The John Deere website doesn't seem to currently have a history section. My records indicate it once had the following blurb in a history section on their site:
Things were so bad, tractors that were repossessed could not be readily resold. It was failing to get them their money back.
Someone at John Deere saw the handwriting on the wall and they said "At some point, the bad weather will change. The economy will turn. At that point, you will need your tractor to bring in your crop. Pay us when you can."
I once read a magazine article written by a guy who tried to sell tractors from a competitor forty years after The Great Depression, in the 1970s. He said if there was a John Deere tractor on the property, it was a waste of time to stop and do a sales pitch.
The family was going to be die-hard loyal to the John Deere company because the decision the company made to not repossess the tractors is why the family in question still had a family farm. The mild statement above about "strengthening farmer loyalty" does not really capture the degree to which that decision made the company successful for decades to come.
I don't know if they still get it at John Deere. It's been more than eighty years and articles I've seen recently have made me feel like no one who works there still remembers that decision, why it was made or why it mattered so very much.
People can live without business. Business cannot live without people.
We sometimes seem to forget that these days. Corporations have so much power and tales of screwing the little guy are so common, we forget that companies are invented by people to serve the needs of people, both inside the company and outside of it.
Doing right by people is sometimes the best business decision one can make.
1933 Business is almost at a standstill. Sales plunge to $8.7 million. Though it is losing money, the company decides to carry debtor farmers as long as necessary, greatly strengthening farmer loyalty.My understanding is that John Deere was the only tractor company that made that choice during The Great Depression. Other companies repossessed the tractors when farmers could not pay, which really did them no good because there was no market for them.
Things were so bad, tractors that were repossessed could not be readily resold. It was failing to get them their money back.
Someone at John Deere saw the handwriting on the wall and they said "At some point, the bad weather will change. The economy will turn. At that point, you will need your tractor to bring in your crop. Pay us when you can."
I once read a magazine article written by a guy who tried to sell tractors from a competitor forty years after The Great Depression, in the 1970s. He said if there was a John Deere tractor on the property, it was a waste of time to stop and do a sales pitch.
The family was going to be die-hard loyal to the John Deere company because the decision the company made to not repossess the tractors is why the family in question still had a family farm. The mild statement above about "strengthening farmer loyalty" does not really capture the degree to which that decision made the company successful for decades to come.
I don't know if they still get it at John Deere. It's been more than eighty years and articles I've seen recently have made me feel like no one who works there still remembers that decision, why it was made or why it mattered so very much.
People can live without business. Business cannot live without people.
We sometimes seem to forget that these days. Corporations have so much power and tales of screwing the little guy are so common, we forget that companies are invented by people to serve the needs of people, both inside the company and outside of it.
Doing right by people is sometimes the best business decision one can make.