A drive for major expansion into the
North American market with new products, new dealer programs, a refined pricing
strategy, and plans to grow to more than 60 dealer outlets in the next two
years has been unveiled by LiuGong.
Curt Unger, president of LiuGong Construction
Machinery North America, said the company was new on the scene in 2008, and now
LiuGong had arrived at CONEXPO-CON/AGG as a global competitor with the
products, parts support, service support, financing and sales programs in place
to compete in one of the world’s largest machine markets.
“CONEXPO is extremely important to us
this year. We’re putting a lot of new things in place to help us sign dealers
and drive new sales. We’re aggressively pursuing dealers right now,” Unger
said.
“What we have done is build a
foundation to grow from. This is a hard market to break into. It takes a lot of
time and a lot of money to build a dealer network, and here you need dealers,
service and parts. We have been putting that in place since 2008 and we have
been building that base and continuing that this year. We have put together a
dealer financing program that is really important as dealers recover from the
tough business climate.”
LiuGong Construction Machinery North
America has partnered with Dutch-based De Lage Landen Financial Services to develop
the program, which engages De Lage Landen to provide inventory finance options
to LiuGong dealers in North America, and retail equipment finance solutions to
its end-use customers.
Unger noted that LiuGong is showing 14
of its newest machines at the show, including the new 842IV Z-bar wheel loader
(the first in LiuGong’s wheel loader line-up to feature the EPA-compliant Tier
4 Interim engine), and machines with optimized hydraulics that can increase
productivity by up to 15% and reduce fuel consumption by up to 10%.
He said the company’s marketing
efforts in coming months would focus on dealer recruitment. It signed five
dealers in 2010 and now has 13 dealers with a total of 17 outlets, but has
plans to have more than 60 dealers when fully expanded. Unger said LiuGong would
focus first on penetrating east coast markets, as the company believes the
economic recovery is happening there first.
The company is also pursuing the
rental market and the general contractor segment and he believes LiuGong’s
wheel loaders, excavators, skid-steers and backhoes mesh well with market
demands.
“We believe the rental market will be
good for us. In the past three years customers have not been able to buy
anything, and they’re renting now instead of purchasing. General contractors
have lost a lot of money, so they will rent. Our machines are easy to operate
and incredibly durable, so this is a great fit.”
LiuGong North America chairman, Jim
Donoghue, has been the architect of LiuGong’s assault on North and Latin
America as well as global markets, and he notes that LiuGong is poised for
success in the US saying he expects to more than double sales in 2011.
“We
are really excited about our future. We’re starting to take our position on the
global stage because we have earned it by making LiuGong customers successful,”
he said.
