Reel Mowers, Etc.
since 1998

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High tech way to sell an old tool

"Why would anyone in their right mind purchase a push mower when they can have the convenience and ease of gas powered equipment to cut their grass?"

That's the question friends and acquaintances of Marjorie King asked her when she initially got inspired to open a push lawn mower business.

"Everyone told me I was crazy," King said.

That just made King, who operates her Reel Mowers, Etc. business in the Big Springs area, more determined.

"Pioneers are always ridiculed for wanting to try something new," she said. "Most of the time they prove the naysayers wrong. The fact that I was being ridiculed gave me a clue that I was on the right track."

Five years later, King's home-based Internet business sells thousands of manually powered mowers across the country.

King was living in Fairfield in the San Francisco bay area when she started her business on New Year's day 1999.

She said she got her business idea after suffering chronic migraine headaches that forced to quit her job in traffic safety with the Fairfield Police Department in 1993 and spend most days in bed with the lights off and the window blinds shut.

"I went through acupuncture and bio-feedback, which helped," King said. "But the doctor told me that I needed to get out of the city, that the headaches were linked to air pollution."

King felt that if she started an Internet business she'd be able to operate it "from a remote mountain area where the air was clean and free from the pollution I was suffering from in the city," she said.

The manual mower aspect evolved from a desire to do something about reducing air pollution.

"Some gasoline mowers cause as much pollution in an hour as 40 new cars," King said.

King attended a mower trade-in event sponsored by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District where people could trade-in their gas mowers and get an electric mower for half price.

At an event where people could trade in gas mowers and get discount prices on electric mowers, King said her suggestion about using manual mowers was ridiculed.

But she went forward with her plans and has since participated in three mower trade-in events in Alameda County, selling 200 manual mowers in just four hours at one event.

"I knew the people who had called me nuts were wrong because I had done my homework," she said. "Sales of manual mowers had tripled in the previous decade."

King sells mowers from three manufacturers in Indiana, Illinois and southern California, one of them has been in business for more than 100 years, she said.

It didn't take long for King to start getting sales requests from people throughout the U.S.

She was even interviewed by a Bay Area television station about her Reel Mowers, Etc. business, and the broadcast went nationwide.

"I got a call from someone in New York who told me they saw me on television and wanted to buy a mower," she said.

Three years later King moved with her business to Siskiyou County.

Now, she says, on a typical spring or summer day, her phone starts ringing at 4:30 or 5 a.m. and "doesn't stop ringing all day."

One of the mower companies notified King that they did not have the staff to handle the workload she was placing on them with her orders. King was told she needed a warehouse.

Told by the county that commercial trucks were not allowed at her home about eight miles east of Big Springs, King was obtained a warehouse in Yreka, along with a shipping locker.

"The Federal Express guy has a key to the locker and he's very good about picking up shipments in a very timely manner," she said.

When she isn't busy with her business, King spends a lot of time with her "critters," including two dogs she obtained from the Humane Society, cats and her beloved miniature donkeys.

"Moving up here was the best thing I've ever done," she said. "The air is so clean. I have a fantastic view of the mountain and I just love hearing the coyotes at night. I can't imagine living anywhere else."

For more information on Reel Mowers, Etc., call Marjorie King at 938-0350 or visit her web site at marjorieking@reelmowersetc.com. She can also be reached toll free at 1-888-384-1033.