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MUSKOX EYES MARKET EXPANSION FOR SNOWBLOWER ATTACHMENT
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Muskox Eyes Market Expansion for Snowblower Attachment
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(L-R): Ron, Noah and Adam Bergman, the core team of Muskox. The 22-78 Muskox bi-directional snowblower attachment’s back drag feature, for which the Bergmans received the patent in spring 2021, allows operators to blow snow while back dragging in front of obstructions, saving time and money, and lowering any chance of injuries by decreasing the manual labor typically involved in the process. The lowered chute, a result of the finetuning process, also is better for operator visibility.
By Ruksana Hussain
CEG CORRESPONDENT
For many in the design and architecture industries, less is more is a mantra. For the Bergmans, that principle held true with the October 2020 launch of their Muskox bi-directional snowblower attachment. Taking a wellknown industry pain point and creating a streamlined solution has allowed the Minnesota-based company to find great success in the last few months, despite launching during the pandemic.
“My father Ron, who is also my partner, was doing snow removal at his shop — he was using two different attachments to do it,” said Adam Bergman, co-founder at Muskox. “He had the idea of combining those machines, so he’d only have to use one attachment. My background had been as a real estate investor, and we do snow removal on all our rental property. One of the biggest pain points we had was the shoveling in front of garage doors.”
Adam saw the potential for not just shops but also homeowners’ associations to use such a solution. Prototyping began in spring 2017 and finetuning the product over the next few years included a hydraulic slip clutch and redesigning the bottom of the machine to incorporate a glide plate to avoid accidents on grass or gravel surfaces.
“Whether you're an 8-year-old or an 80-year-old, you understand the challenge with existing snow blowers of needing to shovel in front of garage doors, it’s a universal problem,” said Adam. “When you see ours where you have that opportunity to back drag and blow at the same time, you instantly see the value and what makes our product different.”
In 2020, Muskox won first place in Northwest Minnesota Foundation’s IDEA Competition receiving a $15,000 cash award and another $5,000 in professional services in recognition of its innovative product. The 22-78 Muskox bi-directional snowblower attachment’s back drag feature, for which the Bergmans received the patent in spring 2021, allows operators to blow snow while back dragging in front of obstructions, saving time and money, and lowering any chance of injuries by decreasing the manual labor typically involved in the process. The lowered chute, a result of the finetuning process, is also better for operator visibility.
The 78-in. machine is available as a single auger and dual auger, but Muskox is looking at expanding into additional sizes. They turned to operators at snow removal companies to test the product.
The core team at Muskox consists of co-founder Adam, managing business development, marketing, and financing; his father Ron, a retired engineer from Artic Cat Snowmobiles — where he did research and development on snowmobiles for more than 30 years — who heads engineering,
Ample sunshine, warm weather, and frequent rain fuels the year-round growth of vegetation in south Florida.
Unfortunately for homeowners and construction companies, that also includes invasive species like melaleuca, Brazilian Pepper and Ear-Leafed Acacia.
Many local ordinances preclude the start of construction until all invasives are cleared from the property. That has fueled the growth of D & S Land Management, a mulching contractor that specializes in invasive species removal based in Naples, Fla.
Invasive species removal can be an arduous and difficult problem to deal with. Large shrubs and trees taking root and spreading out across a plot of land can take a team of people with machetes and chainsaws all day to cut down.
One alternative to cutting down the invasive species is to uproot it. However, this is often easier said than done and requires a grapple or root rake to rip the root system from the ground. For some species, like the Brazilian Pepper, this works quite well. The Brazilian Pepper has a large amount of underbrush connected to one very small root system. Once this is uprooted, however, there is still a very large volume of brush to deal with.
Simply hauling off all the tree limbs and brush can be cumbersome and expensive. Large limbs take up more space and thus need more trucks to haul them all off. Uprooted bushes take up the most space, and can really cut into profits, especially with rising costs of hauling and dumping.
With all these challenges, invasive species removal can be difficult for a company to handle. However, Douglas Clarke and Scott Simmons of D & S Land Management have found their solution in the form of the Fecon Bull Hog mulcher with a depth control rotor.
D & S Land Management has been operating a Kubota SVL95 with a Fecon BH74DCR mulcher attachment for two years. It has found this to be much more efficient than manually cutting down invasive species with machetes and chainsaws.
According to the primary machine operator, Scott Simmons, “For a half-acre, it would take a group of four guys with machetes and chainsaws about a day and a half to cut it all down. With the mulcher, I can do the same area in four to six hours, tops.”
Clearing an area in less time, and with less labor, means a substantial cost savings and a safer work environment. This savings is increased even more when you factor in haul off costs.
A team of men cutting down a half-acre worth of invasive species would still need to do something with the tree limbs and other detritus they cut down. Mulching to clear the area has the added effect of leaving behind a nice carpet of mulch. On existing residential lots, where homeowners are cleaning up or reclaiming their property, this is left as is, which eliminates haul off costs. For new construction, though, the wood chips are raked into piles and hauled off in much more compact piles, which allows for much cheaper haul off costs.
“I’d say we’re cutting about half the cost on being able to mulch it down, so it actually compacts in the dumpsters better. We’re doing all of our small stuff that way, all of our quarter-acre, and half-acre lots.
“I’m saving a lot of time and a lot of money on haul-off because it’s not making such a large pile and we’re able to fit more stuff in fewer containers. We’ll mulch the entire thing and like I said, scrape up all the mulch and all the roots and it makes it way easier for haul-off,” said Simmons.
This is especially important with rising costs of hauling and dumping. Invasive species can be very costly to haul off without mulching.
“Brazilian pepper is very limiting on how much you can actually fit in a grapple truck. I’ve had quarter acre lots where you’ve got seven, eight, nine grapple trucks. You’re talking about almost $3,000 to $4,000 in haul off if you don’t mulch it down first. However, if I come in and I Fecon everything, I can usually have a quarter acre lot that normally would take eight grapple trucks hauled off in two,” said Clarke.
see FECON page 54
Muskox Wins First Place in Minnesota IEDA Competition
MUSKOX from page 51
research and development done inhouse; and Adam’s younger brother Noah, who handles the production and shipping.
All manufacturing occurs at the company’s location in Mentor, Minn., and business offices are in Grand Forks, N.D. Muskox is 100 percent made in the United States, offers one-year warranty on all non-wearable parts and stocks inventory to ship to customers for repairs.
“When we first started, we were doing R&D out of my dad’s 2,000square-foot personal shop. In fall/summer 2021, we rented roughly about a 5,000-square-foot shop space that we moved into and that's currently where we do the assembly of the product. We’ve had a successful season and we’re continuing to expand the business, there's going to be opportunity for growth and potential expansion into a larger facility,” said Adam.
Approximately 90 percent of Muskox sales are direct-to-consumer while the rest are in partnership with RDO Equipment, through which Muskox is sold in 36 different locations. In 2021, Muskox was sold in 16 states in the United States and two provinces in Canada. Consumers include those buying for personal use at their shop or farm, smaller operators focusing on driveways and residential snow removal, and larger operators with multiple HOA accounts.
“We have created all of our own YouTube videos breaking down how we have a service manual that's available on the internet so consumers can go online at any time, and they'll find a library of videos showing not only how to use the product, best practices, but also any type of maintenance and repairs,” said Adam, who offers virtual demos of the equipment every Wednesday at 11 a.m. Central and is on Facebook Live and YouTube. “This gives us a chance to interact with people that are interested in the product. We show the product in use live, we’re able to perform with the machine according to the questions they asked. We also can flip the camera over inside the cab and run it from the operator’s perspective. It's been a lot of positive feedback with it.”
There are, of course, pros and cons to an online-first approach.
“Probably just keeping up with the demand of the product,” said Adam. “The internet really exposes you quickly, it can be your best friend, but also can have some real challenges because you’re going to be held accountable a lot faster on a much larger platform. We’ve been able to embrace that, but the growth of the company has exponentially exceeded our expectations. We’re very proud that we have built this business with a strong foundation from engineering to marketing to branding and product in 15 months and are looking forward to growing and having a strong future based on that foundation that's been established.”
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Muskox has found its strength in its online presence, building a loyal following online.
Muskox photo
