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Sweeping Industry Supplier Profiles |
Fayat Offers Dulevo and Ravo Sweepers in US
by Ranger Kidwell-Ross, Editor, WorldSweeper
Click on the graphic below to watch and/or listen to the @25-minute Zoomcast interview and conversation held between Mike Nelson and Ranger Kidwell-Ross. Below that is a synopsis of the dialogue between the two individuals.
WorldSweeper: This is Ranger Kidwell-Ross, Editor of WorldSweeper and the Director of the World Sweeping Association. Today I'm pleased to announce we have a conversation with Michael Nelson. Mike is going to talk about how Fayat is increasing its incursion into the US marketplace and how that's working. And as General Manager, he certainly will know those things. So welcome, Mike, and tell us what we need to know here in the US about the Fayat line. Mike Nelson: Ravo, Dulevo, Mathieu and Scarab are all well known brands in Europe, but not so well known in the United States. Obviously, we're trying to change that. As a group, we're definitely, if not the world leader, one of the world leaders in the production of street sweepers. Now, we're trying to bring that mentality to the US. So with that in mind, what we've done here over the last two years, is really kind of re-create ourselves. We had a great base of dealers on both the Ravo and the Dulevo side thanks to the work of people like Cees Vanderput and and others within the United States market. It's also been a really committed group of dealers doing very well even with not a lot support from us to promote on the ground level. Everyone in the sweeper industry also knows Francis Nagy; we're really happy to have him on our team. He has created some some great dealer opportunities here in the United States for the Dulevo brand. And we're at a point for both these companies, where we need to start moving forward and doing a better job of supporting our dealers and end-users here in the United States. So we've done a lot of work here over the last couple of years and are really starting to bring it together now, which is why we're talking. WorldSweeper: Well, good. And you are 100% right about about Francis: he is a gem in the industry, and certainly Cees Vanderput has also been a real credit to your company. Cees came and visited me as part of his outreach and I learned quite a bit from him. Mike Nelson: Yes, we're fortunate to have not only really knowledgeable people, but just great people, on our team there. Everyone's a champion in their own right, as human beings. It's really important to have the human aspect as part of our move forward plan. I think most people recognize that the Ravo and the Dulevo are very high quality products, they do an incredible job cleaning and sweeping. But still we're struggling to get the foothold in the United States we really need and I think we've taken some steps over the last few months to make sure that's going to be more more achievable. 
The RAVO 5 eSeries is a reliable, fully electric, exceptionally quiet, 100% emission-free sweeper. This is yet another step in the company’s continuous drive to ensure the well-being of residents and contribute to a healthy, clean future for everyone in the community.
With the RAVO 5 eSeries you are not only choosing the most sustainable solution for keeping your urban environment clean, but also the highest quality and reliability, based on proven technology, derived from years of experience in the sweeper world. One of the things we've done is put together a complete US-based operation. We now have an office in Charlotte. We're bringing more training, more technical support, and our parts warehouse in Charlotte has been operational since the beginning of July so all parts deliveries for our products will come from from the US. I'm sure that'll be with the with some pain getting it going but let's certainly important to be able to serve our users in a much more quick fashion when those problems come up. We have a growing sales force to to assist our dealers with day-to-day problems and activity. We're trying very hard to beef up our technical support team, but we won't sacrifice quality of personnel; we want to find exactly the right people, people have experienced within our space. And, and we're going to continue to search until we find the right people. So if there are good technical support people reading this who are looking for a nice change we encourage them to contact us. Fayat acquired Dulevo about two years ago. That product, just like the Ravo, is a quality cleaning machine. When it's put in the right application it's a superior product. And we're very proud to have both those products leading our group. We'll be promoting the Ravo and the Dulevo brands in the US. 
With the aim of offering the market the best solution for industrial and urban cleaning, Dulevo has designed a line of street sweepers that stand out for their maneuverability, compactness and speed.
Dulevo street sweepers are suitable to guarantee an excellent cleaning of all outdoor areas, combining high cleaning efficiency and minimum environmental impact, both in terms of dust and CO2 emissions. WorldSweeper: Well, you have really hit the nail on the head in a couple of areas. In the US, I think users want US-based technical support. They want US-based part shipments with the different supply line interruptions that have been taking place. I think that's a real concern. How could it not be? Mike Nelson: Yeah, the good news again as we have the group working on this together, within our road equipment division, to ensure we take the best chance of economies of scale. When we have commonalities we're finding them and [acting on them]. That's a long process with the size of companies we have within our group, but it's been fantastic. WorldSweeper: Yes, that makes sense. Another thing that I've seen in the US, especially working with contractors, but with some cities, too, is they want to be able to work on their own machines. For example, one manufacturer had a plug-in module where they wouldn't provide a machine to read it. There was a lot of pushback for that, because you've got a sweeper because you want to use it, then you can't have it sitting in somebody's lot waiting to get fixed for weeks. Mike Nelson: That happens to every manufacturer, I think, in one way, shape or form. But I think the whole basis of this is to make sure you have to be the ability within your own group, one way or the other, to get a sweeper fixed; to make every single instance of that a priority, where something's not sitting for a long period of time. Over the last couple of years it can be supply chain related. We believe you should have a method to fix any problems very, very quickly. And we do have that in place. We have people here trained not only on things like that, but also with our electric products that are coming out as we speak, getting rolled more into the US. For now we can't talk about it. Right now, Ravo has just about 200 sweepers actively working every day in in Europe. And from our standpoint, we had to make sure we have the technical support people behind to to launch that here in the United States. To date we have sold a small amount of machines that are working in the US. We've had high success rate already here in the United States. With with Ravo again, the problem being such a dependable machine. It's very simple. Most of its been identical for many, many years. When adding electrification we were able to keep the same basic heartbeat of the Ravo and electrify such that we're using just 100 kilowatts of battery, which means that we can be successful when a day shift typically, in the municipal setting. We are able to charge overnight on the existing infrastructure these people have, which is really important. We've proven that in Europe, and we'll be bringing that attitude and capability aggressively to the US. WorldSweeper: What is the basic market for each of those two brands, Ravo and Dulevo? Mike Nelson: If we really look at municipal sweeping there are all kinds of methods of sweeping out there. But definitely the Ravo is built for downtown, suburban-type environments. It's very quiet, very fuel efficient, does an excellent job cleaning; basic needs that you find in the cities and in suburbs. In our opinion, every town should have a mechanical sweeper and every town should have a vacuum sweeper, which is a great reason why we have to live with the mix. It was very attractive for our group to purchase them because of the different different operating systems. Having the vacuum assist with with Dulevo product, we're able to do almost entirely dust free sweeping even in places where we can use water. So there's very little dust behind the machine; of course, you get dust off the broom's if you're not using water, but it's an incredible product when you really look at it from a mechanical sweeper point of view. Certainly, we're limited by speed. So it's not a fit all for everyone, but it has its place and the economies of operating these machines are very, very low. WorldSweeper: I agree on the topic that every city should have mechanical and and some kind of vacuum-assist sweeper. The unfortunate tendency, especially in the snowbelt areas, is that because you need some heavy duty mechanical machine to grab salt and cinders the cities keep using them. However, water quality is such a huge issue now, and with the latest studies that have come out of out of Florida, out of Michigan, they're showing that sweeping is actually 500% more cost effective in getting rid of nitrogen and phosphorus from the runoff stream. Those two items are really polluting our waterways, so we have an opportunity to expand sweeping and that everyday sweeping needs to be vacuum-type, not broom. Mike Nelson: I agree with that statement. I think you're going to see more and more vacuum type products being purchased. There is certainly heavy lifting that has to be done in the upper part of our country in the winter, in the snow belt area. Even along coastal areas after storms, there's a lot of heavy lifting that has to be done. Nothing will ever replace the mechanical sweeper to do that. [But it's important to remove] any pollutants you can keep out of the waterways, that you can keep out of the storm drains. It's very expensive to clean a storm drain, and that also requires a lot of water. If we can remove pollutants before they get there it's a godsend for sure. WorldSweeper: A lot of folks don't realize that, of the compounds the EPA is trying to get rid of, about half of them are water soluble. So you're not going to get those out of a catch basin when you clean them. So it just makes sense to get them get them off the pavement early. Sweeping is clearly the first line of defense for water quality and the world needs to figure that out. Mike Nelson: The soda bottles and plastic bags and all that stuff ends up in the middle of the ocean somewhere, you know, and we can get a lot of that with a vacuum-type product. However, like I said, I think if a town can only afford one machine we have a solution for them. Whether it is the Dulevo product or it's the Ravo product, for sure we have a solution. WorldSweeper: What else should we talk about here with those two products? Why do you feel they can make a difference and be chosen over the other American brands that are more well known? Mike Nelson: Well, again, we're doing the right thing right now to build our infrastructure to make sure we have boots on the ground here in the United States to assist the dealers and assist the end-users. We've had extremely successful dealers without that, and that's really a credit to them, not anyone else. They've taken the responsibility of themselves to make the product work for them and their own users. So it's kudos to them, but we're doing the things we need to do to support them in a stronger way. All they would suggest is for people who are in the market for a sweeper to ask for a demo. Ask for understanding the fuel consumption on our machines; ask for understanding how well they clean. We've done a lot of demos just in the last two years and typically come out very successful, especially when it comes to the cleanliness of the street when we're done. We're going to continue to invest the United States: As a group, we're going to continue to invest in people, we're going to continue to expand our our geographic footprint. We don't have dealers in every corner of the US yet. But we are making sure that we get right with our own organization first, before we get the get to that point. On that we certainly believe we're on the right path. And we expect to have that organizational makeup complete within within the next two or three months. Although no one is a fit-all company, we're definitely looking at where we fit into our niche. Some of the spaces with our products we exist in a very strong way. There are many towns that have just our product and it's working very well for them. People that care about the cleanliness of the street – not just running a sweeper down the road to appease their their constituents – should give us a really strong look because I think we do have superior product. Plus, we are very pleased with our dealer network and know that we're nothing without the people who are there for the end user. We're advanced by the people who are supporting us, not only here in the United States but worldwide. This past two years has been a fantastic experience and a demonstration of that. We're going to continue to grow from the success we already have.
It's really about what's right for our world. It's a strong belief of our group to leave the world a better place than we when we started with it. That belief flows from the top all the way down to to the last person in our org chart. We are focused on our environment and what we can do to make it a better place.
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Sweeping Industry Supplier Profiles Contents
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Mike Nelson is the USA General Manager for the Fayat Environmental Solutions sweeper product line. The worldwide Fayat line includes four different sweeper makes, from four different countries: Dulevo, Mathieu, Ravo and Scarab. Fayat Environmental Solutions will continue to offer a full range of products from all manufacturers, but brand and product consolidation will occur and the brands promoted in the US will be Dulevo and Ravo.