Battlefield Harley Dealership Faces a Bright Future
Pennsylvania-based dealership’s new management team part of multi-pronged plan to attract new riders to the MoCo.
Evolution and adaptation are the two greatest keys to survival in changing environments. Harley-Davidson knows this first-hand, having to reinvent itself in the Eighties after AMF’s ownership in the Seventies nearly killed the company. The MoCo is reinventing itself today, as well, introducing electric motorcycles and other bikes in order to attract younger riders.
Harley dealers, too, have had to adapt to changing demographics and cultural shifts. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania newspaper Gettysburg Times has the story of one such dealership keeping up with the times, Gettysburg’s own Battlefield Harley.
Owned and operated by David and Pauline LeVan since 2000, David opened Battlefield Harley to put his management skills to use after retiring from the railroad industry. All was well through most of the dealer’s first decade, until the Great Recession swept “a lot of legs out from the business.” Only in 2012 was the LeVans’ business able to bounce back, helped by the “pent up demand” for new Harleys by those who no longer felt the spectre of the recession on their backs.
Six years later, though, a new challenge is approaching Battlefield Harley’s cannon: the aging-out of Harley-Davidson’s core riders. The LeVans are ready, though, having hired a new management team to bring in the younger demographic usually associated with killing everything from chain restaurants to paper napkins.
“You have to be in the gate or be left behind,” David told Gettysburg Times. “We hope we can share the joy we had with younger riders.”
A few of the ways the LeVans and their crew are able to “share the joy” of the MoCo include bike nights, open houses, biannual motorcycle safety courses, and offering rides on a Harley bolted onto a trailer, designed to give potential riders a feel for what Harleys are all about.
