MV Agusta has promoted Mark Franklin to sales director Europe just 15 months after he joined the Italian manufacturer as UK country manager.
Franklin has built up the UK network to 16 dealers and registrations have rocketed from about 90 to a projected 650 this year.
The UK connection will continue for at least a year, however. A delighted Franklin told BDN: “I’ve asked them if I can retain the UK for at least the next year. At some point I will appoint someone to take over from me but I think it is too soon to have so much change.
“Part of my job was to bring stability to the brand and stop the constant to’ing and fro’ing between importers and distributing directly. I am just getting to know the dealers and we are just starting to build a relationship together and if I just went, ‘here’s somebody new’, everybody would go, ‘Ah, right OK, why is that then’ and it would be back to square one.
“I think we need stability. If I’m comfortable with that in a year’s time then hopefully we can gradually phase somebody else in. To help me with that, MV has given me a budget for two extra area sales managers, hence the advert in BDN.”
Of his track record in the UK, Franklin continued: “We have seen obviously a reasonably good turnaround. We have now got 16 dealers but we still need another 16 to complete the network plan that I gave the company a year ago. There are still open areas we need to work on.
“We are now the fourth biggest market in the world for MV. You have to bear in mind we are a niche brand so the numbers are not staggering, but for MV it’s a reasonable size business and the company is very happy. We have gone from selling 90 bikes a year ago to a projected total of 650 for this year so the increase has been pretty big.
“Although the job is not done, MV is quite happy with the route I am going in and I have been helping anyway with some of the other strategies and markets and things so I guess the company thought my appointment was the right thing to do.”
Franklin will be living and working in Milan but will spend about 10 days a month in the UK to keep the continuity going.
In his new role he will be in charge of all of MV’s direct markets – countries where MV has a subsidiary. This excludes the smaller markets where it has importers.
The key, as he sees it, is to build up the retail side. “If you fix the network you fix everything. We have suffered with a very poor network in the past and that’s partly the company’s fault, the strategy previously, and partly because we were just in the wrong places.
“The job really is to go out into each of these countries and do what we have done in the UK. Assess what we have, keep what’s good, keep the people who want to work with us and can see what’s going to happen with MV in the future and part company with those who haven’t got the vision.
“I know I work with the company so I am obviously biased but when you look at what AMG has done already with us and the plans, which I can’t reveal, for greater involvement from AMG over the next few years, it’s a bit of a no-brainer to get in early before things get really serious.”