| I recently left a major part supplier for a good portion of the heavy equipment industry and Deere was one of our biggest customers. They were truly despicable to work with. On every bid we sent them the #1 requirement was Proprietary Fit. There had to be some sort of IP lockout (always disguised as a valuable design feature, but it never was) to prevent end users from procuring replacement parts anywhere else. In many cases it even made the parts significantly worse, as useless bumps or ridges were added to the industry standard to make them physically incompatible. The old model was we build a part for $8 and sell it to the end user for $10. Under Deere's new model, we build the part for $8, sell it exclusively to Deere for $11, and they sell it to customer for $16. My former employer was very complicit in this behavior, but Deere was by far the most aggressive about and a big enough player to squeeze all their suppliers. Edit: They pay all kinds of lip service to how this is better for the customer ("reliable supply chain", "Deere-guaranteed quality", etc) but that's only in their public PR. Behind the scenes it is 100% about securing a long term revenue source - customers pay out the ass for a piece of equipment, then have to keep coming back to Deere for 50 years for replacement parts. |