Where is our one and only pink Tree Shear today, almost four years later? This is a question I’ve asked myself many times over the years. And I have finally received answers and wanted to share them with you!
But before we go any further it is probably a good idea to do a recap of what even is this whole thing.
The story behind the TMK 300 « Pink Edition »
Okay, It all started just as the Covid-19 had put Finland into shutdown. We posted a photoshopped picture of our TMK 300 shear in which it was turned into black and pink as an april’s fools joke to Facebook (you can see the original post here) and Instagram. And what followed was nothing we could have expected. So many people got excited and expressed their interest for a pink TMK Tree Shear.
And really, it couldn’t have come at a better time, corona had just halted our production and no orders were coming in as the world was anxiously trying to get a crasp of what is going on. There was only one problem… Tenho, our CEO and the inventor of the whole TMK Tree Shear and the company and so on… you get the picture, had in the past decided that TMK would never produce anything but black & yellow products as they were our brands colors and they were very dear for Tenho. But thankfully after a little while of thinking Tenho got excited by the idea.
And as we had our production line sitting pretty much empty and many employees with almost nothing to do we decided to actually make it into a reality. But we didn’t just want to produce a once in a lifetime pink shear, there had to be something little more special with this one. And so we thought that maybe we could help the cause of Covid-19 research by auctioning the unique shear with the help of the world famous Ritchie Bros. and donate half of the final selling price to the WHO’s COVID-19 response fund. And thats exactly what we did.
Here are some photos of the finished shear in all of it’s pink glory. Notice the custom stickers that state « Pink edition – Together against Covid-19 ».
The shear ended up getting auctioned for 5500€ and it was bought by a finnish company Brofta Oy, they do biomass contracting in Southern Finland nowadays.
We donated 2250€ to the WHO’s COVID-19 response fund and Ritchie Bros. donated the buyers fee to a charity of their choosing to fight Corona virus.
We kind of promised to do a little follow up in the future at the time of delivering it to the customer, but never really got around to it, until now…
So where is it today?
Couple of weeks ago I saw a picture in our marketing teams Whatsapp group of little worn out TMK 300 that had some familiar pink tones.
It turns out the TMK 300 « Pink Edition » had gotten back to our factory to be upgraded with a new cylinder and some other bits. Oh how all the memories flooded my head! I was so excited to see it after all these years. It had definitely seen some use, as it should, after all it was built to cut trees and not sit on some showroom gathering dust.
Now you may be wondering why is there also some yellow paint on the shear? That’s because we decided to paint the pink over the yellow as for example our cylinders all come to us painted yellow by our supplier and we thought as it had an extra layer of paint it would remain painted a little longer.
As of this moment the shear has left it’s birthplace (again) and gone back to the customer with all the upgrades. What I can tell you is that the customer who won the auction didn’t actually have any jobs lined up for it but bought it so they can put it in use later in the future. They really wanted to help and be a part of the cause. Because of this the shear left our factor without a bracket.
After some time they wanted to get it into work and so they contacted us to get the shear equipped with a suitable bracket and a Solid Extension. After that they have done a quite a lot of work with the shear (some 1000 hours according to the owner), and they have been very pleased with it.
Late last year they reached out to us to see if they could upgrade some parts on this very special shear. We ended up changing the cylinder to a brand new TMK Turbo and at the same time we hooked him up with a BrushGrapple as the original shear didn’t have one. So after almost four years it has received the upgrades and has gone back to work making money and doing what it was designed to do. Unfortunately we weren’t able to repaint it pink this time but maybe in the future.
When I called the owner to confirm things in this story he praised the shear very abundantly. He particularly praised the efficiency and speed that the upgrade to TMK Turbo brought. He said that back when they bought it they didn’t fully understand what they had just bought and only later realised how good the shear was for the job they are now doing. It has apparantely become « a cornerstone » of their operation.
Here are some photos of it finished, before it shipped back to the customer.
We don’t think this is the last time we hear from the TMK 300 « Pink Edition ». It might even come back to us some day in the future and end up in a glass box for it’s retirement days.
We want to express huge thanks for Brofta Oy for buying the shear in the first place and also shedding some light into its use and life. Check them out here: www.brofta.fi
-Jesse Koponen, Marketing coordinator
