More Bikes, More Craftsmanship, More People, More Fun, More Opportunity for More SalesWith the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building being staged at the Cologne Exhibition Center in Germany (Koelnmesse) at the start of October, the focus here at AMD-Land has, inevitably, been on the final preparations and details to make the experience a memorable one for our competitors.
Doing so was one of the many “hallmarks of difference” that we sought to build into the ‘AMD’ from the start, over a decade ago, as an antidote to the scant regard in which most custom bike competition organizers appeared to hold their competitor community.
With the World Championship it has always been the opposite. The competitors who invest so heavily in being a part of the World Championship are the heroes of process as far as we are concerned, and we always do as much as we can to ensure that their investment in being with us for a week and, in some cases, in travelling many thousands of miles, not just internationally but between continents often, is something that they feel “warm and fuzzy” about making.
It is a matter of great pride, therefore, that this year we will see the reigning World Champion - Suicide Customs - traveling all the way from Japan again to defend the title, and that we are seeing so many, and so many old friends, returning to enjoy everything that the ‘AMD’ and the Hall 10 INTERMOT Customized show-within-show concept has to offer.
‘critical mass design and engineering showcase’
In addition to near record numbers of bikes competing this year (certainly the highest number since 2004), and a record number of exhibitors buying a record square footage at INTERMOT ‘Customized’, we will almost certainly see a record visitor attendance too this year as the public days are extended from four to five to incorporate the German National Holiday on 3rd October.
As it is, the attendance previously seen at INTERMOT Customized already makes it the best attended indoor expo style custom show the world has ever seen, with some 150,000 high mileage riders enjoying the custom bikes and meeting the exhibitors.
As this edition of AMD Magazine went to press, it looked like we will be hosting around 95 bikes, being entered by around 65 builders from something like 30 different countries, which of itself is a record as far as we can tell.
The synergy between the bikes and a classic custom expo formula has always been a compelling one, and has always been something of a holy grail for the custom motorcycle industry. The organizers of INTERMOT (Koelnmesse) do a great job of packing as many features as possible into all aspects, including Hall 10, and the ‘AMD’ may be the headline news for custom enthusiasts, but it is far from the only good reason to visit INTERMOT Customized.
However, the overriding mission that we have always had with the World Championship has been to be able to create a forum, a nexus, where the greatest possible number of vendors (motorcycle manufacturers, parts and accessory manufacturers and distributors), dealers (authorized and independent custom shops), builders and, most importantly, potential customers, are able to see the custom riding options in an environment that does it justice, both in visual and attendance terms, and that is what INTERMOT Customized now represents.
It is a design and engineering showcase for the creativity, innovation and craftsmanship that our industry has always offered. Qualities that for too long have been perceived to be on the fringes of the wider motorcycling and PTW (Powered-Two-Wheeler) market, something that has been niche rather than mainstream.
Well, as we head towards the third decade of the 21st century with millions of potential new consumers emerging as savvy consumers who value quality and experience, the opportunity that a project such as the ‘AMD’ and INTERMOT Customized represents, is a concept whose time has clearly come.
It is a project that has the market’s ‘Zeitgeist’ firmly in its cross hairs. At last it is a project that offers the custom motorcycle industry, and those who would like to engage with it, exactly the kind of platform that has always been needed - a convincing and genuinely global international headquarters event.
One for a market that, within a decade of now, will see some 50 percent of all new Harley and Indian motorcycle sales happening outside the USA, and a market where traditional custom brands such as Harley and Indian will only be a part of the story.
A market where, sadly, Boomers like me are (one way or another) no longer fuelling the market’s spend. Instead, the money in the market will be spent by generations of consumers for whom the world without the internet, social media and digital wallet will be as alien as peak Detroit was to the horse and buggy drivers of the nineteenth century.
Most of the generation reading this are witness to societal and commercial changes the like of which have not been seen in their lifetimes before. Sure, there has always been change, there always needs to be, but what we are part way through now is seismic.
The old orthodoxies are no longer valid. The status quo of what and how the custom motorcycle industry has gone about its selling is a footnote in the ever-evolving story.
The new ways of being reached and sold to that characterize the emerging consumer base may look and feel entirely different, but the differences are superficial - the fundamentals remain as valid as they ever have been.
People still want to be enthused and motivated by great ideas and opportunities, and in our own humble little backwater of the bigger picture that is global capitalism, we are seeing those fundamentals re-establish themselves. Those fundamentals may look, taste and smell different, but in our case, they are still motorcycles. People will still want to personalize them, enjoy them and spend money on doing so.
By the time you are reading this, more people will have been doing so by crowding through the aisles of the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building and INTERMOT Customized at Cologne, Germany, than has ever been the case at any indoor custom motorcycle expo anywhere before!