Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Dealer Down - Closeouts

My local dealer, Shoreline Motorsports in Racine Wisconsin is dropping Triumph, seems their business model just isn't friendly to smaller dealers. All Triumph clothing and accessories are 50% off if you are looking for any factory bits. Really a shame, he was one of the first Triumph dealers in this region, I've bought all 3 of my Triumph's from him. You can email Ken at info@shorelinemotorsports.com to check on availability.

His reason for dropping them were many but I thought some were really surprising:

Triumph ships Clothing to the dealers whether they need/want any more or not, it's the dealer's problem to sell them. Additionally, the factory has started selling clothing through outlets at discounts at or below what the dealer had to pay for the same item.

They ship bikes without regard to stock and what models/colors they already have, this was a small dealer with limited floor space, had over 60 new Triumphs still in stock at the end of summer and Triumph was going to ship him another 60 even though it's heading into winter.


The straw that broke the back was them forcing a store display redesign even though he just bought a display from them 2 years ago

It's hard to understand how a business model like this survives. I never did understand how small ownerships are a detriment to corp. Wouldn't you rather have ten dealerships selling 10 bikes across a wide area over one dealership selling 100 bikes in a smaller area. Brings to mind that GM did the same thing a few years back. Very nearly broke a very good, small dealership just up the road. I guess that's why they're the "big guys", cause they're so much smarter than the rest of us buying public.

Dealers are franchises. Franchisors (in this case Triumph) expect franchisees to jump through lots of hoops, and spend lots of money,to get and keep their franchises. They are always coming up with new rules and requirements for franchisees. The people who make these decisions have no financial interest in the franchise, often no experience actually running a small business and are usually isolated from the effects of their decisions.

An acquaintance of mine is a partner in several McDonalds franchises. McDonalds, the franchisor, makes almost all of the actual decisions that affect his business. What they will sell, what equipment they will buy, what their hours will be, when to remodel, what contractors they will use and many others as well. But, the partners take 100% of the business risk.

Franchisors are rather like the government. They take their share of revenue off the top regardless of the bottom line. They want to make all the important decisions while taking none of the risk. Very few of their employees have ever actually run a franchise and if the franchise goes belly up they get to keep their job. They often make decisions they would never make if they, the franchisor, had to actually pay for them rather than passing the cost on to the franchisee.

Is it any wonder some decide to pack it in?

I hear this stuff from several dealers. If you are forcing bikes on your dealers they don't need that means sales are way off. If sales were good many busy dealers would be ringing Georgia's phones off the hook to get more bikes.

To be honest I really don't see Triumph that much anymore. It just seems like there are less of them.

What was the kicker in all of this was that while they were pushing bikes on the dealer (channel stuffing), they've opened up several new dealers in the same region...

As a private corporation we don't really know how many bikes they make. For 2014 we don't know if they made 50,000 or 25,000 bikes.

They could be stuffing those channels to keep production in Thailand up and running. There may be a minimum they have to move for the plants not to fall into the red.

I think for 2013 Triumph posted a loss.