Four associations will become the North American Equipment Dealers Association
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Four regional equipment dealer associations have voted in favor of a merger.
The Midwest-SouthEastern Equipment Dealers Association (MSEDA), the United Equipment Dealers Association (UEDA), the Western Equipment Dealers Association (WEDA) and the Equipment Dealers Association (EDA) will merge to form the new North American Equipment Dealers Association (NAEDA).
The new group will have a membership of approximately 3,000.
The merger is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2022.
Work on this merger started in 2018, said John Schmeiser, CEO of the WEDA.
“We had a national association, and we had a number of regional associations,” he told Farms.com. “There has been attempts for a consolidation over the years because equipment dealers were consolidating. So we wanted to get dealers in a room, talk about our strengths and weaknesses and find out if we’re serving equipment dealers well.”
Representatives from 10 regional associations sent two equipment dealers to a series of three meetings to discuss possible consolidation.
Of the 10 regional associations, five decided to proceed to the next step. And of those five, four associations supported the eventual merger.
Some of the groups opposing the merger include the Canada East Equipment Dealers Association, Deep Southern Equipment Dealers Association and the Pioneer Equipment Dealers Association.
Bringing the four associations under one umbrella allows the NAEDA to do more work with governments and manufacturers, Schmeiser said.
“We’re doing this for the sake of getting better,” he said. “We plan to get better at advocacy in the federal capitals and the 24 states and nine provinces we operate in. We’ll be adding resources in those areas to be more effective in our legislatures.”
In addition, the merger provides opportunities for NAEDA to work together to bring more services to its members.
Each regional association has resources which can benefit the others, Schmeiser said.
WEDA “provides a full-service accounting firm that does evaluations and helps with mergers, acquisitions, tax work and audits for dealers,” he said. “Those services are part of WEDA right now, but they’ll be promoted to dealers right across North America and be scaled up to a national level.”
One area the NAEDA wants to improve on is member engagement.
The organization will dedicate resources to help members are active in the association.
“We want our members to use the services available to them and take key roles in the decision-making process of the association going forward,” he said.