Which Buell is your favourite?

I really do love them all and I'm proud of them all. The 1125R is a great bike that we have big hopes for, the Ulysses is doing great. We want to have the best handling bikes in the world. We build an athletic bike. It doesn't have the most power, but there's only ever one winner in that competition.

2008 Buell 1125R

With a relatively small model range, how have you avoided being overshadowed by Harley-Davidson?

Well, in some ways, we are. But our customers are so different that we're never competing with them in any way. On one hand, we're not the most important part of the jobs of people [at Harley-Davidson], but on the other hand we have access to a tremendous range of skill sets that, as a small company, we wouldn't be able to have otherwise.

So even if you only get 5% of somebody's time, if they're brilliant at marketing or all the different things you need to run a business together, you can get their best effort in a very short period of time. If you had to go outside and hire them, you couldn't afford them. And if you had to do it on a contract basis, they wouldn't be as committed.

For all the dealers that carry both brands, how do you manage things like floor space allocation?

There's definitely competition. But the good news is, they're usually large dealerships. A small piece of their showroom is still more than we'd have with an independent dealer if they only sold Buells.

Like with any dealer network, we have stronger dealers and weaker dealers. Our strong dealers are fantastic - they're the best, better than anybody. One of the nice things about the Harley-Davidson organization is that they know that it's so much about the customer experience, it's not about just selling a product.

Even though these customers are different and the experience they want is different, it's still a lot easier to get a guy to say, "This customer is different, he has different likes." It's easier than talking to a commodity salesman who's selling two or three or four of the major import brands. For them, it's all about which bike is on sale this week or which manufacturer is giving me a deal this week. That's what motivates competition among the brands.

We don't have that, so overall I think our dealer network is a cut above. The worst of our dealers are not as good as the best of our dealers, but they're not as bad as the worst of the other guys.

With all the news on emissions recently, do you think motorcycle manufacturers are doing enough to promote their more environmentally-friendly form of transportation?

There should be a growing need for motorcycles. They don't use a lot of fuel, they don't use as much space, they require fewer resources to build. Motorcycle manufacturers don't want to be perceived as being too practical, otherwise bikes won't be seen as cool. But they do make a lot of sense for a lot of people...


Photo Credit : Buell