By Becky Zimmer
When problems arise on the farm, there is no one more motivated to solve the issue and get back in the field than a farmer.
As a distributor of agricultural innovations across North America, Jeremy Matuszewski, owner of Thunderstruck Sales & Marketing in Winkler, Manitoba, knows this all too well. In business since 2013, with a strict agricultural focus starting in 2016, Thunderstruck currently represents 13 farm innovators who have brought a beneficial product to market.
Farmers are hungry for innovation at any and every age, says Matuszewski. Everyone is looking for an edge, and he has been lucky to surround himself with farmer innovators and early adopters willing to help with that testing and development process.
Farmers want to do better, he explains, and in working with farmers from across Canada, the United States and Australia, they can share farming practices from around the world. No-till farming has been prominent in the United States for a while and has been an ever-growing practice in Canada. With over a dozen Martin-Till products on their website, Matuszewski says they have had a relationship with the Martin family for some time. Howard Martin – the “godfather of no till” – according to Matuszewski, invented the Martin Row Cleaner in 1991.
“As it becomes a bigger and bigger thing up here [in Canada], we’re ahead of the trend, if you will.… It’s maybe been the last four or five years that it’s really starting to get more popular, and still barely scratching the surface of what it’s capable of.”
What’s unique about the farming industry is that farmers don’t want to sit on something because it gives them an advantage over their neighbour. They want to share the secrets to their success, and Matuszewski has an entire community that allows him to help farmers do that.
“If I have a different product come in from a different farmer who wants us to represent it, I send it to my group of farmer inventors and say, is this a good idea? The R&D starts there, and then we’ve got a pretty amazing group of customers that we’ve served over the last 12 years.”
Farmers then take these preliminary prototypes to test in real-world situations, giving performance feedback or writing testimonials before the invention is signed off for mass production. From there, Thunderstruck Ag markets and sells products to both farmers directly and through dealerships.
Matuszewski knows first-hand how nerve-racking this process can be. He recently developed his own invention – the Razors Edge Concave – right from the initial drawings on a napkin to the sales floor.
The Razors Edge Concave changes the flow of different grains through the combine to reduce bottlenecks and increase capacity. Wanting to put the concaves through the toughest harvest conditions possible, Matuszewski sent the prototypes to trusted farming partners in Australia, knowing that if they performed there, they’d perform anywhere.
“What we learned was, when you design something around how the material flows through, not only can you do all the different types of crops with one set of concaves, but you can actually increase the capacity of that combine, because you’re really balancing out the separating area.”
The response has been overwhelming, with 50 per cent of the initial order sold, and Matuszewski is expecting to be completely sold out by July or August.
Harvest loss is a major concern for farmers across North America, he says, whether that’s at the header, rotor or sieve. With market uncertainty and high input costs chafing farmers, they want to ensure they get every grain they can into the bin and on the market.
With the different brands, makes and models hitting the field, one-size-fits-all solutions are not always possible, especially when a field of wheat provides a different set of challenges than a field of canola.
Thunderstruck Ag understands that from the get-go. With a “by the crop” section on their website, farmers are directed to the different products available for whatever they are growing.
“We want to make it so that if somebody is growing corn and beans, they can find the solutions we have for them, and if they’re growing canola or flax or wheat, all of the solutions are different, because all the problems are different,” says Matuszewski.
Marketing for this problem-solving process is about more than just fluff, he notes, because the heart of bringing solutions to farmers is telling the story. Matuszewski built the marketing side of Thunderstruck Ag from the ground up because he felt most other firms had a misguided marketing process that didn’t fit with the stories he was trying to tell. Over the years, Matuszewski has seen the benefits of pairing the marketing and sales worlds, writing their own stories of problem solving from the farm up.
“We only do marketing if we are controlling the leads. The reason being is because we have such a unique process that we go through, which is problem solving on this side. It was really important that the two of them work together.”
According to Matuszewski, buying trends have changed with their digital presence a vital part of doing business, but much of the legwork still needs to be done at the ground level. With a staggering amount of trade shows on the docket every year, Thunderstruck’s core is centred on this connection with farmers on the trade show floor and at the dealerships. They get to see the product in action as Matuszewski and his team show off what they have to offer.
In promoting their new concave, Matuszewski says their amazing videographer Steve Langston went to every farm in North America that was testing the product to get quality testimonials and video content to demonstrate how grain operations are benefiting from the product.
Over the years, Matuszewski has worked with over a dozen or more farmers to develop, test or market their farm-made innovations or to just offer advice and support.
“There have been farmers and products that I’ve come across where I could offer ideas on how to bring them to market – even if they didn’t quite fit within what we do,” says Matuszewski. “That doesn’t mean we don’t want to help. At the end of the day, it’s about lifting the whole industry – one invention at a time.”