I have been researching the Harley Davidson decline and the closing of the Kansas City Plant. What I see is not much different than the Sears CEO's strategy has been with turning around the decline of Sears and Kmart. All that has been accomplished is thousands of people losing their jobs and things like the iconic "made in America" Craftsman line being all but gone. Sears is down to a few small stores in each town and the Craftsman line mostly being sold in places like Kmart's and Ace hardware stores.

Best Buy with changes like people going form buying CD's to downloading music and the fact that a large number of vehicles now are coming with nice car stereo systems/touch screens there is no longer the large number of people spending hundreds of dollars in having car stereo's, woofers and amplifiers installed. Best Buy had to change some of the structure of their stores to replace and adapt to the lost income and keep them from ending up like Circuit City.

I had a high school teacher that always would say that you never forget to learn from History.

Harley Davidson can either end up like Sears and Circuit City (my and most Harley Davidson owners view were they are headed) or like Best Buy adjust to the changes of the market and find new ways to bring in sales.

I can get a design/engineer team together in one week that can turn the sales decline around, save the Kansas City plant, come up with a new retro line (like the Mustangs and Challengers), fix existing flaws in some current non-selling models and come up with several high selling new special edition motorcycles.

I have owned everything from mopeds, go-carts, mini bikes, dirt bikes, enduros, crotch rockets and Harley Davidson's. I have also sold cars and I know the dealership aspect.

I took marketing in high school and I have a plan for that and a documentary "on the turn around of an American Legend" and I can probably get some Rock Stars involved.

I am offering Harley Davidson the opportunity to be in the news for saving the Job's at the KC Plant (and their suppliers, etc.), Raising the flags high up with pride in being "Made In America" and be what they once were a pride of the American people.
The other choice they have is to continue down their current path and be in the news like Sears and Kmart with yearly store closing list's and everyone in the country discussing "what they used to like", I have researched several dealerships crowds lately and there are a large number of people like myself buying a used "classic" Harley Davidson before they are all gone before what most people think is the end of the iconic brand.

 

A good chunk of KC plant real estate was taken up by the V-Rod. Which was an attempt to branch out from the V-Twin formula.

 

Did you send this to Harley or do you expect them to come here and read it?

 

 

 

I expect someone from Harley Davidson to hear about this and see the possibilities of being in the news as hero's for saving jobs, saving a iconic American brand and making a hell of a lot of money or wither off like Sears. The way they are headed now us Harley Davidson motorcycle owners will be hanging around for years talking about what it used to be like and Harley Davidson be in the news every year with new store closing list's.
They can be gone as easy as Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Mercury to list a few.

 

Harley has been on self-destruct since ***** quit.
They keep wanting to sell the same product orchestrated by old farts to old to buy.
The old guys that never bought into Harley in their youth,
but wish they had have made Harley survive up to now.
How?
The bucket list geezers finally retired went out and bought a slew of twinkies.
No one is going to buy the M8 in large numbers even if it was a great product. Which it is not.

 

 

 

I don't think you'll get a reply.

People keep talking about what Harley has to do to fix things. Endless debates over what bikes they should make or shouldn't make. The world has changed. People aren't as interested in buying & riding motorcycles today like they were in decades past. Ridership is in decline. Harley as a company grew when ridership and demand for their bikes grew. They can't grow forever. It is smart on their part to downsize. If they can operate more efficiently and profitably by running things out of one less plant, then that's what they should do. They obviously recognize the number of bikes they're going to sell is declining, and they are acting accordingly. If the world changes and the demand for bikes comes back, they can respond to meet that need.

There is nothing that convinces me that there is a market for motorcycles that presently don't exist, and that if HD would just make bikes like that, sales would increase by the tens of thousands needed to justify keeping another plant open.

Motorcycles aren't high up (or even on) peoples' lists of things they want to acquire in life, not like they were for prior generations. Change that thinking, and then you'll be on to something.