Lakeland heavy equipment dealership projects $12M in sales in year one

At a former warehouse tucked away just off Interstate 4 and County Line Road in Lakeland, a Kentucky company has just opened a new dealership.

It’s not a Ford or Chevy or Toyota store. This is a construction equipment dealership named Sawgrass New Holland that counts compact track loaders, skid steers, excavators, articulating loaders and wheel loaders and mowers among its inventory.

These are the kinds of machines used on local construction, development and landscaping projects.

Sawgrass’ parent company is Dry Ridge, Kentucky-based Cornerstone Equipment, which already operates three locations in Kentucky and Ohio, and according to President and CEO Devin Ponder, is the largest volume New Holland dealer in the country. (The company is also a dealer for the brand Bad Boy, which sells tractors, mowers and other similar equipment.)

The Lakeland location, which officially opened July 2, is the first New Holland Construction-branded dealership in North America, says Ponder. Its territory is Pinellas County east toward Orange County and includes Polk and Osceola counties. 

Cornerstone chose this market to capitalize on the booming Polk and i-4 corridor market, projecting at least $12 million in revenue the first year and up to $40 million a year by 2031. 

And, If you have a fixed image of how a construction equipment retailer does business, you may be surprised who Sawgrass’ core customers are: older millennials.

“It’s kind of the be-your-own-boss segment of customers that are looking to start something new, their own business, and then grow with the equipment,” Ponder says.

Ponder, 32, says the agriculture market has been shrinking in the past five years largely because of consolidation, but the construction market, especially in places like Central Florida, has been growing.

That has led to a wave of millennials wanting to start their own companies in the constructions industry. These are single operators who want to work for themselves, to avoid or exit the corporate world.

Ponder calls them “Blue Collar Pros” — landscapers, hardscapers, land-clearing companies, pool contractors, utility contractors and other owner-operators. They are customers who may be buying an entry-level mower and eventually growing their operation with trailers and heavier machinery.

That entrepreneurial spirit is baked into the soul of Cornerstone.

Photo by Mark Wemple

The company was founded in 2009 by Ponders parents, Bryan and Kathy. Ponder, in high school at the time, says it began as a material handling business but the facility they built was “way more expensive than we could afford.”

He was tasked with looking for other products that they could bring on and sell. They started with tractors, which led to compact construction equipment and mowers and “for the last six years it's kind of gone from there.”

On line

Given Cornerstone’s millennial customer base, a key part of the company’s model is digital sales and marketing.

Ponder says that is similar to the entire retail industry, as traditional dealership foot traffic continues to decline and much of the business has shifted online.

To meet consumer expectations, Cornerstone, and now Sawgrass, interacts with customers digitally, completing transactions remotely, delivering machinery directly to job sites and servicing equipment in the field.

A customer, says Ponder, can buy and maintain a machine without ever visiting the dealership.

So, what does that mean for the new Lakeland facility?

The Sawgrass New Holland store is on Winston Creek Parkway, an industrial area about three miles from the on ramp to I-4.

Cornerstone leased the 32,000-square-foot facility and spent about $500,000 renovating it.

Given the company’s digital approach, it is primarily an operation hub rather than a traditional walk-in dealership. The facility has an indoor showroom and a main warehouse space to store machinery, handle equipment setup and a parts and service operation. There is space for repairs that cannot be done in the field and it serves as the base for deliveries and mobile service trucks.

But there are elements of a traditional retail operation. While it won’t have a heavy outdoor display, there are some units parked along the front and the facility can fit about 100 machines, 150 when zero-turn mowers are included.

Ponder says the store will employ about 12 people in the first year, working mostly in service, parts and sales.

“Our facility in Kentucky is about a third of this size. We run about $27 million (in sales) through it, so we really feel like we have the capacity here,” Ponder says.

“This is our largest investment ever in a facility, largest investment from a staffing perspective as well.”

The company is projecting between $12 million and $14 million in sales the first year Sawgrass is open, with a five-year goal of reaching about $40 million in sale annually.

The average transaction will be about $83,000.

Hub and spoke

The optimistic projections are based on the market — the reason why Cornerstone chose Lakeland.

Ponder says the combined area between Orlando and Tampa is a top-five growth market for compact equipment, with a lot of the demand driven by road construction.

Opening the dealership in the geographic center of the I-4 corridor then allows Sawgrass to tap into what it sees as a large population base looking to start businesses in landscaping, land clearing or related fields.

Exactly the kind of customer Cornerstone looks to attract.

And it’s the kind of customer New Holland is looking for as well.

Brian Weisbaum, head of New Holland Construction North America, says in a statement that the store is opening in a key market that will allow it to grow in Florida and that “Sawgrass’ commitment and entrepreneurial spirit align perfectly with where we’re taking the brand.”

It “sets the standard for how we engage the market and our customers” adds Weisbaum.

As for what happens next, Ponder says if things go well in the first five years the plan is to add service and support centers in Tampa and Orlando, while keeping Lakeland as the heart of the local operation.

Sawgrass New Holland, he says, would become a hub-and-spoke network.