Last March, when all the world was shaken upside down, financial markets were dropping with no end in sight and fear of the unknown was running rampant. It was at this time that Firefly Automatix began receiving calls from nervous customers rescinding orders. Within a matter of days, their prior three-month backlog was completely wiped out. 

The abruptness of the pandemic threw chaos into the reduction of backlogs and supply chains were halted as fear spread through employees, not knowing whether they would have another day of pay. But FireFly sprung into swift and focused action, gathering the entire company together for an emergency meeting to lay out the reality. 

The executive team didn’t sugarcoat the message―they would either have to lay off half the workforce, or cut everyone’s hours and salaries by 40 percent, getting rid of commissions, and having some members of the management team forgo their salaries.

“It was gut-wrenching as we had spent so much time building an amazing team, and thinking of letting any of them go was horrifying,” says Matt Aposhian, president at Firefly. Hundreds of futures were hanging in the balance. Real families with goals, dreams, and ambitions were now on the brink of ruin. Backlogs were gone, sales teams were no longer physically able to travel to sod farms, and supply chains were disrupted or non-existent. 

But they put it to a vote, and the team voted to save everyone’s jobs and take a pay cut―amazingly everyone clapped! “I had multiple people come up and thank me privately that they were able to keep their job,” says Aposhian.

But this kind of company culture didn’t just happen as soon as the pandemic began, it’s been built by leadership walks everyday on the manufacturing floor. According to Aposhian, “These walks happen two or three times a day to build trust, you know their names, you know their family, and you know what you need to do to serve them. Everyone is equal and everyone knows the role they play in the company’s success.”  

After the decision was made, the sales and engineering teams met to identify product changes and improvements that would bring value and compel customers to buy. Innovation was sparked as prior R&D projects were revived, igniting engineering development that led to a faster harvester that could produce sales now while driving higher margins. 

This close-knit collaboration not only drove innovation but they were able to come out with their 2021 harvester ahead of schedule. This rapid iteration of innovation between sales, engineering, and manufacturing put the production nine months ahead of the prior schedules. “It’s not about what you can’t do, but it’s about what you can do,” Aposhian says. 

The inability to get onsite with customers and showcase products at their farms was a major challenge. Due to pandemic-related lockdowns, they quickly pivoted to virtual showcases.  Sales and engineering teams ramped up on new virtual software and performed live info sessions demonstrating the new machine to farmers across the world. 

This proactive innovation in marketing led to additional sales of their newly developed slab harvesters offering 30 percent higher production rate.

In addition to product innovation, marketing pivots offered a temporary discount, finding several courageous farms to buy in the depths of COVID. These changes, along with the inspirited passion of their employees, resulted in a backlog that began to grow. Not only did they see expansion nationally, but they began to expand further across the world into regions they had not had reached prior, including China.  

The result has been a stabilized company and accelerated growth. Within months of that fated meeting, all employees were back to their prior salaries and the company was hiring for new positions. “We went from cutting hours and salaries and covering cash flow to, within four months, actually hiring more people,” Aposhian says. “We went from 130 to 190 employees from the depths of the virus to the end of 2020.”  

As of March of 2021, a year after the fear and chaos of the pandemic’s inception, Firefly Automatix now has a backlog of 65 machines and are in the midst of relaunching their hybrid wide area mower product, as well as developing an autonomous mower anticipated to be released this calendar year. Their ever-growing team of now 200 employees is even in the process of developing an electric vehicle (EV) team to design and build fully electric mowers for golf and sod farms. 

FireFly Automatix truly walked-the-walk in demonstrating that the greatest innovation often occurs during the depths of immense disruption.