Deere & Company: Competitive Leadership

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That's great context. To your point, Deere has been around for about 188 years now. They've seen the ups and downs and have adapted accordingly.

So is Case, and so is New Holland, and you know, so is Massey Ferguson. They've all been around. I think the most telling point for Deere is that they made a decision probably 40 or 50 years ago to take over total dominance of the corn and bean market in North America. Total dominance. It's an amazing run to have around 60% market share for 45 years without much movement. So when I hear CNH or even Eric from AGCO speak about taking some share, I'm like, okay, you haven't taken it in 50 years. What makes you think you're going to take it now? So, what do you think?

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Well, that's a great starting point for a question in my mind. What is it about Deere that enables them to maintain that lead, that market share advantage? From the corporate side, what strategic decisions have worked out well? Also, an industrial dynamic question we've been asking is to what extent are there really large switching costs for customers? Is the moat for John Deere just that it's really hard for a farmer to switch to a different company because they've been using Deere for the last 30 years?

When they recognize a defect, Deere will take care of it, whatever it costs. Other companies come up with short-sighted strategies we call "fixes fail." They'll let the machines fail, then fix them because they don't want to spend, which ends up costing about three times more in the long run. Deere has been really good about their back-end support. That's one. Two, their marketing. The Deere marketing machine is amazing.

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Well, that's a great starting point for a question in my mind. What is it about Deere that enables them to maintain that lead, that market share advantage? From the corporate side, what strategic decisions have worked out well? Also, an industrial dynamic question we've been asking is to what extent are there really large switching costs for customers? Is the moat for John Deere just that it's really hard for a farmer to switch to a different company because they've been using Deere for the last 30 years?

In contrast, a company like CNH probably has a superior product and engineering in many cases, but they have failed on the marketing side. When I ran New Holland, I used to say we made the best combine in the world, and we were copied by Deere. It helped us with the twin rotor, but we never marketed it like Deere does. That's why CNH had such a low market share in the US cash crop sector. Deere's marketing machine has been strong for years, and their dealer network is another significant factor.

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