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