In Harley-Davidson Inc.’s efforts to attract and retain customers the motorcycle company is planning to lean on its parts and accessories.
Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson is rolling out a new strategy to sell more bikes by bringing back models at lower prices and making sure its dealer network is healthy.
Parts and accessories go with both of those points.
“We also recognized that we’ve under invested in this area in recent years,” Harley-Davidson CEO Artie Starrs said.
“Customization is at the core of the Harley-Davidson experience and a key driver of dealer profitability,” Starrs said during a May 5 earnings call. “No two Harley-Davidson motorcycles on the road are the same, and that’s exactly how riders want it.”
Harley-Davidson is preparing to offer the Sprint model later this year priced at about $6,000, and next year it plans to bring back the Sportster at a roughly $10,000 price.
In both of those launches, Harley-Davidson is integrating parts and accessories in the motorcycle launch to ensure the models can be supported.
Parts and accessories, the company believes, could draw 20% to 30% sales growth within the next few years.
Starrs said the company is expanding the use of “blank canvas” motorcycles “giving riders more opportunity to personalize their motorcycles through genuine parts and accessories.”
“We’ve had too many of too few models on dealer floors,” Starrs said.
“We expect to have more motorcycles in the portfolio that are more approachable from a price perspective, and have less accessories on them and then our dealerships would be equipped with the (parts and accessories) to personalize them for the riders,” he said.
Seats, exhaust, lighting, windshields and handlebars are among the parts the company is targeting.
The customization efforts could work for smaller bikes at lower prices, said Jaime Katz, a Morningstar analyst.
“If you can get a $10,000 bike with $2,000 of personalization on it, whatever attachments you’re putting on is likely to have a pretty good profit margin on them and it’s still cheaper than most of the heavy weight bikes,” Katz told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“We have to see how committed people are to the brand,” he said.
Katz said moving to more affordable bikes is one of the few moves Harley-Davidson has left “if they want to have a consumer with a lifetime potential value to them.”
“We’re all sort of in this wait and see holding period to see if any of these plans work out,” Katz said.
‘Customer is telling us what we should do’
Some Harley-Davidson dealers have been seeing an increase in customers wanting to customize their own bikes.
“We’d overprice a bike if we customized it because you can price yourself out of the market,” said Keith Ulicki, owner of Uke’s Harley-Davidson in Kenosha.
“So we’re letting the customers tell us what we should do. And that’s what the customer is telling us what we should do now, is customize bikes,” he said.
Billy Lobacz, service and parts manager at Uke’s Harley-Davidson, said the dealership has been heavily accessorizing bikes because more customers want options.
“Now we’re getting to a point where we take the models and giving them more of a stripped down vehicle to give them more of an opportunity to be more customizable,” Lobacz said.
“Customers do like this. This is what sets them apart from someone else,” he said. “First off, you’re riding a Harley because you want to be set apart from other motorcyclists but then you can make it the way you want, fit you to how you want.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Harley-Davidson prioritizing customization to attract customers
Reporting by Ricardo Torres, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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