January 2016 to most cold-weather dealers. I thought this was an interesting article on the current state of sales.


http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowat...rrons&ru=yahoo

 

I work in the auto manufacturing industry for various OEM's and the decrease in sales from Harley is nothing like the swings we see in the auto industry.

Especially given that Harley now has a little competition in their target market. That competition will be a good thing for everyone I think.

Seriously doubt that the slight decrease your seeing in sales is the beginning of the death spiral at Harley that the sky is falling crowd is spouting.

 

No surprise at all. They cut inventory last year as well and just never picked up the sales slack. It's just dropped more. And they think dumping more money into marketing is gonna help. HA!

 

In business, there is an old saying: "When you are having a bad year, just sell your way through it".

 

True, but even the most non-motorcyclist knows who Harley is. There is no one better at marketing so to me it's pissing up a rope for them.

 

But is the increase in marketing they are referring to meaning more advertisement to a wider based market? Such as what the auto industry does? You see vehicle commercials everywhere and with Harley not so much.

 

This is nothing new ... Harley does this almost every year ... but they over compensate for it by over shipping to warm weather dealers. They choke them out in the winter then pick back up with the cold weather dealers in the spring. I used to work for a Calif. dealership and we would almost run out of storage space in the winter, then bleed the stock off later. And there is no choice in the matter. Either take in the excess or lower your quota.

 

Each of you are confusing advertising with marketing.
Advertising leads to public awareness of a company or product.
Marketing is much broader based and involves pushing or pulling demand for a product.

When a company the size of Harley discusses increases in marketing, it is likely they are talking about dealer and consumer incentives. As examples: wholesale incentives to persuade dealers to take more product and protect production, sales incentives and dealer stair-step payments to incentivize dealers pushing sales, retail and end-consumer incentives that could increase their support of low APR consumer loans, etc.

The tightwire Harley is walking is finding a way to incentivize and drive sales without detrimentally effecting the brand image and also protecting their famous/infamous new product mark-up.

Advertising is easy to do and hard to measure.
Marketing is much more complicated and needs to drive tangible and measurable results.

 

My local dealer still has 55 2015's in inventory.

 

Thanks for the clarification.