The Farmers Mart Feb-Mar 2020 - Issue 67 | Page 38

38 FARMSTAR FEB/MAR 2020 • farmers-mart.co.uk Celebrating Thirty Years of Success and Growth at FARMSTAR 2020 sees the Farmstar group celebrating thirty years of growth and success. Today they are one of the largest machinery dealers in the north. They have come a long way since the early days. AT the helm today is Andrew Waddington, a well-known face and personality in the farming community. Andrew joined Farmstar in early 1990; he was already passionate about farming and machinery, having worked on the family farm before joining the CASE IH in Doncaster (formerly the mighty International Harvesters) as a test driver, for the Research and Development Department. When CASE decided to shut the test and R & D depart- ments in Doncaster and move them to the US, Andrew knew where he wanted to go – FARMSTAR. He approached them asking for a sales job. He pushed hard, he just wanted to sell machinery. With an attitude like that, how could Ian Husler refuse, so Andrew joined the team. It was clear that they would need somewhere bigger than Spofforth. In 1990, the Marr site was renovated from the former Grove Farm with, you guessed it, two large corn sheds! Andrew and Shaun Husler vividly remember concreting the floors of them to form the initial workshop area. Marr services the Yorkshire & North Nottinghamshire area. Six months later, the next part of Ian’s development plan to increase their geo- graphical spread into Lincolnshire saw the premises at Brigg come in to the Farmstar portfolio. In 1990, as the business continued to grow, the first Market Weighton site was set up on the site of the old water treatment plant, until four years later a purpose-built depot was erected on the Becklands industrial site to serve East & North Yorkshire. The three branches continued to develop and flourish and in 2006 it was decided that Farmstar needed a greater coverage in Nottinghamshire as well as complementing Brigg’s presence in Lincolnshire. Initially, premises were rented at Long Bennington, before acquir- ing the former Wood Yard in 2011 to give them a permanent base and somewhere to grow from. I talked at length to Andrew and Shaun Husler about those early years. Ian Husler was the driver behind the business, and he managed it with complete focus. Andrew, Ian’s brother Shaun and the rest of the team - Brian Bannister, Richard Lister, Mark Benn, Clive Parker and Tony Hailstone worked tirelessly in building the business through sheer hard work, doing pretty much everything from service, sales, they could operate and mend anything, working most weeks seven days 7 till 7, seeing customers whenever convenient delivering machines straight to farm and field. No Farmstar customer was left stranded without a machine. Andrew and Shaun clearly enjoyed themselves, as did the rest of the team, earning that all-important respect on the way. When you have people in a business that clearly enjoy what they do and go the extra mile for customers, people trust you and want to deal with you. Success was across the board; one of Andrew’s personal highlights were when the team sold thirty-six combines in 1996 - imagine doing that now? Shaun and Andrew remember huge lines of tractors in the yard and farmers turning up en masse to drive most of them away. It’s no wonder that Andrew knows machinery and sales inside out. Good leaders do so from the front. Continued on page 40