When Blake Chance walked through the doors of the MasterHand Milling plant in Lexington, Neb., for a college assignment, he never predicted it would start a long-running connection.
“I was taking an entrepreneurship class and my partner on a project had a connection to MasterHand Milling, so we ended up using the company as the topic for the assignment,” Chance said.
“We met Dusty and he took us through the plant and showed us the product,” Chance said. “Before that, I’d never really heard of it. But after seeing it, it really made me think I wanted to feed it at home and maybe eventually try to sell it.”
Fast forward two years, Chance had finished school and found himself with the opportunity to do just that. Taking a new role as warehouse manager for Tarwater Farm and Home, Chance got involved in the Topeka, Kan., company’s marketing, operations and product offering. MasterHand Milling’s range cubes and pellets were the first new product Chance brought to the table.
As a third-generation, family-owned business with deep roots in the community, the Tarwater family has high standards for the products they sell. Chance felt the MasterHand products aligned well with Tarwater’s company values and says taking the chance on a new product has paid off.
“We’ve probably cut our other cube sales in half at least,” Chance said. “Once I get somebody talked into using the MHM cubes, they’re not going to change. One of our slogans is ‘high-quality products for high-quality people’ and MHM was an easy fit with that.”
Blake Chance and his father (pictured) have been using MHM products on their cowherd since Blake brought the product in to the Tarwater stores.
Taking things a step further, Chance was quick to start feeding the cubes to his own cattle.
“My dad and I raise cattle, and I got him talked into trying it that first year when we had a really dry fall,” Chance said. “The cows went crazy over it. There wasn’t much grass but they stayed looking good. It’s a lot easier to sell a product when you feed it yourself.”
That same perspective can be applied to nearly all of the products offered at Tarwater Farm and Home. Since beginning as a small filling station in 1978, the company has expanded numerous times to offer more products to meet the evolving needs of customers. Today, Tarwater has locations in Topeka and Holton, Kan., offering everything from seed, chemical and fertilizer to feed, lawnmowers and chainsaws.
“It’s really customer-oriented,” Chance said. “We want to take care of the customer, so we try to have a variety of things that most farm stores don’t offer.”
Chance said Tarwater has doubled down on marketing to help highlight new products in the industry, and they are gaining a following on social media. In bringing innovative new products to their customers, Tarwater Farm & Home helps drive the agriculture industry forward while continuing their family legacy of customer service.
