In the October 2025 issue of BDN, I wrote that the UK’s motorcycle retail model was no longer fit for purpose. My argument wasn’t aimed at any individual dealer. It was a broad observation that the industry was trying to operate in a fundamentally changed marketplace, while many businesses continued to rely on practices from a different era.
Sadly, recent events suggest that conversation is even more relevant today.
The difficulties surrounding Superbike Factory have generated plenty of discussion throughout the trade. Everyone has an opinion on what went wrong, but perhaps the more important question is this: have we actually learned anything?
From where I’m standing, we’ve seen this story play out before. A successful motorcycle business grows to a respectable size. It isn’t necessarily making huge profits, but it’s turning over impressive numbers. Those turnover figures attract the attention of venture capital or private equity investors, or the owners decide it’s the right time to sell. On paper, it looks like an attractive investment. The problem is that the motorcycle industry isn’t like most other retail sectors. High turnover doesn’t automatically translate into high profit. Margins on new motorcycles are relatively modest, and building a sustainable dealership requires far more than simply moving units.
Too often, investors appear to see a business generating impressive revenues and assume there’s significant profit waiting to be unlocked. The obvious solution, in their eyes, is to reduce costs, trim staffing levels and squeeze efficiencies. Yet history suggests that approach rarely delivers long-term success.
The motorcycle industry is built on something many spreadsheets struggle to measure: passion. Customers don’t simply buy a motorcycle. They buy advice, expertise, relationships and an experience. They return because they trust the people behind the counter as much as the products on the shelves.
One of the biggest mistakes we continue to make is believing we’re in the motorcycle business. We’re not. We’re in the rider business. Motorcycles are simply one of the products we sell to riders.
When we forget that, clothing becomes an inconvenience rather than an opportunity. Accessories become shelf fillers instead of profit centres. Aftersales becomes a necessity instead of a loyalty programme. We stop building relationships and start chasing transactions.
The most successful dealerships understand that every rider who walks through the door represents years of potential business, not just today’s motorcycle sale.
One area that often seems to suffer first is clothing and accessories. Time and again, we’ve seen dealerships reduce their clothing departments, viewing them as secondary to motorcycle sales. The thinking appears to be simple: free up floor space and concentrate on shifting metal. But if selling motorcycles alone was the route to substantial profits, surely the UK’s largest clothing specialists would all be selling bikes by now. Companies such as J&S Accessories and Infinity Motorcycles have built successful businesses around rider equipment, not because clothing is an afterthought, but because it provides consistent margins, repeat business and customer loyalty.
Another trend that deserves discussion is the increasing reliance on consignment stock. At first glance, it makes perfect commercial sense. Retailers can display a wide range of products without tying up working capital. Distributors retain ownership until the product is sold, reducing financial risk for the dealer.
But there is another side to that equation. When a business has no capital invested in stock, there is inevitably less urgency to sell it. Human nature plays a part. Products that have already been paid for demand attention because every day they sit on the shelf represents money tied up. Consignment stock doesn’t create the same pressure.
That doesn’t mean every dealer treats consignment stock this way, nor that the model itself is fundamentally flawed. Many retailers make it work extremely well. However, if a dealership becomes too dependent on stock that carries no financial commitment, it’s worth asking whether some of the incentive to retail those products actively is lost.
Perhaps the wider lesson is that there are no shortcuts in this industry. We’ve watched variations of this story unfold before, and every time the industry promises to learn from it. Maybe this time we actually should. Because if we don’t, we’ll be having exactly the same conversation again in another five years.
After more than three decades working in dealerships, parts, clothing, sales and distribution, I’ve come to believe that we’ve been asking ourselves the wrong question. We keep asking how we sell more motorcycles. Perhaps we should be asking how we create more riders. Because motorcycles introduce us to customers, everything else we do determines whether they become riders for life.
If we start thinking of ourselves as rider retailers rather than motorcycle retailers, we might finally stop repeating the mistakes of the past.
Paul Day,
UK territory sales and marketing representative, Klim Europe