son ! No , really , I Love ‘ More Roads ’
( monstrously huge quantities of hurrah !). Now , in fact , none of this is rocket science really . Let ’ s be honest here , and most of it is way late , and with ‘ LiveWire ’ there is a sense of cart-in-front-of horse , riskiest gambit first , with those plays that are more likely to succeed coming afterwards . Indeed , most of it is based on gospels that many have been preaching for many years - much of it is playbook , and other people ’ s long ignored and unappreciated playbooks at that ; ones that Harley has had offered to them on a plate long before now .
, all this to be done while embracing several key criteria , these are the However interesting and , for me , best and most ambitious parts of the plans .
First , to go in these ( logical ) new directions while not alienating their existing core customer base - always an overstated concern in my view - one that woefully undersells the innate creativity and thirst for innovation that is such a quintessentially American quality . In my humble opinion , it is the conservatism of the past two decades that has been the betrayal . Second , acknowledging and facing up to the fact that its dealer network needs to be “ finessed ” at the very least , needs to be helped to manage its sales and marketing journey in a more contemporary and cohesive manner , needs to convincingly embrace the morphing nature of buying and , above all , needs to be downtown as well as in the suburbs and counties . Final and largest hurrah of all is the acknowledgement of all this . Third , to do all this in a sustainable and profitable way , one that would allow Harley to continue to reward its investors at a rate that will keep it within the top quartile of the S & P 500 in shareholder value terms , fair enough , but above all keep it free of the dead weight of debt – if weight is the enemy of performance , then the weight of debt is the enemy of balance sheet performance . Husbanding resources is the appropriate mantra ! Many analysts have been calling for greater clarity and detail of the plans ( as have dealers and everyone else ) and while , at this stage , they remain just exactly that , plans , in strategic terms it is the clarity that is the money in the bank . The announcements confirm that much of the speculation about where Harley could and should be taking the ‘ Bar ‘ n Shield ’ in new model and market segment terms , has , after all , been pretty much where management ’ s head has also been at ( if only they could have been a tad more liberal with the hints ). Above all though , rather than a Stasi style corporatism , the 21st century orthodoxy is to take your market with you . The bean counters will always tell you that goodwill can ’ t be amortized , so has no hard business value , but they are emphatically wrong . With clarity comes momentum . The plans revealed about the dealer network strategy certainly do put the churn of the past here years or more into context though . If the selling-up of singleton store owners of many decades standing hasn ’ t been something that Milwaukee has been actively fostering , it certainly tells us that they haven ’ t been averse to it , that they definitely see more opportunity than downside in it .
‘ with clarity comes momentum ’
There have been plenty of siren voices , some quite recently well connected who have been bemoaning that Harley has clearly been courting a more auto industry like network , one where it doesn ’ t quite descend to “ chocolate by the checkout ,” but nonetheless one in which the emphasis is even more firmly on units rather than legacy . It throws their interpretation of keeping traditional core market buyers ‘ on side ’ into stark relief . Clearly Harley ’ s interpretation of doing so isn ’ t the same as those with the classic and touchingly irrational emotional attachment to the brand that drives otherwise sane people to have a multi-billion Dollar corporation ’ s logo tattooed for life about their person .
Harley the line between legacy and baggage , between loyalty and longevity , For is obviously less well defined than it is for those of us who live our lives under
the daily , grinding pressure of enduring multiple quarters of declining demand . The story of the past four or five years has been very different to that of 2008 and 2009 . Then the collapse in demand was fast and universal . More recently it has been a long , slow process of atrophy , and in reaching for solutions I guess Harley can ’ t really be blamed for factoring in the strictly time limited value of Boomers . Harley has been “ Dad ’ s bike ” and “ Grandpa ’ s brand ” for an awfully long time now , and that certainly isn ’ t a heritage paved with opportunity – sadly “ core ” market , in that respect , is simply not going to be sufficiently sustaining in the future . But there has always been change and always will be – the time to worry is if a corporation stands still – as Harley has done in strategic terms for far too long now . If that change means having the kind of shops that ‘ new gen ’ consumers will want to visit , can visit and will buy from , then so be it – bring it on ! Of course , it is all about balance in that respect , and time is Harley ’ s friend in that what may be a fast change in the character of the dealer network as far as Harley is concerned , will actually , probably , be slow as far as the world in which they are needing to compete will be concerned . Many may well take exception to some of Harley ’ s “ Many Roads ”, especially where dealer policy is concerned . For many it may be too radical in the context of a concept of “ legacy ” that is increasingly becoming more of a liability . Remember , everything that at one stage is radical eventually becomes orthodoxy and finally , outdated .
Robin Bradley Co-owner / Editor-in-Chief robin @ dealer-world . com