American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 251 June 2020 | Page 29

my prior work, and many of my first
customers are still Zodiac dealers
today - people such as Ger Dijkshoorn,
Motor Saloon and Kees Rozenboom.
After that, customers in Sweden,
Germany, France and Italy soon
followed.
"Back then, regardless of where the
parts were actually being made, most
shops in Europe would buy direct from
the United States. There really wasn't
a European custom parts distributor
here in Europe at that stage at all, so
we were the first - we pioneered and
created the market we all know and
see today with Zodiac."
The first Zodiac catalog appeared in
1982, and around that time Ton and
Marianne exhibited at IFMA, the then
large trade fair in Cologne - the
precursor to today's INTERMOT.
"We displayed everything in large
glass showcases, and it worked," says
Marianne. "We attracted attention
and international growth and gained
momentum. Foreign agents were hired
and took the orders in their markets.
They then passed them on to Zodiac
and everything was sent out from the
Dutch warehouse."
"We ordered what we needed in
Taiwan," says Ton, "and we soon had
more than 1,000 part numbers. The
order times were three to six months,
so you had to be able to accurately
estimate what you needed, when you
would need it and how many of each
part." The thick, modern day 'Bikers
Book' Zodiac catalog now contains
more than 5,500 Genuine Zodiac part
numbers alone. Genuine Zodiac
products are produced in Taiwan, with
the administration and worldwide
sales in Hong Kong; European sales
and inventory are at the Zodiac
International headquarters warehouse
at Mijdrecht in the Netherlands.
After that start in Europe, it
wasn't long before suppliers of
other brands, especially
American brands, also wanted to start
selling through Zodiac. "The first was
Rivera Primo, closely followed by
Delkron, and now we have more than
370 brands in our catalog, 300 of
which are American," says Vincent
Pels.
Being 'his father's son', Vincent grew
up with drag racing, but realizing at an
early age that electronics and the rise
of the computer would be important
during his lifetime, rather than
automatically starting to work for his
father straight from college, he first
worked for IBM for a while, before
www.AMDchampionship.com
From its beginnings in 1985, the Zodiac catalog has
become a staple - now available in six languages.
making the switch to Zodiac in
advance of his father's desire to retire.
"I grew up with drag racing," says
Vincent, "and although mine is mostly
an office job these days, I'd rather be
getting oil under my fingernails than
flying a desk!" Vincent is active in the
drag racing team, developing new
parts and playing a major role in the
construction and maintenance of the
Zodiac Top Fuel drag bike - overseeing
technical developments, such as a
complete camshaft for the nitro-fired
1,000 hp plus drag racer, a machine
that is highly regarded in the European
Top Fuel class, with his father having
been a multiple times European
Champion.
Zodiac is able to achieve EU approvals for both
its own and its vendor's product lines.
Zodiac had to move to a larger space
quite soon after starting, then moved
twice before occupying the present
day facilities on Industrieweg in
Mijdrecht. Along the way, Zodiac
pioneered several dealer initiatives
that eventually became standard
industry practice in Europe - the
annual dealer show, annual print
catalog produced in-house in multiple
language editions, using an advanced
CMS, that also feeds the online catalog
and B2B Dealer Lounge (Vincent's
computer industry background
proving invaluable at that stage),
multi-language monthly dealer
newsletters and multilingual, multimarket
pricing - something that
became a whole lot simpler in of
Europe's main markets with the
advent of the Euro single currency in
1999.
Vincent says that one of the big
reasons why Zodiac succeeded
was because many smaller
companies - in the USA as well as
Europe - found it difficult to reliably
source good quality production in
Taiwan. Many found that the
expensive tooling and molds that they
had paid for within their pricing were
then used by the factory to sell the
exact same product to anybody else
who wanted it - generally at a lower
price, the initial tooling cost having
already been covered.
"With the kind of purchasing
organization and control we have,
with self-owned factories and good
links with reliable, independent
component makers as our set-up, has
meant that for our own products, if a
sample was sent and a mold was
made, then it was recorded here in the
West to prevent counterfeits and sales
to third parties.
"We own that tooling and we have
100 percent control. We specify the
materials and all aspects of the
processes so that we can be confident
'5,500 genuine
Zodiac part
numbers alone'
of the quality. That is the dynamic that
created Zodiac in the first place and
the well-known ZEL part number
(Zodiac Enterprises Limited) is still a
common sight on all sorts of products,
including famous names such as Bates
headlights, to name just one of the
hundreds of examples."
The roots of Zodiac come from the H-
D scene - drag racing and customizing
- and that is partly why Zodiac became
and remain so close to the American
market. The Zodiac drag race team has
been at the top in the Top Fuel class in
Europe for years and has often
competed in races in the USA. Zodiac
remains one of the principal 'go to'
distributors for American vendors to
this day and brings some unique
benefits to the table for vendors and
dealers alike.
"We are the only distributor in Europe
with our own full workshop - dyno,
CNC machining, prototyping, the full
set-up. Not only do we develop our
drag racer, we also build our own
custom bikes, which are our 'business
cards' at trade fairs. We build them
100% street legal so they can be
ridden on the road, a condition that all
customs built by us must meet, so that
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