After 100,000 hours of doing anything, you develop a certain level of expertise – and so when Peter Brunt took the leap from farming to farm machinery sales, he felt pretty comfortable straight away in his new role.
Peter and his father Ian formed Eagle i Machinery in 2010, while Peter was taking a 12-month sabbatical from farming after they recognised the need for high quality, simple machinery to enable grain growers to farm more efficiently.
“I love my numbers, and being efficient with staff and efficient with numbers, there are a lot of similarities between the machinery business and farming,” Peter said.
“Having that farming background has really made the difference in establishing Eagle i, because we really understand what the machinery needs to deliver at different times of the year, and how the economics of farming work.
“We try to give good prices to farmers year round, and we also make sure we keep a really big stock of spare parts on hand, because we know from our own experience that if you are in the middle of a harvest or cropping and your machinery stops working, you need to be able to get it up and running again quickly.
“Timing is everything in farming – and our business needs to respond to that.
We moved the business to our current location in 2014 with two staff and now have a payroll of 16.
“We were approached to start selling T-L Irrigation Co. pivot and inline irrigation systems in 2014, because we had had so much success with them on our own farm, and we have been the top international seller of their products for five years in a row now.
“We are happy to sell the products, because from our own experience, we think they are simply the best. We never compromised on safety on our farm, and went to the US looking for a high quality irrigation system, which led us to T-L.”
Peter switched to Moggs Accounting + Advisory five years ago and looks to the firm to make sure he is compliant, in an environment of rapidly-changing rules and legislation, working with Accountant and Finley office team leader David Vinecombe.
“David has helped us unbelievably with employment contracts, knowing what is right and wrong and making sure our staff are looked after,” Peter said.
“It’s been really good to have informal chats about business decisions – I just find the relationship really easy. They’re very accessible they do a lot of work for me that I should probably be doing and that saves me time and allows me to get on and develop the business.”
