ABOUT AGRIMANUAL HOW IT ALL STARTED
AND WHERE WE ARE NOW
Having left school in 1965 I took up an apprenticeship with IH as an Agricultural Engineer. Up until retirement in 2015 I have been working with and around agricultural and construction machinery. In approx 1993 I rebuilt a MF 135 Tractor and needed the workshop and parts manuals. Then it took some time to source these. This gave me the collecting bug.
In late 1995 I started to collect manuals as a hobby. Over the next few years I had collected over 2000 manuals and was running out of space to store them.
In 1998 we decided to start to sell some of the duplicates off and realized there was a demand for agricultural workshop manuals. We spent the next 2 years attending local shows etc with a stall and did very well.
Attending auctions and closing out sales we managed to replenish our stock and the business grew. We have never employed anyone and kept it all in the family, so you will always get a personal service.
In 2002 we joined Ebay and started listing manuals on their Auction Site. Then there were very few sellers selling manuals on Ebay and the business took off we had buyers all over the world many of them repeat buyers. A lot of our customers became good friends who we visited on our travels.
As the years ticked on Ebay slowly put up their fees and it looked like you were working for Ebay so we started our own web shop.
Taking about a year to get established sales increased and we are doing very well. In 2013 we decided to supply digital manuals on disk as well as the printed manuals. This resulted in a dramatic rise in sales. September 2019 we started to do digital downloads. This has been a huge success and accounts for 80% of all our sales. We still list on Ebay but we try to put a larger selection in the shop. In January 2021 it was decided to only advertise and list digital manuals downloads and posted on a USB Drive. We no longer supply printed manuals.
The web shop manualfinder.co.uk was in need of a revamp so we spent 6 months of our time working on it, and this is the result. Agrimanual.com Over the next few months we intend to transfer all of the manuals over to Agrimanual.
The future plan is we will run Agrimanual Web Store for 1 year to establish it runs as well as the Manualfinder Shop. I will be 75 by then and intend to take retirement. Agrimanual Store with the full inventry of manuals will be for sale and we will be open to offers.
We have tried to make it clean and easy to navigate and we hope you like it. Any suggestions for improvements would be appreciated.
To all our past customers over the last 26 years we thank you for your custom, as without you we could not continue. To all our future customers we look forward to dealing with you and building a lasting relationship.
Neil & Christine
Dec 2024