Thursday, September 16, 2010
Use only VESPA SOAP for that 2stroke scent momma likes!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
How Dealers in Europe Stay in Business
Sales in Europe fell as badly as they did in the United States between 2008 and 2010. It's even more competitive in Europe where most cities have twenty repair shops. Take a look at Madrid or Rome and you will see Scooter Shops every few streets. The way many of them have survived is by repairing everything. Even Honda exclusive stores repair Chinese, Kymco, SYM, or TGB. Vespa - Piaggio stores do service work on everything including Yamahas unlike many stores in the USA that refused to change with the market these guys have adapted since there is almost no money in new unit sales. Today in Italy a new store makes less than 7% on a new Malaguti or Benelli scooter. The Chinese flood of product have also brought down the prices of parts to the point where the only way a store can stay in business is by offering service and to do so they need to REPAIR EVERYTHING AND HAVE PARTS IN STOCK.
MRP has been working with US dealers to adapt to the new market reality since 2008 by being the ONLY source in North America for many brands of OEM parts from CPI, Cubik K, Diamo, Italjet America, Malaguti, MH, SN, and more....we have OEM parts for Linhai, CFMOTO, QJ, Benelli Andretti and much much more over 12,000 SKUS for scooters at http://www.mrp-speed.com
Vendors That Compete Against Their Own Dealers
I absolutely loved this article by Arlo on Dealer News. Two things that were left out is the trend that has started in Europe and how dealers there barely survive on service. They can't make any money on parts when parts makers in the scooter world now sell direct to the public and they can't make money on scooters. Some dealers there survive on less than 7%. So the only place they make money is service.
Now if you add all the illegal shops in Rome and what the owners have had to resort to by hiring illegal workers you really have a mess nobody likes to talk about.
Arlo wrote one of the best articles I read and I wish more websites would do this. I think he just failed to mention Dennis Fox and Kirk Fox are the initials in DKscooters and DennisKirk.com this is one of the first things you learn when you enter the business. Are they owened by PU no, not directly, it's probably a trust or something that can't be looked into. Simply put they are separate corporate entities as his research indicated. Also, it doesn't really matter if its discrete or direct anymore plenty of distributors especially the Scooter World are selling direct. The Internet and the Chinese supply have made this into the wild west economic system so you can't blame anyone - It has done away with any exclusivity, any four tier sales system ( factory - distributor - dealer - consumer ) so dealers can expect even more hard times on all this.
Even brands that were established by cutting the teeth of sales reps with product demos and dealer direct like Scorpion have changed to selling to Tucker Rocky and selling direct to consumers. Tucker already has some of the loosest MAP policies around so its a free fall in the industry when it comes to dealers. The funny thing is most dealers don't have the time or the energy to compete they buy a PSN Powersports Network Website and just drop ship it all and ignore the fact they can't compete online anymore. It's a really sad state of events. I think Arlos advice is the best. Make as much noise as possible, complain, and support the brands that don't compete with the store.
BELOW IS A LINK TO HIS ARTICLE AND MORE.
Vendors That Compete Against Their Own Dealers
By Arlo Redwine
http://dealernewsblog.com/2009/10/18/vendors-that-compete-against-their-own-dealers/
BrokenChainWhy has the industry allowed so many vendors to compete against their own dealers through online sales? Shouldn’t everyone respect the supply channel? Or do some vendors have legitimate reasons for selling directly?
Two years ago, I was attending an annual meeting of MIC members when a guest speaker told the 200 assembled vendors that they all should be selling online. “The most important way for the aftermarket to sell is the Internet,” the market analyst said. “Companies used to be worried about how it would affect their retail establishments. That way of thinking has gone by the wayside.”
This comment surprised me. When the analyst asked for questions, I asked whether he believed motorcycle dealers in particular no longer cared whether their suppliers sold directly. He gave a quick affirmative and left the stage.
As we dispersed for a coffee break, a vendor rep came up to me and said that he was glad I had asked my question. Vendor sales to consumers, he assured me, were still highly controversial.
Well, perhaps the speaker had misunderstood my question, so I confronted him during the break for clarification. He said that he’d been speaking generally, but that, yes, he believed the idea also applied to suppliers and dealers in the powersports industry. He qualified this by saying that supplier websites could link to dealership sites or incorporate dealers in profit sharing. When I noted that many — probably most — dealerships did not partake in e-commerce, he shrugged his shoulders.
Again, this was two years ago. In hindsight, it seems that the analyst was on to something. The idea of wholesalers bypassing their dealers is not as controversial as it once was. Why is this?
What’s particularly bad is when suppliers sell products for below wholesale. “That’s what we’ve seen more often — is them selling directly to the public and undercutting us,” Crystal Ashby, marketing manager for Chaparral Motorsports in San Bernardino, Calif., told me in late August. “For instance, we’ve seen particular companies selling close-out merchandise on their website for below our cost, and then we’ll call and say, ‘OK, we want to buy that for a customer at that price.’ And they won’t sell it to us at that price. They want to sell to us at our higher dealer cost.
“Any company, any distributor that sells direct to the public is really robbing everyone of a sale,” she said.
Some suppliers claim that they must sell consumer-direct to survive — or they claim they retail only noncurrent items.
Ashby is skeptical. “They’re saying that because we [the dealers] can’t facilitate all of the business, they need to help out,” she said. “Well, if they were to supply me with everything that I needed, then I could probably facilitate all of the business. But they’ll run off X amount of inventory for their distribution company and then they’ll run off X amount of inventory for their direct-to-the-public inventory. Then, when our inventory runs out, they won’t pick from that retail inventory because they’re making double, triple the margin they would be making by selling it to us.”
Another excuse I’ve heard from vendors/retailers is that in many parts of the country, no dealer exists that stocks their products. “How else can people buy our stuff?” they ask.
Ashby has an answer to this question also. “Now there is a dealer in every area because of the Internet,” she noted. And she wasn’t referring only to big Internet operations like Chaparral. Any-sized dealer today can afford e-commerce thanks to companies like ARI, 50 Below and PowerSports Network. “Every small dealer could grab a hold of one of those Internet providers,” she said. “They provide a really good package that is really easy to work with. It doesn’t take a lot to get started.” (Click here for a comprehensive buyer’s guide for the three website providers mentioned.)
FoxRacingSo which vendors are selling to the public? The first big names that come to mind are Fox Racing and Shift. The company that owns those brands has been doing it for many years, seemingly without compunction. And in my last blog posting about MAP policies, I mention Scorpion Sports’ relatively new shopping cart.
But as far as I know, neither of these companies is undercutting its dealers, the ultimate sin. I didn’t ask Ashby to name names when she made her comment about such suppliers, but perhaps I should have. If you know of any undercutting vendors, post a comment below. Please provide links supporting your claims.
Now, at this point, I pretty much have to address one of the industry’s longest-running rumors: that Parts Unlimited is somehow the true owner of prominent online retailer Dennis Kirk. If true, this would be a big story. Accordingly, a few years ago, I investigated by contacting Minnesota’s Secretary of State office for Dennis Kirk’s articles of incorporation. There are two sets of papers, which is not unusual as companies often form more than one corporation to separate assets. Dennis Kirk Inc. was incorporated in 1977; Dennis Kirk Store Inc. (the online operation maybe?) was incorporated in 1995. The sole board of directors for the latter corporation is listed as Fred Fox, the founder of LeMans.
FredFox
But unless I’m mistaken, this doesn’t indicate ownership. A high-level Parts Unlimited executive once ensured me that LeMans does not own Dennis Kirk. The truth of the matter, he said, was that Dennis Kirk had long been a favorite customer of Fox’s. This alone explained Fox’s being the initial board of directors. It also explained, I suppose, past off-the-record reports from employees that Fox visits Dennis Kirk’s facility with an authoritative air.
At the time I was doing this research, Dennis Kirk declined to speak with me. But the special attention from LeMans could be reason enough for it to shy away from the trade publications.
In conclusion, I won’t assume LeMans owns Dennis Kirk when both companies deny it and I’ve seen no proof to the contrary. Besides, look at it this way: LeMans is roughly a $1 billion company. Motorcycle Superstore, the country’s largest online powersports retailer, reportedly had sales of $43 million in 2008. Even if Dennis Kirk’s sales approached that number, it’s hard to believe that LeMans would risk the goodwill of its entire dealer base just for the extra margin on such relatively small volume.
Baker[1]But enough about that. Let’s get back to the vendors that we know are selling to the public. It always amuses me when I get a press release from a vendor about its new shopping cart on its consumer website. What great news to share with your dealers! The latest companies to make such announcements are Baker Drivetrain and Saddlemen. Click here for Baker Drivetrain’s story. A Saddlemen rep said that the company is willing to sell directly but prefers customers to buy from dealers. As if customers give a rat’s ass about the vendor’s preference!
Instead of selling directly to people, established brands like Fox Racing, Scorpion and Saddlemen could be linking to their retailers’ websites. Or they could do what Kawasaki once did with respect to its online sales: give the nearest stocking dealer its usual margin for each sale. [Update: Several dealers have since told me that Kawi only paid about 3 percent.] I say Kawasaki once did this because it eventually decided to end consumer-direct sales altogether.
Another option for dealer-respecting suppliers is Shopatron, a company that specializes in allowing manufacturers to sell online without cutting out their retailers. Suzuki is just one of Shopatron’s latest clients. Click here for a short article explaining how the system works.
Before I sign off, let me say that there are some legitimate excuses for consumer-direct sales. After all, many small vendors begin by selling their wares to the public, before slowly building a dealer network. There’s a transition period. When that period should end is hard to say.
And even established vendors typically sell directly when they attend the big consumer events like Daytona or Sturgis. I suppose it’s only fair for them to recoup their costs as they market their brands. An exception would be the semi trucks of the major distributors. More than once I’ve confirmed that all such semi sales go through a local dealer.
As inventory levels remain high — and retailers and vendors struggle to survive — excessive discounting is going to tarnish some brands. Similarly, look for more and more vendors to use the economy as an excuse to become your competitor. Don’t take it lying down. Make some noise. Remind your suppliers that barring a few exceptions, the supply chain shouldn’t be broken.
Visit http://Dealernews.com for more blog articles
Feeding your competition
I have this great story and in the last 48 hours it’s become something I had to share with everyone. It involved a small vendor who works out of a U-Haul, a shop that
My first caller yesterday morning was a store that hadn’t placed an order in 8 months and his total for the year was around twenty dollars. Today he wanted to order another ten in parts. The funny thing is before he ordered he proceeded to tell me how he was slow and there was no business, but he was buying a thousand dollars in parts from some guy working out of a U-Haul and no longer needed MRP or his WPS accounts. I thought it was pretty balsy for someone to say that ( I ignored his comment and I realized you have to take everything with a grain of salt since he just wanted to buy without meeting our minimums) I explained to him that the U-Haul guy was the reason his business was going out of business and his sales were slow. He said and I quote “I don’t care if his mobile U-Haul competes with me, we’ve been here over 5 years, I want price.” The best thing about this quote is how it would haunt him the next day. So before I told him he had to live up to our minimums and that we had spoken to the store ten times this year I proceeded to explain why U-Haul guy was helping destroy his shop of 5 years. Then I told him we could talk about his order.
Now say what you want, but MRP like every company is here to make money. Unlike the U-Haul guy this dealership buys from were not a retailer. I’m not directly competing with the store by selling on Ebay and online direct. U-Haul guy is helping destroy brands since their suggested retail prices are nowhere near where they should be on eBay every morning when he’s on there. He’s also in the same area as the dealer so the dealer thinks he’s being helped all he’s doing is sending the U-Haul guy more business. This is one more clear example of everything that is wrong with the powersports industry right now.
I think part of the reason there is so much desperation out there is because dealers allowed distributors to destroy the market by liquidating bikes at auction, sell online direct, and sell parts to the public. I strongly believe the Chinese importer that sells parts direct to the public for whatever reason has basically cannibalized their own long term growth. Then again this is the type of business decision made by someone only thinking about immediate revenue, immediate gratification, and has no interest in building a brand or worrying about if your client will be here next year.
So any distributor in my position has to think - I have employees and overhead. I pay insurance. The guy that works out of U-Haul or his garage doesn’t have liability insurance, workers comp, property taxes, marketing expenses or provide a website with thousands of parts on there. You’re comparing us to the this is why the fly by night guy that works from the U-Haul who has 200 SKUs and buys from WPS or Parts Unlimited because you don’t have an account there? This guy won’t be here next year and the guy that sells direct might have great revenues, but you will never see any legitimate Honda or Yamaha dealership put a sign up that reads “CheapChineseParts.com” on the window. You can walk into a hundred Kymco or Honda dealers from
I face this every day if I sold direct to the public and hired four or five guys at $8 an hour to slave on the phones I could run three or four dealers out of business next week. I could sit here and I would instantly loose a good client like Scootertronics or Buggy USA. They stock, race, go to the track with scooters or buggies. They would never fly our colors or try to promote the line, because they would know in the back of their head that instead of sending them leads we are taking them.
I know a lot of people criticize FRED FOX and company, but that’s who we aspire to be everyday as we’ve built up MRP from 3,000 SKUs to over 12,000 in the course of 18 months. I can say a million things about DKscooters.com and how it closed, how it drop shipped from a million suppliers cannibalizing scooter dealer sales before it shut down, I can talk about DK selling direct to the public, but let’s talk about the fact that PARTS UNLIMITED is the 400 pound gorilla because they decided it’s not in Lemans' business plan to
So I put forward the following contention: Can the Vespa shop survive in todays market ( anywhere other than a primary market like NYC or Chicago ) solely on the Vespa – Piaggio franchise. The absolute answer is no. This is now a widely accepted Universal truth. I think this theory is now proven and in today’s market the smart owner is telling their repair center “hey guys we need to start repairing Yamahas and Kymcos as well as Piaggio.” Same applies to the Honda shop that normally wouldn’t repair a SYM or Kymco.
Now the Chinese only dealer is faced with a question and a new contention emerges. As they have struggled and prices are at all time low on new vehicles. The small Chinese only shop has tried to offer better product moving up from Qingi to say CFMOTO or a better 2T scooter like
So I think my contentions apply directly to the market we face. You have a dealership. You absolutely need a Kymco part, if you are not a Kymco dealer then you have buy it from a Kymco dealer. THIS MAKES SENSE because Kymco is in the business of keeping the brand and business alive, it has a value, THEY ARE NOT MEANT TO BE AT EVERY LOCATION. We took this same business decision and my outlook is the fact that we have a value that sometimes is only realized when someone comes in with a Malaguti scooter or a Keeway ( and Keeway North America discontinued these parts and MRP got them at auction ) and you’re client is desperate for these parts. We come in and save the day and help you make some money. That’s our value. That’s why we have dealers that buy $25,000 a year and are loyal to the brand. They have the business intelligence to not put up website links to direct competitors online on their site. They know the market itself has to be sustainable and for it to be sustainable you cannot take sales away from legitimate stores even online. Dealers have to pay rent, employees, taxes, insurance, and have a million issues every single day. So to those hardworking guys I would be doing them a disservice ever time we sell to the guy that buys $20 a year because they make a strong effort to
So I look at Parts Unlimited and I say yes they are the 400 pound gorilla. I both admire them and want to get in the ring with them. That’s what life is about, if your goal is to hide then don’t sign up for the army. If you want have a franchise read the fine print if you’re going to represent KYMCO then you HAVE to live up to what they ask for, if not don’t do it. Don’t get married and pretend you’re a bachelor.
So back to my caller yesterday I told the client listen at this point you’ve purchased under $50 this year. He said he understood, but that U-HAUL Guy had everything he could ever need and if he needed more he could buy it direct in
Today his wife called. A sixty five year old man had a
Mr. U-Haul drove into the Motorhome community they service and dropped off flyers to all the motorhomes that he repaired mopeds and scooters ( despite having no license, no location, and doesn’t have a tax ID) The TNG owner had gone to the U-Haul guy and he couldn’t get a quote ( doesn’t have an MRP account) then Mr. U-Haul guy said he would be opening a parts account with MRP next week.
The smart savy customer went to their shop because he needed to leave town this weekend and wanted his scooter running. He told her the story about what Mr U-Haul was doing. They freaked out. They purchased $400 in MRP parts. Turns out everything I predicted, everything I had said was true. Will they stop buying from Mr U-Haul? probably not. Because the powersports industry has a short term memory and now getting screwed by distributors or suppliers is becoming the standard.
Still now they see the value of working with someone that has the parts that Mr. U-Haul cannot get. Now they see the value of working with someone that won’t be driving into the motorhome community taking their clients. It’s a shame it comes to this it really is, but if anything I told them they were only helping build up the guy that would eventually try to take their business. Call it Cassandra’s curse if you will, but this is the state of the industry.
http://www.mrp-speed.com
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Geriatric Scooter Testing the NP50 trike 110cc SCOOTER
part 2
part 3
Car vs Scooter Why you should wear helmets
Josh Koeppel getiting hit by a car.
Another crazy crash.