The 2025 Annual Meeting of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI) took place near Park City, Utah at Deer Valley’s Stein Eriksen lodge. OPEI leaders assembled a powerful posse of presenters who spoke about corporate culture, current economic forecasts, trade policy and tariffs, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and several vital missions and projects of OPEI staff and board members. OPE+ attended the event and we present a few highlights.
Thorne kicks off event, his last
David Thorne, OPEI Board Chair and VP of John Deere’s Ag and Turf group, kicked off the meeting’s opening session; it would be his last OPEI meeting due to his upcoming retirement from Deere. “The OPEI has never been healthier,” he said. The association’s dues revenue is up, participation in the Equip Expo trade show is at an all-time high, and the product representation is increasingly diverse. The group projects its fiscal 2025 revenue to be up nearly 15% over 2023 revenue. Thorne reiterated the three focus areas for the OPEI board.
First, to support the industry’s common interests including tracking statistics and trends, advocating for the industry, and promoting the industry in the best light to the general public. Its second focus area is the economic and regulatory environment, which includes in large part the regulatory and political activities in Washington, D.C. and the 50 states. Third is to continue presenting a dynamic response to changing environments around the economy, politics and more.
Home sales drive OPE spending
What drives spending on outdoor power equipment? New home sales, according to Dave King of the Farnsworth Group, a market research consulting group specializing in home improvement and the lawn and garden industry.
The years 2023, 2024 and 2025 (to date) stand out, said King, as years with the fewest first-time home buyers in the last 25 years. And the OPE market in that period, he said, has been flat. Home affordability, due to home prices and higher interest rates, is a challenge because people can’t buy a first home or move up to take on a higher interest rate. Much of the data King provided pertains more to residential equipment sales and less to the commercial market but spending on landscape services is also impacted by home sales.
Consumer confidence and uncertainty also impact spending. “We are currently as uncertain as during the worst of the pandemic,” said King. But he said if we continue to see growth in “real personal disposable income” – and as of March, it’s ahead of the previous year – he expects homeowners to continue spending on building projects. That includes lawn and garden equipment and work. He expects the OPE market – residential and commercial – to experience more than 3% growth in both 2025 and 2026.
Are your employees “engaged”?
Using research based on neuroscience and behavioral science, Don Rheem works with business leaders to create workplace conditions that improve employee performance which can help boost corporate productivity. “Everything we do in business is based on science,” he said, “except with people.” Where has that gotten us? Right now, he said, “69% of our workforce is disengaged. And it’s costing $450 billion per year in lost productivity.”
Job switching is at a 10-year high. “Employees don’t need your paycheck,” said Rheem. “They can get that elsewhere.” Rheem’s company, CultureID, helps companies create a corporate culture that helps them thrive. He said the definition of a company’s culture can be found in the answer to this question: “What does it feel like to work here?”
Rheem, who is currently working with at least one power-equipment manufacturer (and we hope to deliver that story soon), said companies are social ecosystems, and a company’s culture is directly dependent on the quality of the relationships there. “Relational cultures thrive. Transactional cultures struggle.”
Leaders need to know, said Rheem, that employee engagement is directly tied to leadership, “and there are micro cultures under every manager.” He said that too many corporate leaders target underperforming employees when they should be looking at managers. And when engagement rises, so do profits.
Session Highlights
“The Consumer Product Safety Commission is experiencing unprecedented changes,” said Erika Z. Jones, a partner with the law firm Mayer Brown which helps the OPEI work with the CPSC directly in D.C. “These are very challenging times in Washington.”
After the Trump administration fired the CPSC’s three Democratic commissioners, a federal court reinstated them, and the administration is pursuing a stay of that reinstatement. Meanwhile, the Trump admin. is hoping to abolish the CPSC and move its work inside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Such a reorganization would require Congressional approval.
Jones urged OPEI meeting attendees (including the heads of several large equipment manufacturers) to continue working on product safety standards. “Whether the CPSC is a 5-person independent agency or a two-person group or a one-person appointment under HHS, product safety rules and regulations will continue,” she said.
Robert DeFrancesco, a lawyer focusing on trade with the firm Wiley Rein LLP, did an admiral job of updating attendees on the tariff policies of the Trump administration. The fluidity of the policies, proposals and trade deals makes reporting on this difficult. DeFrancesco urged people to read the initial memo on Trump’s “America First Trade Policy” for guidance on where this could go.
OPEI staff members updated the group on its activities including continued work with the EPA and California. The OPEI’s Greg Knott, SVP for standards and regulatory affairs, joined Britt Speyer Fleming, partner with VanNess Feldmann law firm, to talk specifically about the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the current state of the SORE Amendment. That’s for Small Off-Road Engines, and CARB now talks about its “Transition to ZEE” amendment, for Zero-Exhaust and Evaporative emissions requirements for small off-road engines and equipment starting for model year 2024. This includes commercial- and high-use equipment.
Knott and Fleming discussed their work on behalf of the industry to make sure OEMs have ample time to comply with standards, that they’re written to address current technology for power equipment engines, that they factor in current economic situations, and that they won’t overly burden consumers and equipment users.
To give an overview of “Extended Producer Responsibilities,” the OPEI’s Brandon Martin, VP of battery electric products and industry affairs, pointed to an effort in OPEI Canada, specifically in British Columbia, outlining the complete product lifecycle – design to recycling – that improves sustainability and reduces waste and pollution from the outset of product creation. Leading with this idea is better than responding to it as a governmental mandate. And the EPA, said Martin, “is considering a national EPR framework.”
Article by Glenn Hansen, editor of OPE+.