|
Last September came and went leaving me with some disappointment. I had been lucky enough to be invited to the Toro Experience at Toro World Headquarters, but the summer of 2010 was brutal and left many of us with a full plate come cooler weather. In late August I received a phone call with another invite, I didn’t hesitate.
Over my 18 years in the industry, I have visited numerous turfgrass industry vendor campuses. On the flight to Minnesota, listening to my favorites on my iPhone, I found myself revisiting some of these visits, anticipating what the Toro Experience would be like.
We had received a basic schedule before we had left and a list of attendees. I was accompanied by some great superintendents from various regions, including locally, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. Being the tech guru I am, seeing things like “Computer Design and Analysis Demonstrations” and “Toro Experimental and Test Departments” I new this would be a good few days and probably with very little tweeting. However, it was a fantastic few days.
We were greeted in Bloomington, M.N. with nothing short of first class service. It was clear after the first 15 minutes of our tour of headquarters, Toro isn’t just a company that produces great equipment, it’s a culture. As you enter headquarters, you are greeted with a long hallway, hung with photos of Toro history and actual pieces of equipment in the Toro portfolio. We were introduced to a plague along the hallway that listed some of the tenures of employees, from line workers to executives. These tenures were impressive and it really demonstrated what type of company Toro is.
Our tour of Toro’s R&D facility was nothing short of impressive that afternoon. Until you see a facility like this, you can’t truly appreciate the resources that go into producing equipment. The ingenuity that many of these engineers posses is impressive.
Our first day with the Toro family was capped with a Twin’s game a Target field. A little trivia if you ever visit this impressive stadium. The 7 foot gold glove in Target Plaza outside right field, is 520ft from home plate; Harmon Killebrew’s longest home run.
Our next morning began with some presentations regarding some of Toro’s present technologies, including precision turfgrass management with Toro’s Precision Sense6000. These are all some great technologies and not just for the techie like me and should make some impacts on our course management in the near future.
Later that morning we headed over to the Legends Golf Club. This was a memorable round on two fronts. First, the golf course was spectacular, winning course of the year in 2007 by the NGCOAA. Secondly, during our round, this particular area of Minnesota broke a weather record for highest wind speeds during a non-storm event. Yes, it was down right windy; driver, driver, 5 iron windy on a par 5. Seven iron from 100 yards windy. We experienced winds in excess of 50 mph during our round, but it was a great round with some great company. I had played with one of Toro’s engineers. I can remember one of our many conversations. He told me how much he appreciates customer visit’s to HQ and activities like the baseball game and golf . He said it humanizes what they do each day; to actually meet the people their ideas and designs impacts.
Our last day at the Toro Experience was really the meat and potatoes of our visit. We got to see some designs in the Toro pipeline along with visiting some recent releases, like the Toro Triflex. We also had some discussions on the Tier 4 initiative as well as a round table about our experience with the Toro distributors and sales staff. Before grabbing lunch and heading back to the airport we were treated with a visit from Toro CEO Mike Hoffman.
The anticipation on the flight out had turned to exhaustion on the flight home. The Toro Experience was a great few days to see inside the Toro Company. If you have the opportunity to be invited to this, my advice, go.
About the author
William Brown, CGCS, maintains Hartefeld National in Avondale, Pa.
|
