American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 208 November 2016 | Page 43

machines such as small cc scooters is still in
decline, counterintuitively following such a
dramatic recession, it is higher value larger
displacement motorcycles rather than price
point machines that are driving growth.
The best news of all though comes in the
custom market, where Harley’s
performance, in market share terms and
new unit numbers, in Europe is doing much
to soften the impact of the domestic sales
numbers, with custom-esque machines of
various kinds also being among the
strongest growth areas for most of the
“mainstream” motorcycle manufacturers.
Hence the “double-boothing” that was seen
at INTERMOT this year as OEs sought to
stake a claim to future exhibit real estate in
the new show-within-show ‘INTERMOT
Customized’ Hall 10 this year.
With the mid-single digit motorcycle growth
being seen now in Europe, and the modest
visitor number growth being claimed by
INTERMOT (up by around 10,000 from
2014), it has been the advent of ‘INTERMOT
Customized’ that has given the show most
of its claimed +17 percent increase in
exhibiting company numbers, and in the
context of the collapse in numbers since
2007, everyone in the industry in Europe
will happily take the present modest and
early positive indicators “all day long”.
With the uncertainty of unfolding change
continuing to swirl about us, any kind of
growth is good growth. In European terms,
the custom market has emerged from under
the wing of the street, sports, naked style,

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dual-purpose and scooter markets – what
was once niche, truly is now starting to
define the mainstream.
As long-term market leader, HarleyDavidson always has largely defined the
primary business opportunities in the North
American motorcycle parts and accessory
aftermarket, but increasingly Europe is
catching up – albeit with a new definition
of what “motorcycles of character” means
to the new-generation of Millennial beard
wearers and what were hitherto regarded
as minority markets.
That definition is already being seen in the
U.S. of course, and has been for some years,
but in Europe it is also informing OE
production capacity priorities – and that is
important as a potential game-changer as
the Japanese superbike revolution was in
the 1970s and 1980s.
In our visits with exhibitors in the “main”
halls, our International Dealer News
domestic European ‘Metric’ customers, it
was startling how many vendors, now more
than ever, are keen to know how they can
engage with AMD Magazine as the pathway
into custom sales, and I was asked about
how European vendors can get sales
moving in the domestic U.S. custom market
at least a dozen times on four days.
There was palpable disappointment at
hearing that the channels are just as
complex and the market just as crowded for
them as a European vendor trying to sell in
the U.S. as it is for American vendors trying
to gain traction in the European market but with a relatively healthy domestic
European custom market in which to
liquidate development costs, few appeared
to be deterred.
A few such companies appear in this
selection and in my review of ‘INTERMOT
Customized’ elsewhere in this edition, but
for most of the businesses included here,
those that already have brands that can sell
across the board, have product solutions
specified for the V-twin market, and have
mature channels already in place, the
opportunities may be morphing, but
opportunities they certainly are.

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