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<\/p>\nI am a long-standing, card-carrying lover of Harley-Davidson. I have owned and ridden its bikes hundreds of thousands of kilometres, in an outlaw club no less, since before the marque became something dentists took their wives out on Sundays with.<\/p>\n
I defend the brand against the haters, and would happily park one in my garage tomorrow. The new FXDR is the best thing Milwaukee has ever built.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m seriously starting to wonder just what Milwaukee plans to do about its seemingly irrevocable sales-slide.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just happening in Australia, where Harley has posted its eighth (or is it ninth?) consecutive quarter of losses. This is happening in the Motherland. The share price is down, manufacturing facilities are being closed, the level of company debt is being questioned in the media, and I can only imagine what the board meetings must be like.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So how did it get to where it is? How did the undeniably coolest brand in the world, an icon \u2013 a brand people tattooed on their bodies FFS! suddenly start heading south?<\/p>\n
Well, it wasn\u2019t sudden. These things never are. And I believe it all started with the Harley Owners Group (HOG). That was the beginning of the downturn we\u2019re now seeing.<\/p>\n
At its peak, the HOG was a marketing department\u2019s wet-dream. Cashed-up boomers aching for a bit of outlaw glamour \u2013 because let\u2019s not forget, Harley would not have sold a lot of bikes if Hells Angels didn\u2019t ride them \u2013 would be gloriously feted by the factory at regular and very controlled events. They were a captive audience, just as keen to accessorise their new hog as they were to play dress-up and have parades. And they regularly bought new Harleys. And if you weren\u2019t in the HOG, you were automatically given membership when you bought a new Harley. The cash registers were in overdrive. Life was good at Milwaukee HQ.<\/p>\n
Surely H-D did not actually believe this would last forever?<\/p>\n
Well, it sure acted like it did.<\/p>\n
It kept producing bikes that spoke only to its traditional customer base \u2013 which was now essentially all the HOG, and totally ignored the changing world \u2013 which was changing faster than anyone could have imagined.<\/p>\n
The bike market started to slow down. Harley was not alone in feeling the pinch, but it got pinched the hardest because all of its eggs were in one aging basket \u2013 the HOG.<\/p>\n
The slow down, at least in Australia, was and is due to a few factors which combined to produce a perfectly nasty storm \u2013 stagnant wages growth, the massive safety brainwashing campaign, the feminisation of society, the expense and difficulty in getting a motorcycle licence (and the length of time spent on Ls and Ps) \u2013 and in Harley\u2019s case you could add the aging of its traditional buyer group and the demonisation and subsequent virtual disappearance of outlaw motorcycle clubs from public view.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, Harley\u2019s greatest un-uttered nightmare was made real.<\/p>\n
Those dowdy old fuddy-duddies of the HOG were now the poster boys for Harley.<\/p>\n
No longer was it the hard-bitten, relatively youthful, tattooed one percenter with the baking-hot girlfriend glued to his patched back, belting down the road in a welter of thunder and attitude, what someone pictured when someone pictured \u201cHarley-Davidson\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was now an \u201cold peoples\u2019 bike\u201d.<\/p>\n
As one tradie told me after he fixed my garage door and we got to talking about bikes because he saw the ones in my garage, he would never buy a Harley or want to ride one because it was \u201cAn old man\u2019s bike\u201d. His father rode a Harley.<\/p>\n
The outlaw image on which Harley carved its wonderous empire was over.<\/p>\n
Milwaukee, of course realised this. Maybe too late, but it is what it is, and what to do now? Stop building its traditional performance-compromised cruisers to an ever-aging demographic now on its last legs?<\/p>\n
It quickly rushed a small-capacity Indian-built 500 to market. It sold spectacularly well. And then it didn\u2019t \u2013 because it really wasn\u2019t very good.<\/p>\n
In Australia, it adopted a marketing scatter-gun approach \u2013 it started targeting hipsters \u2013 which are nothing other than a tiresome fashion statement and not people who buy new bikes. It produced computer mock-ups of future builds \u2013 adventure bikes and streetfighters. But people cannot buy CGIs. It promised to build a slew of all-new motorcycles in the next five years.<\/p>\n
It then hauled out its electric Livewire and took care to only invite the press which either depended upon it for advertising, or was venal enough to provide the gushing copy Milwaukee expected.<\/p>\n
The Livewire itself? Well, I rode it four years ago in Malaysia, and I\u2019m not convinced a $40,000 whizzing blanc-mange that won\u2019t do 200km on a charge is what\u2019s going to save its arse.<\/p>\n
No-one is.<\/p>\n
People don\u2019t yet want electric bikes. Only legislators want electric bikes.<\/p>\n
So what now? How does Harley get out of the corner it has painted itself into? How does it recapture its cool?<\/p>\n
Is it too big too fail?<\/p>\n
Ain\u2019t no such thing.<\/p>\n
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