Robert Foster grows emotional when asked to explain why he left Bad Boy Mowers, the Batesville maker of zero-turn commercial lawn mowers he co-founded in 1998 with business partner Phil Pulley. He’ll only allow as to how there was a “split” in the company, and in 2013, Bad Boy bought Foster out.
“I don’t want to talk about people, and it’s very — emotionally, I don’t want to go there,” he says in an interview earlier this month at Intimidator Inc., the manufacturer of utility vehicles — and, more recently, zero-turn lawn mowers — that Foster started in August 2013. “It was not a good situation.”
Maybe a thousand feet as the crow flies separates the Intimidator plant from the Bad Boy facility in the Independence County Industrial Park. And though Intimidator is the startup, it lays claim to the 1 Bad Boy Blvd. address; Bad Boy is at 102 Industrial Drive.
“It was something that devastated me,” Foster says of the split. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through in my life.”
In essence, you were pushed out of Bad Boy? “Yeah.”
So what caused you to return to manufacturing? There’s a long pause. Foster is fighting to stay composed. Finally, “For our employees. I had 38 families depending on me.” He explains:
“We had 38 employees and I really at that point didn’t think I would ever build anything else again, ever. I went through a depression period, where I thought I would never, never be in business again. I just kept thinking that these people have — gave so much to me and my wife that I felt that we had to produce.”
Going Separate Ways
A little Bad Boy/Intimidator history is in order.
In about 2008, Bad Boy began producing four-wheel-drive utility terrain vehicles or utility task vehicles — UTVs — in addition to its zero-turn mowers.
In August 2013, Bad Boy Mowers celebrated the completion of a $7.4 million expansion allowing the company to build new multiterrain vehicles, or MTVs. On Aug. 7, 2013, an Arkansas Economic Development Commission press release about the completed expansion described Intimidator Inc. as an affiliated company of Bad Boy. “Through the expansion, which Bad Boy originally announced in 2012, more than 200 new jobs will be created in the next 3 to 5 years,” the release said.
In August 2013, Foster took the 38 Intimidator employees and launched Intimidator as a separate company. In November 2013, he sold all of his shares in Bad Boy.
In October 2015, at the Green Industry & Equipment Expo, a major trade show for outdoor power and lawn and garden equipment, Foster debuted his Spartan Mowers, manufactured by Intimidator. He started shipping Spartan mowers in February 2016.
On Sept. 7 of this year, Bad Boy Inc. sued Spartan Mowers in federal court in Batesville, alleging that Spartan had infringed on a Bad Boy patent for lawnmowers.
Foster invented and received the patent for the “Independent Four Wheel Vibration Damping System for Riding Mowers.” But, Bad Boy said in its lawsuit, Foster had assigned “all rights, title, and interest in the patent application” to Bad Boy.
On Sept. 19, Intimidator, owned by Foster and his wife, Becky, announced that it was expanding, investing $12 million in facilities and equipment and adding 400 full-time employees over four years. Intimidator said the expansion was the result of growth in the UTV market and “the lawn industry’s enthusiastic response to the new Spartan line of zero-turn lawnmowers.”
On Sept. 20, Bad Boy held a news conference at the state Capitol to announce that it was exporting mowers to Australia.
On Oct. 20, Spartan Mowers answered Bad Boy’s lawsuit, denying that Foster had assigned his interests in the patent to Bad Boy.
Two phone calls and emails to Bad Boy asking to hear its side of the split weren’t returned. And though Foster understands the interest in a story that finds former business partners now competing head-to-head in a small Arkansas city, he doesn’t want to dwell on that aspect, preferring to discuss his plans for Intimidator and, in particular, for Spartan.
Batesville Mayor Rick Elumbaugh isn’t keen to discuss the rivalry. “We as a city look for growth and we look for economic development,” he says. “If both of them do well, the city of Batesville does well.”
‘Unbelievable’ Demand
A couple of years after starting Intimidator, Foster says, he came to a realization. “After 18 years in the mowing industry, I thought I might just go ahead and build another mower, because I can take everything that I’ve learned and what everybody wanted through all these years” and build a mower incorporating all that knowledge and all those desires.
Foster’s company manufactured about 3,000 Intimidator UTVs in 2015. He’d projected building about 800 Spartan mowers in 2016, but “we’re probably going to do about 3,500.” Demand, Foster says, has been “unbelievable.”
“Everybody knows me in the industry. They know my love and passion, that it’s what I love. And we’ve just got a really good price. We’ve got something that’s different, that no one’s ever seen before. It’s a different look,” he says. “People will kid about we have Spartans that don’t have yards, just to have them in their garage because they look cool.”
“Everyone says that if Batman had a mower, it would be a Spartan,” Foster says.
Foster appreciates ‘60s-era muscle cars, and “I kind of took the theme of that muscle car look, real curvy, that all-steel look.” He waxes dreamy when discussing the Spartan. “They have steel-belted radial tires, which have never been seen before in the mowing industry. We have smart-ride technology for an all-independent ride. We have GT track. Traction is very important in the mowing industry for hillsides and inclines. These machines are extremely good on traction control.”
And then, he says, “our price is just unreal,” meaning affordable for what the mower delivers. The price of a Spartan ranges from $4,799 to $9,999.
The Intimidator Group is the umbrella company under which Intimidator UTVs and Spartan Mowers are sold. Robert and Becky Foster also own Bad Dawg Accessories, which provides aftermarket accessories for UTVs, and Gourmet Guru Grill, a ceramic grill. Together, their ventures employ 180, Foster says.
Intimidator occupies several buildings, totaling about 144,000 SF, in the industrial park. Batesville, birthplace of Nascar legend Mark Martin, has a skilled manufacturing workforce. In addition to Bad Boy, which employs about 700, the town is home to a number of automotive machine shops and a couple of race car makers, which have attracted skilled craftsmen like welders.
Intimidator is receiving economic incentives from the state, which, Foster says, is facilitating the $12 million expansion announced in September. “It will make a difference in how many people we employ this year,” he says.
Intimidator currently uses five lasers to build its products but needs a sixth, and the company hopes that by February it will be able to build the frames and decks for its mowers 100 percent robotically, Foster says.
A robot can build 30 decks or frames per shift, he says, compared with nine or 10 manually manufactured.
New hires earn more than $10 an hour, Foster says, but within 18 months are earning more than $16 an hour. He and his wife, Becky, who serves as Intimidator’s operations manager — “She pretty much runs the place,” Robert Foster says — are working on establishing a profit-sharing arrangement for Intimidator’s employees.
In 2013, the first year that Intimidator was open, revenue totaled about $5 million, Foster says. He projects revenue approaching $50 million this year. The company is operating close to capacity. “We could use a 300,000-SF facility right now,” Foster says.
Intimidator now has 60 dealers and Spartan close to 80, he says. Intimidator is in a partnership with Mahindra USA, a tractor manufacturer, to make UTVs under the Mahindra brand, but “we’re growing the mower side of it faster,” Foster says. Spartan got a big boost when Riggs Cat of Little Rock picked up the line.
Lifelong Love
Foster literally built his first mower — the foundation of Bad Boy — in his home garage. Now he becomes ever more animated as he explains the intricacies of mower design — traction control and balance — and how he built the first Spartan mower at his house so no one could see what he was building. He scrupulously notes he had the help of his nephew, Adam Branscum, and employee Gus Munoz, as they worked nights and on weekends on the mower.
Foster, who grew up in Thida, about 30 miles from Batesville, always loved building things. At 8 or 9, he would accompany his father, who had a Dr Pepper route, on his calls, and “I would literally drive him crazy at all the stores that had equipment. I would just go crazy over looking at the equipment. I can remember at an extremely young age cutting out mowers out of magazines.”
At 12, Foster met his future wife, then 11, who lived in Olyphant (Jackson County). “She was capping strawberries on the front porch.” He was 17 and Becky was 16 when they married. They still attend church at Olyphant.
Foster still remembers the first time they could afford to fill up the gas tank of their car. They’d been married about a year. He says those habits of frugality remain.
When asked what’s next for Intimidator and Spartan, he says, “We have lots of new stuff for ‘18. When new stuff stops, the fun stops. 2018 will be the year for UTVs. We have a lot of really exciting things coming out in ‘18.”
Foster deflects questions about any possible tension arising out of his company manufacturing mowers just a few hundred feet from where the Bad Boy company he co-founded makes its products.
“We just try to focus on what we do,” he says. “We don’t really focus on anyone else besides what our goals are. Our goal is to have the best product on the planet for the best price. Our goal is to be the No. 1-selling mower company in the world.”
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