Owner Motorsport Aftermarket Group (MAG) has announced that it is to close the J&P Cycles warehouse, sales, marketing and management complex at Anamosa, Iowa, with the loss of some 125 jobs.
Headquarters to the business started by John and Jill Parham some 30 years ago, the site has seen the company grow into one of the largest and most respected mail order motorcycle parts and accessory businesses in the world.
The warehouse function will re-locate to a 900,000 plus sq ft (85,000 sq m) former K-Mart facility at Louisville, Kentucky, with sales and administrative functions being split between the J&P store and call center at Daytona, Florida, and a new Motorsport Aftermarket Group head office in Texas where it will be co-located with front-office functions for Motorcycle Superstore, MAG's other, largely 'metric' internet and mail order business.
Ryan Polk, the President of J&P Cycles’ parent company MAG Retail, says that the company expects to continue shipping products from Anamosa through the end of January, with the Anamosa, Iowa location, including the showroom, closing entirely some time in 2016… “when our lease expires, we’ll stop operating in this building.”
Polk says that a changing business model has forced the changes. “The business has changed a lot in the last five years. The internet customer has different expectations than the traditional catalog customer. We have to adapt to those differences.”
He says that the worldwide UPS air hub in Louisville means a warehouse there will allow the company to ship its products to more of its customers, faster, than can be achieved from the Anamosa warehouse ever could. “We can cover 71 percent of our customers in one to two days from Louisville. For us to be a viable company, we have to change.”
In a statement issued to make it clear that these changes do not affect the National Motorcycle Museum at Anamosa, John Parham said: "While I know that improving customer service is important to hold a strong position in the market, and with the internet, people want everything now, it is painful to see the company that Jill and I built here in Anamosa move its headquarters.
"Having retired from the company a few years ago, we wish the employees and the leadership, including our son, Zach, who serves as Vice President/General Manager all the best, continued success and growth.
"The National Motorcycle Museum is an entirely separate corporation, completely separate from J&P Cycles, and there has never been an corporate management relationship between it and the Museum. These changes do not impact the Museum, which will remain open daily, year around. The Museum and J&P Cycles do promote each other in their respective marketing work, and with J&P Cycle's reach to over a million customers, it has been, and we trust will continue to be a helpful marketing partner for the Museum."
www.jpcycles.com