Kubota Thunder Bay Has New Ownership!
There is new ownership of a long time Thunder Bay business. Randy Neufeld and Cole Christian have acquired Kubota Thunder Bay, completing the transaction at the end of November, 2021.
“The previous owners of Kubota Thunder Bay, Cristin and Ian Parker had the business for around 21 years, and they grew it to what you see now. They were my customers at my previous job and when they moved to this new location we got together and decided I was going to come on board and help them take the business to the next level,” said Randy Neufeld, General Manager, Kubota Thunder Bay. “Things went well and shortly after that we hired Cole Christian. Cole and I started taking over the running of the business the last 3 or 4 years.”
The business used to be located on Powley Street and previously Cumberland Street. Kubota has been in Canada over 40 years now.
“We both had been in the business for quite a few years and helped grow it and see it continuing to go that way. Cristin and Ian had done their two decades in the business and were looking to retire so it worked out well for all parties involved.” said Cole Christian, Controller, Kubota
Thunder Bay. Cole took accounting at Lakehead University and then worked for Enterprise Canada managing a couple locations for them. He started at Kubota Thunder Bay as an Admin Assistant and gradually took on more responsibility.
Kubota Thunder Bay have been at the 635 Hewitson St. location for about 7 years this May. The new location building is 7000 square feet in size on just over an acre of land.
“It did give us the opportunity to grow with better visibility and offer more room to grow. We could put more product on display and showcase it better. As well it offers a better customer experience,”said Cole. “We recently have leased an additional 1/2 acre near the expressway from our neighbour which allows us to bring in more product and support future growth.”
Kubota Thunder Bay currently have a staff of 15 including two part timers. There are also job ads up now for new positions.
The business has two parts personal, a service writer, three mechanics with a fourth coming, two sales staff, a janitor/ handyman, delivery driver and they want to add an admin position as well. There is also Randy and Cole.
Kubota Thunder Bay sell a variety of products from several suppliers. These include all Kubota products, Land Pride, HLA Attachments, Horst, Farm King, Walco, BaumaLight,Wallenstein Equipment wood chippers, Husqvarna chainsaws, Stihl products including lawnmowers, Ariens snowblowers and DR walk behind products. They operate in the Industrial, Commercial and Residential markets.
“Kubota is our main supplier and we sell their entire product line anything from small lawn tractors to big farm tractors and the full line of construction products as well.”said Randy.
“During the last few years of the pandemic we have managed to stay on the right side of it. With the pandemic people have stayed at home more which has benefited us as they have done home projects. It had been alright for us,”said Randy.
“This is a fun industry for us to be in. You are dealing with a good group of mature, well established customers. Also the customers that we have here are very loyal.We try to make it a positive shopping experience for them.” said Randy.