In this episode of "How We Did It: Stories from Independent Farm Equipment Innovators," we hear from Pat Whalen, the late owner of Yetter Manufacturing. In part 2 of this 2-part series, Pat shares his proudest product innovations and what makes Yetter unique from its competitors. Watch it here >>
In the early 90s, Whalen was licensed to build the residue manager, a product that put Yetter Manufacturing on the map. He took a couple of prototypes out to a local farmer and was told that he could put two rows on the machine and if it works then they could talk.
After one round, the farmer quickly asked how soon he could get the other 10 rows. Luckily, Whalen had anticipated this and had them with him. Following this visit, Yetter expanded and took their product to other test sites, “and the rest is history, it just exploded overnight,” says Whalen.
A piece of advice that Whalen received while attending a seminar has stuck with him all these years later, “If you can’t do anything about it, why are you talking about it? Do something you can control, otherwise you are just wasting your time.” Whalen brought this advice into how he ran his business.
“In a nutshell, we drive innovation, because we are able to do it,” says Whalen, “We helped push the no-till and reduced farming, we helped people cut costs when they really needed it, and we did too in business. I think it opened up the door to a broad spectrum of customers, the products we have developed since then have added to that.”
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