HAGEN, Sask. – Ernie Skaar may not be a farmer any more but he’s got the same old problem. Making his product is the easy part; marketing it causes headaches.
Skaar builds and sells the Backwoods Buddy, a metal and plastic trailer that can be pulled by all-terrain vehicles on rough ground.
When he bought the rights to the design in June 2002, it wasn’t a big problem to learn how to build the trailers. Trained as a mechanical draftsman, Skaar also had years of experience working with metal on the farm.
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“Dad taught me to weld at a very young age,” he said.
“As a younger person I didn’t enjoy working with metal that much. I just loved working with wood. My dad was just the opposite: hated wood, loved metal. Now I’m getting to the point where I just love working with metal.”
Selling the trailers is another story.
“Marketing is a very big stretch,” he said.
“Part of the problem with this unit is it is fairly expensive to build. There’s not enough retail difference in there for a distributor-wholesaler-retailer so what I’m having to do is kind of act as a distributor-wholesaler and a retailer as well.”
Once production moves beyond selling the trailers one at a time, he will be able to recruit other businesspeople into the marketing chain. However, until he starts receiving larger orders, he will be forced to wear all the marketing hats.
It’s a role that hasn’t come easily for Skaar.
“To develop a new product and try and get it out and exposed is a lot of work, a lot of legwork and a lot of extra unanticipated expense.”
Skaar grew up on the family farm near Hagen and left for Vancouver in 1970 to study mechanical drafting. He met his wife Carol there and worked for a few years for a sawmill and a heating and air conditioning company before returning to the farm in 1974.
In 1998, bowing to the pressure of farm debt and a small land base, the Skaars quit farming and rented out their three quarter-sections of land. Skaar worked in a gun shop in Prince Albert, Sask., and he and his wife continued to be foster parents.
In the fall of 2001, Skaar heard about the Backwoods Buddy, which had been designed by a Prince Albert man. He bought the design the following June and went to work building trailers in a 50-year-old shop on the farm that had been constructed of used lumber.
“It leaked so bad the metal rusted.”
Last summer he began converting his empty farm machinery shed into a shop, which he moved into in April.
The plastic part of the trailers are made by a company in Saskatoon and Skaar builds the metal frame and puts everything together.
He attends trade shows, mails flyers to potential customers and maintains a website.
While he has primarily targeted hunters and outfitters, he thinks mineral exploration and surveying are also good prospects. Agriculture is a different story.
“I’ve been farming enough years that I know that when farmers know what they want, they go get it. But if it’s maybe a toy or something that’s not quite as necessary, they hold off. The economy has not helped anyone. I’ve had orders in Saskatchewan that got cancelled last year once the frost hit.”
He sold 15 trailers in 2004 and so far this year has sold 12. He has received “quite a few interests” for later summer and fall, but Skaar said he’s not getting too excited about that.
“I know what interests are like. You don’t take interests to the bank.”
Even as he struggles with the challenges of marketing, he continues to come up with new products to build. He’s trying to get approval from the federal transport department to sell a trailer that small cars can pull on the highway. He has also designed a plastic fish filleting board.
“Part of my problem is I usually have more ideas than I’ve got time.”
As usual in any new venture, money is a problem, especially in the early phase of low-volume production.
“At the stage we’re at right now, you just sit back and say, ‘OK, how much more am I willing to put into this financially’ because it is draining to try to develop a new product … and when you’re manufacturing the first ones you really have to dig out of your own pocket to do it.”
Like the farmer he used to be, Skaar will continue to produce his product and look for new customers, hoping for higher volumes and better margins. The 55 year old hopes to eventually turn his business into a viable manufacturing company that he will be able to sell to someone else.
“I’m not going to live forever,” he said.
