American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 175 February 2014 | Page 4

Attendance guaranteed!
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HERE’S always a back story! In the case of our decision to refine
our BIKE BIG EUROPE expo thinking it is a simple one.
Attendance numbers.
Having proven the BBE concept, all that remained was to build the attendance.
In truth, having successfully demonstrated what a custom market tech,
engineering, parts, performance and accessory expo formula could and should
look like, in a post-recession 21st century, that was always destined to be by far
the easiest of the project’s long-term requirements - after all people will line up
to see something good, but first it has to be good!
There are no end to the varied buttons that could be pushed to get the right
number and right profile of visitors through the door of a show such as BBE if
and when the relevance and quality message had been established.
In that regard we probably over-achieved in 2013, so much so that when I
subsequently started to eye a selection of strategies
for 2014, I very quickly came to the conclusion that
since the attendance already exists at INTERMOT,
since the people are already in a visitor habit at
INTERMOT, lets take the formula to them, lets go find
them rather than wait for them to find us.
There are all sorts of permutations of marketing
available to BIG BIKE EUROPE. Many of them
obvious, and many of them universal. But many are
also idiosyncratically European, arising from the
unique structure of the market in Europe - one in
which (unlike the United States) the ‘custom habit’ is actually a distinctly minority
oriented taste in motorcycle terms.
Don’t get me wrong, the custom market in Europe is large, and is growing
larger in share terms all the time, but in a continent where total motorcycle/PTW
sales topped out at nearly 3m annually as recently as 2007/8 (with minimal
numbers of those units being ATV/Quad or SxS units) that share is never going
to come close to the 50 percent or so that Harley has hovered around in America
for the past couple of decades.
One of the (many) stated ambitions with BIG BIKE EUROPE was always to
build it out from a custom v-twin core to be inclusive of liquid-cooled customizing
- a formula that better represents the greater degree of platform cross-over seen
in custom shops in Europe, and one that goes to the performance oriented
character of the market in Europe (indeed, increasingly, in North America too) as
well as speaking to the broader palette of custom design and engineering seen
in Europe - some would say the more radical, esoteric and plain ‘wackier’ custom
design and engineering oeuvre seen in Europe.
The concept of upgrading the custom show at INTERMOT that has already
been a World Championship affiliate event for the past several years (The Cologne
Custom Cup) had already been explored, somewhat, before the decision was
taken to create BBE as a stand-alone event to host the AMD World Championship.
Because of the very specific expo environment that we want to champion, and
the frequency issue (INTERMOT is held every-other-year), and the timing issue

(spring and autumn/fall timings both have merit) we decided to set about an
initial ‘proof-of-concept’ so we could know whether or not the ideas we had were
robust in conceptual terms.
If they weren’t, then we had nothing. If, as has proven to be the case, they did
make sense and work well for the very particular business needs of the custom
and performance market, then we had everything.
Suffice to say that the positive scuttlebutt about BBE in May last year shockwaved around Europe so quickly and decisively that ‘first contact’ with Koeln
Messe on co-joining with Cologne was under way within a month. Koeln Messe
is the Cologne Expo Center; they organize and stage INTERMOT on behalf of the
German motorcycle industry association that owns the event - the IVM.
Of all the “circles that needed to be squared” in finessing the initial BBE/AMD
World Championship formula in this way, none proved to be a fatal flaw in the
concept, once the magnitude of being able to tap in
to INTERMOT’s established 200,000 plus visitor (and
abundantly international) footprint was considered.
Especially in the context of a European liquid-cooled
market that has currently ‘cooled’ alarmingly, and the
on-cost that a second expo in Germany in the years
when INTERMOT is staged represented for all
qualifying sectors of the target exhibitor community
in Germany (and the rest of Europe) was taken into
account.
The plan is to alternate the AMD World
Championship between INTERMOT in “even numbered years” (2014, 2016 etc)
and to stage BIG BIKE EUROPE at the same Cologne, Germany venue in the “inbetween” years (2015, 2017) etc.
That way the AMD World Championship remains an annual celebration of
motorcycle custom design, performance engineering and stock-modification
excellence, but in expo terms we genuinely bring something new to the business
cycle.
One year gets the undoubted benefits of a much larger broader-band
attendance than any custom event could ever generate on its own, and the crossover environment benefits that a seat at the top-table of the mainstream of the
international motorcycle industry brings.
The following year exhibitors, customizers and visitors get the narrower-band
benefits of design, engineering and ‘tribal’ focus business opportunity that has
been at the heart of the BBE concept - the specialty-focus of BBE as a stand alone
event in contrast to the “expansion-mission” that INTERMOT represents.
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