MULTI-franchise dealer McIntosh & Son has opened a dealership in Esperance.
But the branch’s franchises don’t include New Holland, which remains the domain of Staines Esperance.
Explaining the move to Torque during a visit to Esperance earlier this month, branch manager Devon Gilmour, who also heads up the Katanning, Kulin and Albany operations, said growing market share for other franchises such as Challenger, Trufab, Merlo, Hardi, Harrington Weed Destructor and Agrispread forced a response.
The McIntosh & Son group has since picked up the Versatile franchise for the majority of its WA outlets.
“We needed a presence on the ground in Esperance to support and service our customer base for these product lines,” he said.
“It became a critical mass issue where we could no longer effectively do the job we wanted to do by deploying staff from our other branches.
“We’ve always focused on providing our customers with service and support and Esperance became a logical extension of our business.”
The Esperance branch boasts two salesmen, three servicemen, one administrator and two parts interpreters.
The service manager is Matt Moulden, who joined McIntosh & Son in 2000 after leaving the family at Woodanilling in 1995 to complete an ag mechanic apprenticeship under the late Ian Bolto at Katanning.
Sales representative is Dan Tracey, who has been with the McIntosh & Son team in Katanning since 2005, starting in the service department before moving into sales.
The Esperance team is supported by McIntosh & Son group managers Ben Daniell (sales), Ashton Nehme (parts) and Daniell O’Neill (service).
“With the structure we have in place we are able to effectively and efficiently support our new and existing customers in Esperance.” Devon said.
McIntosh & Son only recently picked up the Hardi dealership for Esperance and has an experienced Hardi service technician in Matt to oversee product support and service.
