Lights, camera, Hydraulics: Grand Island's Lifco Hydraulics using unique marketing strategy

Story and Photo by Karen Carr Keefe

Senior Contributing Writer

Lifco Hydraulics may make internet stars of some of its employees in a new promotional video series being shot at its Grand Island site.

In the course of the media campaign, it also is training women staffers to operate heavy equipment so they can help develop the company’s newly expanded site at 1865 Grand Island Blvd.

Lifco recently grew its footprint to 10 acres along Grand Island’s main thoroughfare by purchasing adjacent property that had, for decades, been home to a series of restaurants, beginning with the Clown House and ending with Taquito Lindo. The company has been on Grand Island for about a year and a half.

Lifco manufactures attachments and accessories for heavy equipment such as excavators. It has renovated a large warehouse that it’s owned for about three or four years. With the added acreage, Lifco has the potential for mixed-use development, according to company President Fraser Berkhout.

The warehouse holds a vast number of attachments ready for shipping to customers in the U.S. and Canada.

“We cut the steel (for the attachments) in Buffalo. We fabricate in St. Catharine’s – but there’s going to be fabrication in Buffalo, as well,” Berkhout said.

“We store them here on Grand Island, and likely, we are going to be creating a lot of promotional material on Grand Island. But we’re going to be taking these attachments and we’re going to be doing our work with the development of this whole property.

“We make sure that, in all of the contracts we have with the contractors, they have to use our attachment.”

He said, with this development strategy, Lifco gets the publicity, the video content – and it starts to build buzz for the development. Berkhout said they have been working with architects to get approval – to get to the point where they are.

“And it’s happening right here on Grand Island,” Berkhout said.

“The next phase will be quite a bit more intense,” he noted.

Responsible use of the land

“We have 10 acres, and half of it is cleared land and the other half is wooded,” Berkhout said. “There’s a wetland out in the far corner, and so that’s going to be remaining untouched, and then the other, we’re able to do what we want with that. We want to be making sure – especially on Grand Island – that all the environmental considerations are taking place. For instance, I can hear the loud frogs over there in that corner, and I want to make sure that we keep all that there.”

He is strategizing what is needed, what people will pay for, and how best to use the land. Plans are very preliminary, Berkhout said.

“But I think that putting a commercial building where the taco stand was is probably the priority,” he noted. “It’s a nice parcel of land, and the Jackson Music building is quite an older building. I would love to move those tenants over into the new building and then redo the Jackson Music building, as well.”

Who buys Lifco attachments?

Berkhout said the current customers for the heavy equipment attachments are working farmers, general construction and demolition.

“Let’s say they need a 4-foot trench: Well, they need exactly a 4-foot-wide bucket,” Berkhout said. And that’s exactly what Lifco can provide.

“We had a bunch of delays, then things got really busy at the end of COVID; so, we just put a lot of this on ice until we were ready – and then now we’re ready for it. And then by the amount of time that passed, we had outgrown this facility,” Berkhout said.

The facility in Buffalo is three times the size of the one on Grand Island, he noted.

Female heavy equipment operators

Customers for their excavator attachments are primarily a male audience, he said.

“Males, obviously, like to see females in their videos,” Berkhout said. “We had a positive reception to that before.”

He said the company didn’t want the women they hire to follow into the stereotype of a blond bombshell: “It was really supposed to be that they are operators who just happen to be female, as opposed to female construction operators.

“If we can accomplish multiple facets for our intended audience, that’s great for everybody.”

Briana Malkiewicz, one of the two women hired to train as heavy equipment operators, was originally hired to be an order desk staff member, with a computer-and-desk job. But Berkhout said Malkiewicz is the only one who actually followed up and called on her interview and resume. “So, we said, ‘Come on in,’ and we interviewed her. She had a lot of good energy, so we got her training.”

Malkiewicz likes the work: “It’s a lot of fun. It’s definitely different than any job I’ve done – it’s a learning curve. The day goes by a lot faster when you’re doing fun stuff all day long. We’ve got a great crew and we all get along.”

She said the staff bounces ideas off each other: “It almost doesn’t feel like work.”

She also is taking a course on social media, Meta and marketing.

The other woman trainee is Megan Swaine. She graduated from Buffalo State University in December with a bachelor’s in media production.

“I fell in love with video editing while I was in school,” she said.

Swaine has been editing video for Lifco and has the job of content creator.

“I found the job description for Lifco and I said, “Why not – let’s take a shot – first big-girl job, post-grad, so let’s do it!’ ” she said.

Berkhout said that, when the two women were hired, the company already had an excavator because Lifco had to do training on it.

“So, we had all of it. We just saw the opportunity” for training at the Grand Island site.

“It was this idea of going after a shared audience,” Berkhout said. “Typically, in our videos on our YouTube channel, we really want a direct correlation between our customer and the viewer. So, the viewer must be one of our customers.

“Well, in this case here, it’s a little more of a wide, general entertainment, shared audience.”

He said viewers could also be interested in purchasing attachments or hydraulics.

To view the videos, go to Google and search for “Lifco Hydraulics.”

“What I think would be the best goal here would be to get these young women proficient enough to where we can build it into the construction contracts on Grand Island that they have to use our excavator and our operators,” Berkhout said. “So, the ultimate test is, can Briana and Megan work on a job site that’s actually doing construction?”

For this video series, he said, “Our working title right now is ‘No Man’s Land.’ Sort of this idea – that obviously they are women, but that they’re in this highly responsible – and could be dangerous – kind of work now, as well.”