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Jacobsen Launches Zero-Turn Mowers and Utility Vehicles 09-17-15 | News

Jacobsen Launches Zero-Turn Mowers and Utility Vehicles
Aimed at Larger Commercial Customers

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Jacobsen, a Textron Inc. company, just announced the launch of its line of zero-turn mowers and utility vehicles. This line is aimed at larger turf customers including municipalities, sports fields, schools and golf courses. This comes after Jacobsen acquired Dixie Chopper back in 2014.

"Jacobsen is well-known in the golf industry, but also pretty well-known in the upper end of the municipal and sports turf sector," said David Withers, president of Jacobsen. "As we talked to our customers, the assumption was Jacobsen already had a zero-turn mower to go into that space. One of the attractions of acquiring Dixie Chopper was the Chopper brand and the equity that it had in the marketspace."

The company now had the ability to take some of the technology and be able to generate variables that could then be added onto a broader portfolio. Withers said his company probably was only filling 30 or 40 percent of what a big municipality or university was buying. He thinks now it will be at about 80 percent.

"What we've found having Dixie Chopper for 18 months is that the majority of the sales of Dixie Chopper products go to large-consumers and lawn maintenance contractors," said Withers. "They sell more into that space than into the municipal space."

Withers said Jacobsen is appealing is to commercial cutters, municipalities, sports turf and fields and those type of customers where Jacobsen is a much-known brand. In terms of a dealer channel, most Chopper dealers are geared towards large-consumers demographic, rather than the more commercial and municipality space. For more information go to www.jacobsen.com.