Mike Mlekush was a successful lawn maintenance contractor when he decided to become a Walker Dealer in the summer of 2019. “We sold a Walker on our very first day,” Mike recalls. Since then, Walker Mowers of Helena has sold 20-plus Walkers every year which has put him in the top 50 as a Walker dealer.
The broader Walker Mowers of Helena team, from left: Josh Granville, Hoff’s automotive technician; Darrin Farrell, power equipment technician; Mike Mlekush, owner of Walker Mowers of Helena; Nick Hofferber, Mike’s nephew and owner of Hoff’s Automotive; Josh Sweetman, sales at Walker Mowers of Helena.
This year has been the most challenging of Mike’s five years as a dealer. Inflation and interest rates have caught up to many of his customers. As of mid-June, sales for the majority of his equipment lines were pacing below forecast. The Walker line, however, was still humming along.
“We had 27 units sold by the middle of June,” Mike says. When asked why his Walker sales have been holding up, Mike says it’s because the Walker Mower doesn’t have the same level of competition as a mid-mount or stand-on mower. The quality of the machine and loyal customer following have also helped.
Stepping Up to Fill a Void
Mike’s roots run deep with the Walker brand. He has run the mowers, primarily Model T’s, in his own lawn maintenance operation for 17 years. He has also run a Model B with a mulching deck and dethatching attachment. Regardless, the thought of becoming a Walker dealer had never crossed Mike’s mind until he started running into some issues six or seven years ago.
The local Walker dealer Mike had been doing business with, whom he liked and valued as a business advisor, was struggling to provide timely service and warranty support. Mike actually had to coordinate with a different dealer more than three hours away to get his four machines worked on. “Hauling my mowers all the way up there was not going to be a long-term solution,” Mike says.
Other mowing contractors around Helena were having the same troubles. Mike started buying parts from that distant Walker dealer, who also happened to be the distributor for the area, to work on not only his mowers, but also other area contractors’ mowers. Then one day in 2019, Mike got a text from his contact at the dealer/distributor. He wanted Mike to give him a call.
“He wondered if I wanted to get set up as a Walker Dealer,” Mike says. “I was running my mowing business out of a 2,000-square-foot building at the time. The front half was set up for offices, and the back half was a shop. I never used the office area because I did all of that work at home. So I cut a hole in the wall and turned it into a showroom.”
Mike was still hitting the lawn maintenance business hard when he became a dealer, mowing around 200 yards. But he still took to his new role as a dealer by storm, selling 20 Walker Mowers in his first year. “That was five times what the previous dealer had done a year earlier,” Mike points out.
As Walker Mowers of Helena continued selling more mowers, Mike knew they would need a larger facility to continue growing. He purchased some land in 2020, and ended up serving as the general contractor on the construction of a 6,000-square-foot building that opened in October 2021. That’s also when the dealership began adding other equipment lines to broaden its customer base. In addition to Walker, they now carry Scag, Toro, Echo and Honda, along with Boss and Buyers Products snow-handling equipment.
When it comes to the Walker line, Walker Mowers of Helena has been selling a nice mix of models. That said, the Model T is the big mover since grass and leaf collection are so popular in the Helena area.
“We’ve also had success selling the GHS Blower Lockout so contractors can run different decks throughout the year and not collect all of the time,” Mike points out. “Similarly, we have some contractors who’ve bought both a Model T and a Model B. Then they can just hop on one mower or the other, which is easier than switching decks. Plus, that gives them a good backup machine if their main mower ever needs to be sidelined for service.”
While contractors remain a huge part of the dealership’s business, the homeowner market has been growing as well. Walker Mowers of Helena has been having success with the Model R. Mike says homeowners like the fact that they can have the mower set up to either collect, mulch or side-discharge. “I even have one customer who has a Model R that can do it all,” Mike says in reference to the Model R’s standard side-discharge deck, optional mulching kit and optional Accelerator Grass Catcher.
“All of my customers like that the deck is out front so they can see what they’re doing,” Mike continues. “The price point of the Model R really puts it up well against some other higher-end consumer, zero-turns out there.”
Helping Customers Succeed
Mike Mlekush ultimately became a Walker Dealer to elevate the level of service being provided in the Helena area. Additionally, he had a desire to help other lawn maintenance contractors work through the same pain points he’d experienced as a contractor himself.
One piece of advice relates to certain fuel tax credits, which can tally into the thousands of dollars per year for many contractors.
“A big chunk of the price of gas is state and federal taxes,” Mike points out. “I always tell my commercial customers to be very thorough with their receipts for every gallon of gas that goes into every piece of off-road equipment. They can work with their accountant to fill out a form to get a lot of that money back.”
Another piece of advice for commercial cutters relates to the life of their equipment, particularly their Walker Mowers.
“I advise my customers to replace their mowers at least every four years,” Mike says, adding that his dealer had taught him the same thing many years ago. “It’s not that the Walker is some terrible machine. Walkers can last a really long time. I actually had a mower come in for service that I had owned many years ago; it was on its third owner. But if the warranty on a mower is three years or 1,000 hours, that’s a good time to sell it on the open market and get a new one. Walkers have excellent resale value. Also, when you try to run a mower too long, you can end up chasing parts and having more downtime for repairs than you’d like. That doesn’t make sense for a guy who’s trying to make money mowing lawns.”
Mike doesn’t push this concept to simply sell more mowers. He’s simply trying to help his commercial customers be more productive and make more money, which is ultimately in his best interest as a dealer, too.
It’s also in a dealer’s best interest to find ways to improve his own profitability. Always wary of overhead, Mike looks for additional revenue-generating uses for his 6,000-square-foot building.
Mike has begun leasing part of his shop to Hoff’s Automotive, which is owned and operated by his nephew, Nick Hofferber. Nick handled snowplow installations for Mike in the dealership’s first year when Mike didn’t have a full-time technician. Nick continues to assist with snowplow installations as needed. In fact, it’s not uncommon for Nick and his employee, Josh Granville, to lend a hand to Mike’s two employees, Darrin Farrell and Josh Sweetman, and vice versa.
“We now have two automotive lifts and two lawn mower lifts in our shop,” Mike says. Things can get a little cramped during the spring when both businesses are running in high gear. But all in all, things have worked out well and both businesses benefit from the synergies.
Another revenue-generating idea has taken a little longer to come to fruition. Earlier this year, Mike moved his office into a spare room about the size of an elevator. Mike doesn’t care about that, though. He wants to drive as much revenue out of his spacious building as possible. So he’s been renovating his old office to turn it into a drive-thru coffee shop. When it’s all ready to go, he’d like to run it himself to maximize the earnings. But at this point, it’s likely that he’ll just lease it to someone else since he’s so busy running the dealership.
Mike unexpectedly got even busier this summer. He’d attempted to exit the lawn mowing business early this year, but the sale of his company fell apart so he had to resume control. There’s no way he could keep up with all 200-plus accounts, though. He’s servicing more like a dozen, many of which were among his original clients back in 2007. As for the other 180 or so? Those accounts present more opportunity for Mike’s commercial customers at the dealership. Now that he is a dealer, success for his customers is what matters most, anyway.
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