The Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) again this year is offering a variety of communication tools at the Dealer Expo so that attendees and exhibitors can urge Washington to drop the existing ban on the sale of youth ATVs and motorcycles.
“There is tremendous momentum for Congress to amend the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act’s (CPSIA) lead content provisions to exclude youth vehicles,” said Paul Vitrano, MIC general counsel. “We need our voices to be heard now.”
The MIC’s multi-media communication offerings at Indy and on www.stopthebannow.com include:
Text. Use your cell phone to send the text message “StoptheBan” or “STB” to 30101. An SMS interface on www.stopthebannow.com allows the public to send StoptheBan text messages directly from the website.
Letter. You can add your signature to letters urging Congress to amend the CPSIA to exclude youth vehicles. Last year’s campaign generated over 5,000 hand-signed letters at the show.
E-mail. Computers are available in the MIC Business Center(Booth # 4508) so you can send e-mails to Washington calling for the ban on youth equipment to be dropped. Last year, more 1 million electronic messages were sent to Congress.
Call. A computer station in the MIC Business Center will identify key members of Congress, and a Skype account will enable you to call your congressmen directly from the computer.
Video. You can “Send a Video Message to Congress.” A camera and filming booth will be set up in the MIC Business Center so that Stop the Ban messages can be created, posted online, and forwarded to Congress.
Vitrano said there are three key reasons why youth ATVs and motorcycles should be excluded from the CPSIA’s lead content provisions: (1) the lead content poses no risk to kids; (2) the key to keeping youth safe is having them ride the right size vehicle; and (3) the lead ban hurts the economy.
“MIC calls on Congress to draft legislation as soon as possible to either grant a categorical exemption for these products, as would be provided by H.R. 1587, a pending bill with 56 bi-partisan co-sponsors, or to give the CPSC the flexibility to do so,” Vitrano said.
Visit www.stopthebannow.com for background information, FAQs, and public outreach tools for the Stop The Ban campaign. JD
Contact me with story ideas or news tips
at 952/893-6876 or joe@powersportsupdate.com.
I’ve been reporting on V-SEPT (www.v-sept.com) for about five years now. For those of you who don’t know, the company offers an Internet-based CRM (customer relationship management) system built specifically for powersports dealers. Click here for my latest profile on the system, written for our July 2009 issue.
More than one dealer has told me that they have a high regard for V-SEPT, and several current Top 100 dealers have noted it in their contest applications, including Andy’s Cycle Sales of Hazard in Bonnyman, Ky.; Dothan Powersports in Dothan, Ala.; Family PowerSports in Lubbock, Texas; Gieson Motorsports in Rock Falls, Ill.; and Skagit Powersports in Burlington, Wash.
Heartland Honda in Springdale, Ark., is another Top 100 dealer that uses V-SEPT. In an article I wrote for our website last December, store manager Greg Donahoe shared his opinions on several marketing-related vendors. Below is the most relevant portion of the article relating to V-SEPT: Read the rest of this entry »
Move Could Enhance Polaris’ Engineering Capabilities
I just received this information from Polaris Industries. More about this later.
Polaris Industries Inc. (NYSE: PII) today announced its acquisition of swissauto Powersports. Based in Burgdorf, Switzerland, swissauto has expertise in designing and developing high-performance and high-efficiency engines and innovative vehicles. The acquisition will further strengthen Polaris’ global engine and vehicle design capability while also enhancing the company’s European presence.
Founded in 1987, swissauto’s core capabilities are in development, prototyping and manufacturing of internal combustion engines. Polaris has a long history of working with swissauto. The high-performance, four-stroke Weber engine that Polaris uses in several current snowmobile models was developed by swissauto.
In addition to recreational vehicle engines, swissauto also has a strong tradition of developing top-tier racing engines for World Motorcycle GP. The company’s V4 2-stroke 500 cc engine drove 29 wins, 41 Poles and 3 World Championships during the 1990s. A completely new racing bike was also developed by swissauto and competed aggressively against larger Japanese OEMs during the late 1990s. This bike achieved the pole position twice during it’s first season of racing and ranked in the top ten several times.
“Swissauto has industry leading powertrain design and development capabilities and a strong understanding of turbo-charging and high-performance engines,” said Polaris Chief Executive Officer, Scott Wine. “This acquisition directly supports our stated objectives to be the best in powersports and a global market leader. ”
Polaris acquired the powersports portion of swissauto and will continue to operate in the current swissauto facility located in Burgdorf, Switzerland. The automotive division of swissauto was not involved in this acquisition and will continue to operate autonomously.
This story originally appeared in the Dealernews February 2010 issue.
I have yet to see the final MIC numbers for 2009, but dealers likely retailed about 500,000 new motorcycles and scooters made by the major brands. This is roughly the same number they retailed in the late 1990s. For all you industry veterans, wouldn’t it be great if you could just downsize to your 1999 staffing and advertising levels, and call it good? The OEMs and aftermarket could do the same. With all the recent layoffs, maybe that’s what they’ve had in mind.
If only it were that easy. For one thing, technology and the Internet have changed how business is done. Today there are dealership duties that didn’t exist a decade ago. Even our favorite V-twin hippie, Rick Fairless, has computer people on staff. Turn to page 18 for some insight into how he’s built one of the smartest websites I’ve visited. It’s plain fun.
Technology doesn’t necessarily mean more overhead: It can save money in man-hours and advertising. Fairless, for example, explains how he’s stopped spending money on the Yellow Pages. Another columnist, Eric Anderson (page 28), talks this month about digital signage that acts as a silent salesperson on steroids. Read the rest of this entry »
Former Custom V-twin Executive Leads Chinese Importer/Distributor
Brett Smith, former president of S&S Cycle, one of the leading names in American motorcycles, has been named head of Baja Motorsports‘ U.S. operations. Smith currently is traveling in China where he is visiting Baja factories and component suppliers.
Brett Smith
I’ll be providing more information on this major move when Smith returns to the U.S. and gets settled into his new position. In the meantime, here is information on Smith and Baja in a Q&A session that I developed with Smith.
Baja Motorsports is based in Tempe, Ariz., where it operates a 70,000 sq. ft. parts, service and warehouse/office facility. It sells Chinese-made powersports equipment primarily through big box retailers such as Pep Boys. Service is provided through a network of some 1,000 independent service shops in North America.
Baja was launched in 2004 by Richard Godfrey, president and CEO, Jennifer Andrew, vice president of operations/CFO, and Ryan Daugherty, vice president of sales and marketing. In the first year, Baja posted sales of $6.5 million.
A recent brief announcement out of Tucker Rocky Distributing about changes in the marketing department piqued my interest. The note said that long-time marketing and advertising guy Stephan Ulbrich was no longer with the big national Fort Worth-based distributor. Several other reassignments were also mentioned. The moves followed the
Steve Johnson
departure of another long-time TR marketing executive, Tim Pritchard, vice president of sales and marketing, who left the company in October after eight years with the distributor.
What was up with the changes, I wondered? So I called Steve Johnson, TR’s president and COO. It turns out that the personnel changes reflect a significant shift in the way TR is working with its customers, both on the supplier side and on the dealer side.
The departed ex-employees aren’t talking, of course, but here’s the story, as Steve discussed it with me.
“It was clear to me that we needed new leadership in the sales and marketing area,” Johnson told me. ” Tim had been here many years and we had a philosophical difference on how to run the company, so I made a change.”
While pretty much all the press attention during the Cycle World International Motorcycle Show stops is directed toward the motorcycles, it’s kinda cool to turn that focus around to the journalists themselves.
If you’ve never been a part of this roving crowd of camera snappers and flashers (CAMERA flashers) it’s often been described as a scrum al a rugby, and for good reason. As the media schedule skips from OEM announcement to OEM annoucement, the press follows in a tight bunch, each jockying for position and camera angles. It’s even crazier at the European shows (like EICMA) where it seems that a fist fight is only a shove or elbow away. This roving band of moto-journos tends to break up as the hours progressive until it’s the niche guys getting the niche news. Good times for sure.
At the opening of the New York IMS stop, show representative and extremely debonair motoguy, Robert Pandya, was directing the first few hours of the press event. At 9:30 a.m. Friday morning, the show floor was still chockablock with unopened wooden crates, union workers, cleaners, assemblers and other assorted workers. Forklifts whirred and honked their way through the crowds, impatiently navigating the crowds to deliver payloads of whatnot.
There were reps from blogs, magazines, radio shows and newspapers, a span of media representation ranging from Roadbike to All About Bikes magazine, from Popular Science to American Iron. Oh year, don’t forget the Motorcycle Radio Network and Rider. In other words, the show gets some pretty damn good press from a wide range of media. We like this.
“Move in here folks,” Pandya says while trying to start the show at the Cycle World booth. “We don’t want to play journalist shish-kabob.”
From here the group moves en masse to BMW to hear head media-man Roy Olliemuller tout the OEM’s 2009 sales numbers before introducing the BMW crew and the S1000RR. There were those forklifts again in the background (and almost in the foreground!)
Boom, off to Victory Motorcycles. Then the Suzuki Busa Beats 2010 launch. Next, Star and the Performance Machine Raider. Honda? You’re up. Harley-Davidson’s got a new bike. Let’s go see it. A Ducati fashion show AND the 2010 Multistrada 1200? Bellisimo! Hardcore Choppers. TapouT. Ducati freestyle stunt team. Phew. It’s a busy schedule.
Harley-Davidson lost $147.2 million from continuing operations in 4Q 2009 on revenue of $764.5 million. For the year, it earned $70.6 million from contining operations on revenues of $4.29 billion. Full year income from operations was down 89.4% from the $684.2 million it earned in 2008. 4Q shipments were down 53.1% from 4Q 2008. For the full year 2009, revenue from Harley-Davidson motorcycles was $3.17 billion compared to $4.24 billion in 2008 on shipments of 223,023 Harley-Davidson motorcycles, compared to 303,479 motorcycles in 2008.
Tim Conder, a senior analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, notes that Q4 is the seasonally weakest at retail and is subject to the largest year over year percentage swings. He also noted today that Harley’s planned shipments this year of 201,000 to 212,000 units, down 5%-10%, were below expectations of analysts who follow the company. Analysts thought shipments this year would be about flat.
Conder said that Harley’s U.S./global sell-through was worse than his expectations. U.S. retail sales for Harley motorcycles were 162,385 units. JD
Contact me with news stories and tips at 952/893-6876 or joe@powersportsupdate.com
Short of purposefully having a get-off on your motorcycle, what better way to test a new brand of riding gear than to throw yourself down a hill in (what looks like) the Silverlake area of Los Angeles? Arlene Battishill, the brains behind GoGo Gear and Scooter Girls, does in this little video she posted to YouTube.
I talked to her the day after she did this and she was still pretty shaken up by it, but I can’t help but find this endlessly entertaining. From what I’ve been able to surmise, Arlene is a pretty unique woman — who else is going to attempt to create a line of high-fashion riding gear for women from the ground up with no motorcycle industry experience whatsoever? So, if you ever get the good fortune of meeting her you’ll think, ‘Of course she threw herself down a hill to test that gear.’
Reduced unit sales of scooters in 2009 forced Piaggio USA to cut several top level managers in its sales operation and flatten out its sales staff, Paolo Timoni, president and CEO of Piaggio’s US operations, told me.
Noting that industry-wide U.S. scooter sales were down about 65% last year, Timoni said that steps had to be taken to balance revenue and costs. “We don’t expect 2010 sales to go back to 2008 numbers,” said Timoni. So, it was cut either sales or dealer services.
“Given our priorities for 2010 and 2011,” Timoni said, “ we concluded it was a priority for us to maintain our service capabilities (to dealers) as much as possible, because we think this is what dealers need. Probably, we could get with a smaller sales organization, since there wouldn’t be that much sales, right? Therefore, we basically reduced the size of our sales organization.”
The position of vice president of sales and marketing has been eliminated and the former head of sales and marketing, Gary Pietruszewski, has been let go. The marketing management functions now will be handled by three managers, who report to Timoni. “It’s a much flatter management structure,” he says.
Melissa MacCall is responsible for marketing, Internet activities, promotions and co-marketing activities. Karen Andrews is brand manager for Piaggio and Vespa, and Rick Panettieri is brand manager for Aprilia and Moto Guzzi.
At the same, the number of regional sales directors was cut from three to two, and three regional sales directors were dropped, reducing the number of sales directors from 10 to seven.
“We have great opportunity here,” says Timoni. “You notice we didn’t touch our service organization. We thought that would be the best investment we could make now, and we hope dealers appreciate that basically all the infrastructure and organization to support and service them has been untouched. That’s our strategy.”
No other changes are planned for the time being. “That’s all there is,” says Timoni. JD
Call me with your story ideas and news tips at 952/893-6876.
Or email me at joe@powersportsupdate.com.
Dennis Johnson
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