We aim to strengthen and deepen our collaboration with suppliers with a joint value creation approach. The objective is to generate more value together than the companies could do alone. After assessing the market, we identify opportunities and convert them into a Joint Business Plan that we collaboratively implement and track. These partnerships are underpinned by mutual trust and extensive data sharing. Our strategic collaboration with John Deere, Husqvarna and Bosch Rexroth are all good examples of this.
In the agricultural market, we celebrated the five-year anniversary of the partnership between Kramp and John Deere in September 2023. “We wanted a solution that would enable official John Deere dealers to order non-original parts from the Kramp assortment, in addition to obtaining original parts through John Deere’s own portal,” says Boris Vernooijs, Strategic Partnerships Assortment Manager. “Using the ‘Webshop’ Business Solution | Powered by Kramp (see chapter 9), we co-developed the Extraparts webshop. This is based on the technology and assortment of Kramp, but designed in line with John Deere’s own branding.”
“John Deere has strengthened the aftermarket proposition of its dealers across Europe”
Boris Vernooijs
Significant turnover growth
From Kramp’s perspective, this partnership has resulted in significant turnover growth over the past five years. Besides strengthening our relationships with official John Deere dealers in established markets, we have also started new relationships in our growth markets such as Central and Eastern Europe, and Italy.
Improved service level
Equally importantly, this partnership offers clear benefits for John Deere and its official dealers by increasing the service level for the non-original spare parts business, Boris explains: “John Deere has strengthened the aftermarket proposition of its dealers across Europe. The combination of John Deere’s official webshop with the Extraparts portal fulfils a dealer’s complete needs. In fact, our message is ‘If you can’t get it from John Deere and you can’t get it from Kramp, you probably don’t need it!’. After initially starting as a pilot project in Germany, we have already rolled out the concept to 17 countries and there’s still potential to add more countries in the future.”
Groundbreaking pilot in forest and grass care
Similarly, since January 2023, we have been intensifying our relationship with Husqvarna, a leading Original Equipment Manufacturer in the forest and grass care (F&G) market. “We already carried Husqvarna’s retail brands in our range, but we were keen to commercially activate and develop our existing assortment in line with our increased focus on F&G as a core market,” comments Jelle Brandsma, International Business Development Manager.
“We intensified our relationship with Husqvarna step by step, starting with a ‘test, learn, modify’ pilot project in the Benelux region only. Initially, 800 carefully selected fast-moving Husqvarna original parts and accessories were made available to official Husqvarna dealers and 700 fast-movers were presented to non-official dealers,” he says.
Significant acceleration
“This was such a success that we significantly accelerated the project in July 2023 by adding a further 20,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) for non-official dealers and 48,000 SKUs for official Husqvarna dealers,” he comments. “As Kramp, adding all these products to our range is helping us to respond to the market demand among both official and non-official dealers and strengthen our reputation as an essential partner in F&G.”
Extending the reach
“At the same time, we are helping Husqvarna to grow its market share by extending the company’s reach to the hundreds of non-official dealers in the highly fragmented ‘alternative’ channel for the later part of the machine lifecycle,” explains Jelle. “Thanks to our efficient inventory management and strong logistics network, we ensure that both official and non-official dealers now have quick and easy access to original parts when performing repairs for end users of Husqvarna equipment. The response from the dealers has been overwhelmingly positive, and they particularly appreciate our reliable in-night deliveries and late cut-off times.”
“In addition to improving service to end users and dealers for OE parts, this pilot offers Husqvarna multiple strategic benefits”
Jelle Brandsma
Strategic benefits
“In addition to improving service to end users and dealers for Original Equipment parts, this pilot offers Husqvarna multiple strategic benefits. Thanks to the huge amount of click data at our fingertips and our in-house data analysis capabilities, we can share valuable customer-behaviour insights with Husqvarna to guide their commercial strategies and inventory management strategies, for example,” he continues. “We also support them with dedicated marketing efforts such as Search Engine Optimisation campaigns. And ultimately, collaborating with us for the logistics and distribution activities allows them to reduce their cost to serve and focus on what they’re good at: manufacturing top-end products.”
Reducing the carbon footprint
“By partnering with suppliers, we not only help them to optimise their sales, their OE market share and their cost to serve, but can also help them to reduce the carbon footprint. This increasingly matters in both a regulatory and an Environmental, Social and Governance context,” says Boris. “Kramp is so well established that most dealers often already receive regular – and often daily – deliveries from us. Every time an extra item can be consolidated with an existing order rather than being shipped separately, it makes a difference – and that all adds up, especially in view of our European footprint.”
Futureproof business
“We will continue to work closely within these partnerships to analyse opportunities and jointly develop action plans to capture unexploited sales potential, whether in new geographies or by making further improvements to our value proposition,” adds Boris. “In the course of 2024, we expect to see even more suppliers taking an interest in a joint value creation-based approach. We firmly believe that this is the right path to a successful, futureproof business for Kramp, our suppliers and ultimately the customers,” he concludes.
