Harris, Tait combine dealer channels in U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico

When sales efforts are combined in any industry, overlapping geographical service territories often become a complicating issue, but Young said he does not believe that will be the case in the Harris-Tait agreement.

“You would think [there would be territorial overlaps], but Tait tends to be strong in the [western U.S.] and in Canada,” he said. “Those are two large holes for us, and they fill it in very nicely.

“As you might expect, there are a couple of [territory overlaps], but those are onesy-twosy conflicts that we are working out, and we expect to have a resolution quickly. There is very little conflict here.”

Diack agreed, noting that Tait’s previous dealer strategy likely helped this situation.

“As a small company competing in the U.S., we’ve really had to hunt around the fringes of the two dominant players and build presences where it’s not necessarily economic for them to do so,” Diack said. “When you stand back and look at it, we’ve got quite a complementary presence, in terms of where we are, where they are and where we compete head on.

“I’ll be really frank with you: Going into it, we hadn’t seen it. But, as we were going through it, it became a really obvious part of the benefits of bring us and Harris a little bit closer in order to go to market.”

Young said that legacy Harris and Tait dealers will be able accept orders for their new portfolio products immediately, and Harris expects to “finalize the integration in the next 90 days.”