JONESBORO, Ark. – A late October meeting with SMA staff and a facility tour provided a glimpse into the somewhat” invisible hand” of aftermarket parts supply.
Blant Hurt, general manager, says SMA is the largest privately held aftermarket parts distributor and one that maintains a focus on the full scope of production ag equipment.
SMA was founded in 1964 and employs 170 who are dedicated to “helping farmers and families grow.”
With no direct sales, SMA is a 100% wholesale distributor and is committed to being out in the field – backed up by 32 territory managers. “We’re only as successful as our dealers are,” says Luke Gazaway, national sales manager. “So we’re very ‘boots on the ground’ and keep showing up in dealers’ business to be close to the action.”
The business remains owned and operated by the Hurt family, today by Blant and Rodger Jr. president.
SMA possesses deep inventory of coulters and blades.
According to Spencer Worlow, marketing manager, SMA offers 80,000 sku numbers from four distribution centers. In addition to facilities in Jonesboro, Ark., the others are strategically located in Corsicana, Texas, Des Moines, Iowa and Fresno, Calif.
SMA supplies roughly 6,000 operations, consisting of the small (Amish supply stores) all the way up to the farm stores and mainline OEM dealers – and virtually everything in between.
SMA’s Sweet Spot
Gazaway explains the company’s purpose. “The OEM dealers want to supply their main brand. But we don’t want them to lose business when a farmer has sticker shock from the OEM price. We don’t want the farmers walking out of that dealership and searching online for a cheaper price from an unknown supplier.
“Instead, we want the dealership to be able to hold that customer at the parts counter with a value-oriented alternative of similar quality.”
SMA maintains a call center staff of about 20 to handle phone orders, troubleshoot and assist in logistics.
The company’s product managers find and vet the value-oriented parts before adding them to the SMA catalog. In late October, three of the SMA staff, including Gazaway and Rodger Hurt Jr. attended the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Assn. (FEMA) / Equipment Marketing & Distribution Assn. (EMDA) Joint Convention “Showcase” exhibition to follow up with several new promising sources from overseas.
The firm’s extensive list of brands is shown here. Many of SMA’s Asian parts suppliers are 30-year partners, says Gazaway, adding that about 60% of its parts book is sourced from U.S. manufacturers.
“We don’t want the farmers walking out of that dealership and searching online for a cheaper price from an unknown supplier; we want the dealership to be able to hold that customer at the parts counter with a value-oriented alternative of similar quality…”
Gazaway adds that his team’s personal presence in the field is a differentiator. SMA regional managers are focused on bringing value in alternative products, but also monitor performance to make sure that their choices of suppliers are also sound choices for the dealer and farmer.
SMA also markets products under its own label – AgSmart (all-purpose parts), PickSmart (cotton picker products), TruPower (power transmission) TISCO (tractor parts) and ICEBIN (roto-mold coolers and tumblers).
A Closer Look
Farm Equipment toured one of two 160,000 square foot facilities in Jonesboro, Ark. The other facilities are roughly one-third the size of the two flagship facilities in Jonesboro.
About 70% of the commerce is executed on its website. The firm also does a fair amount of “will call” business for those dealers who have trucks running through the area. Will-call customers can expect their orders processed within 2 hours of the order entry.
According to Gazaway, all orders received by 3 p.m. are fulfilled by SMA that same day.
On the warehouse floor, activity starts with a “cartonization” step. The computers output the weight and size of the order, which prompts the system to specify a box size. “The first step in the process is the building of the box,” says Gazaway.
From there, the part picking commences. The clean well-lit aisles resemble a Home Depot – everything has a place, and in the case of smaller items, plastic bins bearing their name and sku number. Bearings, hydraulic components, water pumps and lugnuts all found and labeled in the same aisle.
Spencer Worlow, marketing manager, explains the weigh station that all cartons pass through to verify that the order is of the specific weight identified for the box during order processing.
Once in boxes, the automated conveyors must pass through a weighbox scale to ensure that the order is correct. Assuming the weight matches that which was estimated by the originating order, the box is conveyed to the packing stations. From there, they are wrapped and loaded onto trucks in 2 bays a short distance away.
A tour of the building shows the wide array of parts, including thousands of coulters and blades and virtually anything you’d see at a dealership’s parts counter.
Adjacent to the warehouse floor is a call center team of about 20, who are available on the phones to troubleshoot and assist in managing logistics. A monitor flashes the call volumes, calls handled, abandon rate, average talk time, calls waiting, average wait time, service level and agents online – ensuring that the customer service machine is operating well.
Following the weigh station, the box is packaged and loaded onto the trucks.
SMA is happy to be the invisible parts partner, says Gazaway, who came out of the CNH wholegoods equipment world before joining SMA.
When asked about how some majors cite the aftermarket as countercyclical opportunities when wholegoods are down, Gazaway notes that it rarely works out that way.
“When things are tight, farmers tend to keep running the status quo, even on worn parts. We don’t typically participate in a ‘unit-down situation’ where the farmer must buy.”
But SMA finds the volatility to be vastly different from the wholegoods world that Gazaway came from. “While the wholegoods business can be up or down by 30% in a given year, the parts business has swings of 4-6%.”
