Ash wrote:
Will winning breed success for Buell Motorcycle Co.?
http://www.jsonline.com/business/59803327.htmlJust read that article.
Quote:
Buell shipped 13,119 motorcycles in 2008, compared with 303,479 shipped by Harley. The company had $123 million in sales, compared with $4.3 billion for Harley.
Buell Motorcycle Co. is almost small enough to be a "rounding error" on Harley's income statements, according to analysts.
At times, Erik Buell said, he has worried that the company might be too small to survive.
"Especially in this economy, I do worry about it," he said. "Who knows if the brand will survive? But if the philosophy of what we have done survives, then the brand could be absorbed and called Harley-Davidson and it wouldn't matter."
There are several reasons why Buell Motorcycle Co. has remained a small company.
First, Harley-Davidson kept Buell out of top-level racing until just this year when the 1125R was made available to the Geico Powersports race team.
Not racing at the premiere-class level was a mistake, Erik Buell said, since success at the track could have generated bike sales.
"We were turning up our noses at aspiring racers, and it actually angered a lot of people," he said.
Second, Buell motorcycles are sold at Harley dealerships. It's not the place where many sport bike riders hang out, and the dealerships haven't always put much effort into selling Buell bikes.
"If we had been winning races and championships, the dealers might have felt differently about it," Buell said.
Some "hmmm..." moments in that lot, eh.
Aside from "it wouldn't matter" (it fecking would to me!), is this signs of Erik raging against the machine? We know how he must have felt, racer boy being strangled and kept away from the track but he now seems to be saying it out loud.
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