George
You are spot on about branding and selling the brand over the product. I got to know the people at Harley U.K. rather well and at that time I was running the Volvo dealer training centre in Daventry. I invited the Harley U.K. MD to be a guest speaker at our annual dealer conference and as they were based not far from Daventry he agreed.
He was a great speaker and gave a fascinating presentation. What stuck in many dealers minds was that at that time (early 90’s) the average accessory spend per unit sold for cars was around 3% (of the cars purchase price) but for the previous year the Harley U.K. figure was 10% with some dealers much higher. One wag amongst our dealers said ‘yes, that’s because you don’t finish the bikes!’ The Harley guy laughed and said ‘by design dear boy, by design’.... he went on to explain how it was company policy to leave everything you touch whilst sat on the bikes with an ‘upgrade’ option.
At the time I just just bought a Heritage Softail Classic for £12K and had close to £2K of accessories bolted to it so he was spot on.
I know ‘chrome don’t get you home’ but most of us fell for the hype and handed over the cash.
BR
Colin
