The 17-outlet strong Chicago-based Windy City/Fox Motorsports dealership group says it saw record unit sales in July and a third straight quarter of growth in 2020 Q2. With 14 of its stores being H-D franchises, Windy/Fox has become a market bellwether since it was founded in year over year growth in Q2 of 2020 by Ozzie and Jill Giglio. The company says that over the last 20 years it has introduced over 100,000 motorcycles into the Greater Chicago area market through its Brick and Mortar outlets and UsedMotorcycleStore.com - which claims to be "the largest used motorcycle marketplace in the U.S."
We here at AMD Magazine were saddened to hear of the death of Neale Brumby, 63-year old owner of Australian custom magazine Heavy Duty - "illness may take the man, but not his achievements."
The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) in USA has recorded less than 41,000 motorcycle thefts in 2019 - maintaining an overall downward trend that has seen motorcycle thefts fall by -12% since 2016 (46,467). Most thefts happen in the warmest states and in the warmest months. The most stolen brands were Honda (8,122), Yamaha (6,495), Harley-Davidson (4,737), Suzuki (4,686) and Kawasaki (4,641). Of the thefts in 2019, 18,857 (46%) were recovered. Most occurred in August (4,642) and the fewest in February (1,972).
Owner Babcox Media has announced that its B2B title Motorcycle & Powersports News will no longer be appearing as a print magazine - opting instead for the even more precarious life of being a digital only information service. Originally known as Motorcycle Product News, MPN was founded in 1974 and had a name change in an attempt to broaden its market in 2011.
SEMA has announced that its eMarketplace online 'show' solution will be staged from November 2-6. With INTERMOT and other expo organizers (trade and consumer) also trialing 'virtual' gatherings of one kind or another, there is widespread exhibition industry concern that any expectation that the "shows of old" will automatically re-emerge in a vaccinated post-pandemic world are naive. Not all change is good, but it is mostly inevitable and irresistible.
Tucker Powersports has introduced a new real-time stock check site for its dealers - stock.tucker.com. Product availability can be searched by Tucker part number, vendor part numbers and, eventually, many OEM equivalent part numbers where there is such a product. The search results will display picture, description, MSRP, substitutes, catalog page link, which of the five warehouses has how many of the required item in stock and an 'Order It' tool function.
Having celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019, it would appear that the much vaunted acquisition and relaunch of Easyriders Magazine in the hands of "brandmaker" Pepper Foster (co-founder of the Chip and Pepper fashion label) has failed after its first edition. The new owner had promised repositioning, improved quality, a brave new dawn, blah, blah. A second edition has failed to appear, and the reports we here at AMD are reading suggest the project is as dead as a battery on a bad day. It was quite apparent that the reboot would kick itself up its own ass as it was aiming for a confused and confusing matrix of demographics. Rather than leveraging the heritage that made it the icon it was, Foster's game-plan was to jettison its pedigree in chase of a rich vein of dollars that just doesn't exist. But one edition? Is that a record fail?
Sources: AMD, IDN, FT, Reuters, PSB, MPN, B&B, BDN, MCN, AP, Bloomberg, MSNW, Electrek, electricmotorcycles.news, RideApart.com, Motor1.com