Lack of Manufacturing = Scooter Shops out of Business?!!

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sunshinen
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Lack of Manufacturing = Scooter Shops out of Business?!!

Post by sunshinen »

A small Genuine dealer closed it's doors. =(

Here's the posted reason:
Unfortunately, the gas crisis we are currently experiencing created an increased global demand for scooters. So much that all of my 9 brand distributors/manufactures were unable to provide products in a reasonable period. With promises of fresh inventory available in July or mid-August, we had already sold out our current inventory. As you know, one cannot run a business on a promise.

Our closure came with a heavy heart and lots of reservation but, simply the supply chain failed and we would be unable to continue operating without a steady supply of inventory. It saddens me that in a boom economy and being a early adaptor of the scooter boutique store front we were unable to capitalize on this most recent spike in demand!

Our intentions were always to be the premier provider of scooters and related products to our customers by providing a friendly environment to enjoy each other's company. Thank you for making our dreams a reality if only for a short time.

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Post by jfrost2 »

I think it's more like lack of imports. Genuine a month or two ago had a "crisis" where they had no bikes in their factory at all, all were sold to dealers, and dealers sold them to customers. Then genuine kicked up the amount they import, and so far, bikes are slowly appearing in shops again, but still flying out the door many times before the bike even touches dealer grounds.
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Post by ericalm »

Sucks to hear about this.

It's not just Genuine, as the letter says. My local dealer can't keep anything in stock—Genuine, Kymco, SYM, used scooters. Honda sold out of all scooters for 2008 months ago. Older dealers should be able to weather the storm because they're selling twice as much as last year and will be making much more in repairs and service work. Unfortunately, with accessories in short supply (even some Givi topcases are pretty rare these days, I hear), some of their best markup items aren't available.

For those able to stick with it and make it to next year, their business will be off the charts come next spring.
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Confused

Post by SDG »

This is sad, surely a family business full of hard working folks however what I do not understand is why no staying power?

If you have an annual expected sales performa and you achieve it by selling out by say July why don't those profits (actually a years worth) sustain the business with cashflow until December?

The reward for selling more units in 7 months should not be going out of business, where did the profits go? This is a sincere question, I just struggle with this obviously. Farmers work their fields what 6 months a year, take their harvest to market and they go fishing for a few months, why not business's that sell a years worth of product in 7 months?

Am I missing a factor here?

SDG
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Post by runtotorun121 »

I don't understand.

Let's say it was before the "scooter boom". Some dealers might order 20 (insert you own number here) scooters and plan on/be lucky to sell them over a course of several or many months. I would assume their initial order was what they thought would do them (i.e. what they would be able to potentially move), and if that is the case then they have just as much money now as they would have had when they sold them all sans scooter boom in six or nine months.

Does that make sense? I would think that the ordering of 'extras' must have been an unexpected surprise and now crisis, but I don't understand how their business plan is less financially stable now than at the beginning of the year when they thought it might be a 20 scooter season. . . :?:

A shop here has has a steady trickle of at least Genuine scooters, from what I have seen. Maybe they could have sold even more if they came in, but they have taken down-payments for advance orders, so I would think they are still making money.

Anyone have a better idea of why a shop should be going out of business?
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Post by Racenut »

Contrast...

Go to a Ford or Chevy dealer and look at the trucks and SUV's they have on the lot.


Go to scooter dealer and look at.... well.. nothing.
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Re: Confused

Post by ericalm »

SDG wrote:This is sad, surely a family business full of hard working folks however what I do not understand is why no staying power?

If you have an annual expected sales performa and you achieve it by selling out by say July why don't those profits (actually a years worth) sustain the business with cashflow until December?

The reward for selling more units in 7 months should not be going out of business, where did the profits go? This is a sincere question, I just struggle with this obviously. Farmers work their fields what 6 months a year, take their harvest to market and they go fishing for a few months, why not business's that sell a years worth of product in 7 months?

Am I missing a factor here?
No and those questions occurred to me as well…
It's possible (likely) they didn't order enough scooters, sold their inventory quickly and then were unable to replenish their stock because they didn't anticipate that all the manufacturers would have nothing to ship. They may have only had modest sales increases, if any, before running out. So they many not have actually sold more units.

Who knows? Maybe they were paying too much in rent, took out huge loans, or were in some other financial mess. I actually launched a successful business once that went under because I didn't have enough capital to meet a sudden surge in demand. Not necessarily the case here but I can see how success can sometimes be the death of you, especially when faced with a boom that no one was prepared for.
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Post by sunshinen »

It was a rather small shop (in terms of space for display, storage, and garage), so I suspect they could only order a few scooters at a time.

For those whose business model is to avoid buying more than they can store/sell and order additional scooters as they move inventory, this would be a hard market. When dealers can't get more scooters in, it's not just that they can't get extras to meet higher demand, some can't even get their usual numbers. So the bigger shops that stock up and store more inventory win. The smaller shops that either don't have the space or the cash to do that lose.

Edited to add:
For example, lets say what you have on your showroom floor is all you have room for. You plan to buy and sell 5 Buddies a month. You get your Buddies for April and sell them in 2 weeks. Happily, you go to order more. But are told not only that you can't capitalize and get extras, you can only get 3 for May. You sell all three before they come in. Then you're told you can't get any more scooters till August. If your overhead isn't sufficient to carry you through June and July -- what SHOULD be your best months of the year, where you make up for the long winter, you're screwed.

A shop that has plenty of room to store scooters, on the other hand, may buy 20 Buddies, expecting them to last 3 months. So if they sell them sooner, they still have the expected income for that period. They can't capitalize on the boom, but they at least have their normal income.
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Post by Pete1ks »

I can attest to this being accurate.

I live in KC, and no scooter dealer within 3-hours drive has any Genuine scooters over 50cc in stock.

I ended up getting a Pamplona, and had to haul it a couple hundred miles.

Worth it.
kazoo

Post by kazoo »

Amazing what a year and five months will do:

Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 4:11 pm

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Post by Elm Creek Smith »

We just had a new scooter shop open in Tulsa. It's an "Authorized SunL Dealer" called "Affordable Scooters."

I can't wait to see how long it is before they start having to deal with what they sell. One of my co-workers had one that she couldn't get ANYONE to work on. Finally a shop told her, "We'll try to get it running," and did! She sold it for $200.00 because none of the lights would work.

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Post by SDG »

sunshinen wrote:It was a rather small shop (in terms of space for display, storage, and garage), so I suspect they could only order a few scooters at a time.

For those whose business model is to avoid buying more than they can store/sell and order additional scooters as they move inventory, this would be a hard market. When dealers can't get more scooters in, it's not just that they can't get extras to meet higher demand, some can't even get their usual numbers. So the bigger shops that stock up and store more inventory win. The smaller shops that either don't have the space or the cash to do that lose.

Edited to add:
For example, lets say what you have on your showroom floor is all you have room for. You plan to buy and sell 5 Buddies a month. You get your Buddies for April and sell them in 2 weeks. Happily, you go to order more. But are told not only that you can't capitalize and get extras, you can only get 3 for May. You sell all three before they come in. Then you're told you can't get any more scooters till August. If your overhead isn't sufficient to carry you through June and July -- what SHOULD be your best months of the year, where you make up for the long winter, you're screwed.

A shop that has plenty of room to store scooters, on the other hand, may buy 20 Buddies, expecting them to last 3 months. So if they sell them sooner, they still have the expected income for that period. They can't capitalize on the boom, but they at least have their normal income.
+1

This would be the part I believe I was missing. Makes perfect sense.

Best,
SDG
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Post by runtotorun121 »

Pete1ks wrote:I can attest to this being accurate.

I live in KC, and no scooter dealer within 3-hours drive has any Genuine scooters over 50cc in stock.

I ended up getting a Pamplona, and had to haul it a couple hundred miles.

Worth it.
Might want to recheck this. . .I am pretty sure there is a dealer here who has had Genuine products all season long on their floors (over 50cc). They just aren't one of the big dealers.
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kazoo

Post by kazoo »

Okay, so I want to know how much they were making on the sale of the scooters back then? Do they pay up front the full amount for the scooters? Did they plan on selling x amount of scooters a month to meet meet the fixed operating costs?

If they're not making "anything" on the sale of scooters then it must be from maintenance and accessories. Of course this would be a huge problem if you don't have a reputation because you just opened up and have sold only 2 scooters.

SDG wrote:
sunshinen wrote:It was a rather small shop (in terms of space for display, storage, and garage), so I suspect they could only order a few scooters at a time.

For those whose business model is to avoid buying more than they can store/sell and order additional scooters as they move inventory, this would be a hard market. When dealers can't get more scooters in, it's not just that they can't get extras to meet higher demand, some can't even get their usual numbers. So the bigger shops that stock up and store more inventory win. The smaller shops that either don't have the space or the cash to do that lose.

Edited to add:
For example, lets say what you have on your showroom floor is all you have room for. You plan to buy and sell 5 Buddies a month. You get your Buddies for April and sell them in 2 weeks. Happily, you go to order more. But are told not only that you can't capitalize and get extras, you can only get 3 for May. You sell all three before they come in. Then you're told you can't get any more scooters till August. If your overhead isn't sufficient to carry you through June and July -- what SHOULD be your best months of the year, where you make up for the long winter, you're screwed.

A shop that has plenty of room to store scooters, on the other hand, may buy 20 Buddies, expecting them to last 3 months. So if they sell them sooner, they still have the expected income for that period. They can't capitalize on the boom, but they at least have their normal income.
+1

This would be the part I believe I was missing. Makes perfect sense.

Best,
SDG
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Post by illnoise »

I feel bad for them, but there are a lot of questions. Were they new? Did they really have enough capital? Did they plan well? If they couldn't stay in business through a two-months shortage (that followed a HUGE sales bonanza), how were they going to make it through a winter after a slow year?

I don't know how ANY scooter dealer stays in business, dealers only make a few hundred bucks on each scooter they sell, so service and accessories must be the answer. If they sold a lot of bikes, they should be raking in money doing oil changes and selling topboxes.

It's a tough industry, even in good times. Genuine took orders at the end of last year and everyone underestimated their orders, that's not really Genuine's fault, it's the dealers. Sure, the dealers were being conservative, which is smart most of the time, but you can't blame Genuine for NOT importing thousands of bikes that dealers didn't order, just in case.

Dealers that ordered a lot of bikes got more. Older dealers got more. newer and smaller dealers maybe got shut out a bit, but that's how it works.

Kymco REALLY dropped the ball this year by not taking pre-orders until it was too late, it'll be hard for them to ever recover. Genuine handled things pretty well, all things considered.
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Post by ericalm »

kazoo wrote:Did they plan on selling x amount of scooters a month to meet meet the fixed operating costs?
I'm sure they did. I'm sure all dealers do. And they rely on their spring and summer sales to carry them through the lean months of fall and winter.
So what happens when a dealer sells everything they possibly can—all of their inventory—in May and then can't get their hands on more stock until October, when sales seasonally drop off? They could try to scrape by on maintenance and accessories, but there are no accessories to be sold (much like scooters) and they haven't been selling scooters for much of the summer so there will be far fewer coming in for routine maintenance.
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Post by pcbikedude »

illnoise wrote:Kymco REALLY dropped the ball this year by not taking pre-orders until it was too late, it'll be hard for them to ever recover. Genuine handled things pretty well, all things considered.
However, I have seen some '09 Kymco's on the showroom floor already. Some of those have already sold. Genuine has not even announced their '09 lineup. None of the manufacturers will have any significant amount of bikes on the showrooms until late October. So those scooter shops without significant accessories or limited service bays are probably go under.

If I were the owners, I would consider adding brands. Even overlapping brands.
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Post by ericalm »

pcbikedude wrote:If I were the owners, I would consider adding brands. Even overlapping brands.
The shop that went under had 9! I can't think of 9 brands I'd want to sell in a shop (and also have to service).

Genuine had previously stated their '09 models would hit the dealers in the fall. I have to wonder if this is still the case. Either way, there are no changes to its bread & butter, the Buddy.
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Post by hcstrider »

illnoise wrote:I feel bad for them, but there are a lot of questions. Were they new? Did they really have enough capital? Did they plan well? If they couldn't stay in business through a two-months shortage (that followed a HUGE sales bonanza), how were they going to make it through a winter after a slow year?

I don't know how ANY scooter dealer stays in business, dealers only make a few hundred bucks on each scooter they sell, so service and accessories must be the answer. If they sold a lot of bikes, they should be raking in money doing oil changes and selling topboxes.

It's a tough industry, even in good times. Genuine took orders at the end of last year and everyone underestimated their orders, that's not really Genuine's fault, it's the dealers. Sure, the dealers were being conservative, which is smart most of the time, but you can't blame Genuine for NOT importing thousands of bikes that dealers didn't order, just in case.

Dealers that ordered a lot of bikes got more. Older dealers got more. newer and smaller dealers maybe got shut out a bit, but that's how it works.

Kymco REALLY dropped the ball this year by not taking pre-orders until it was too late, it'll be hard for them to ever recover. Genuine handled things pretty well, all things considered.
In talking with my dealer it sounded like Genuine changed their business model in 2008. The dealer said that in previous years the dealer could order a low volume of scooters at the beginning of the model year and then as the dealer sold their scooters the dealer could replenish their inventory on a weekly/monthly basis by ordering more scooters from Genuine. It sounds like prior to 2008 Genuine was acting like a huge warehouse for all of the scooter dealers.

It sounds like in 2008 Genuine changed their business model and asked each of the dealers to pre-order all of the scooters that they would need for the entire year. In this business model the dealers had to be pretty good at guessing how many scooters they would sell during the entire year. Since my dealer is a small family owned business, they only ordered the number of scooters that they were pretty sure that they could sell for the entire year. These orders were placed in January/February 2008, before the gasoline price increases and scooter boom took place. The result was that my dealer sold all of their Buddys and Stellas and did not have a good option for replenishing their inventory.
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Post by BigColdMartini »

Now that we the sheeple have been conditioned into thinking $3.50 a gallon is a bargain, will the scooter boom go bust?

I know I'll get flamed for this but I think gas should be $5 a gallon or more. Just look at how fast behaviours changed and people started thinking green over the last 6 months compared to the last 30 years. Of course, I know that means higher prices for food, etc. but we can work on solutions for that if we're clever enough.
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Post by jfrost2 »

I think the boom is still going strong, people still feel the hurt at the pump when they pay 60-70 dollars or more in their car/truck/suv then look to scooters and motorcycles as a gas saver method.
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Post by k1dude »

BigColdMartini wrote:Now that we the sheeple have been conditioned into thinking $3.50 a gallon is a bargain, will the scooter boom go bust?
I've been thinking the same thing. The new numbers are out and with the drop in gas prices, people have been falling back to their old driving habits. Gas inventories are falling as usage is surging once prices fell below $4/gallon. We've been conditioned now to think $3.50/gallon is a good price.
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Post by jfrost2 »

Gas hit a low of 3.45 the other day, and it jumped right back to 3.73 a gallon for regular right after oil fell to $113 a barrel. I think the sudden hike is a "last minute money making" scheme before the prices fall more.
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Post by pcbikedude »

BigColdMartini wrote:Now that we the sheeple have been conditioned into thinking $3.50 a gallon is a bargain, will the scooter boom go bust?

I know I'll get flamed for this but I think gas should be $5 a gallon or more. Just look at how fast behaviours changed and people started thinking green over the last 6 months compared to the last 30 years. Of course, I know that means higher prices for food, etc. but we can work on solutions for that if we're clever enough.
You can pay me $1.50 per gallon extra if you want. :P
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Post by Scooter Hoot »

Eh, conspiracy theories aside, things move in cycles, but trending upwards. The dollar was tanking so a bunch of scared investors moved to investing in oil. Thus prices go up. Now the economic problems have moved to Europe and Asia as the American economy seems to be starting to recover meaning the dollar is doing better in relation, so the investors all flee oil.

Honestly, we'll probably see oil drop below 100$ sometime this year, but consumers are usually wary of "investing" in cheap oil with big SUVs etc after just getting burned pretty badly this year. I don't think the scooter boom will continue at quite the same pace, but it will still be larger than it was a few years ago.
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Post by MikieTaps »

Scooter Hoot wrote: I don't think the scooter boom will continue at quite the same pace, but it will still be larger than it was a few years ago.
And then in another couple years... it will be even BIGGER! <--- hopefully :D
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Post by jrsjr »

runtotorun121 wrote:Anyone have a better idea of why a shop should be going out of business?
First, let me say that I have no knowledge of this particular situation. However, all businesses in the USA and even abroad are being affected by the global credit crunch. Even businesses in good financial shape and with a clear view to profits ahead are having trouble borrowing money. A business which can't even say for sure that it will be able to procure goods to sell... That's not a good situation. It might be well-nigh impossible to borrow money under those conditions.

I'm not a banker, but I have a pretty good feeling for something called "fiduciary duty," which means the banker's responsibility (supposedly) not to lose their investor's money. When business is great and credit is loose and $$$ are flowing, great. When things aren't great, like right now (Late Summer 2008), they get really shy about the possibility of losing a penny of their investor's money and it can suddenly be difficult to impossible for a business like that scooter shop to borrow the funds it needs to procure new goods to sell.

This isn't the first example we've heard of this happening, not even the second example recently, so there must be an underlying business cause. I do agree that it is a crying shame, especially for a family business to go under. I hope those folks found jobs to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. :(
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Post by UXO »

jrsjr wrote:
runtotorun121 wrote:Anyone have a better idea of why a shop should be going out of business?
<DELETED FOR Obvious reasonS>
This isn't the first example we've heard of this happening, not even the second example recently, so there must be an underlying business cause. I do agree that it is a crying shame, especially for a family business to go under. I hope those folks found jobs to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. :(
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Post by ericalm »

BigColdMartini wrote:Now that we the sheeple have been conditioned into thinking $3.50 a gallon is a bargain, will the scooter boom go bust?
Eventually, yeah, but I don't know if it's going to happen yet. Sales will take their seasonal dip in the fall and winter, though it may not be as low as past years because a number of people decided to buy scooters in the summer but couldn't.

This poses another problem for dealers. How can they predict what sort of volume they'll do next year? My guess: next year's sales will be better than last year but not as good as this year. Regardless of what gas prices do, there are a lot more scooters on the road these days and products like the Buddy attract a lot of new buyers simply by being visible out on the streets. The novelty will wear off over time, as people crash, decide it's not for them and garage their scooters, sell to people who already own scooters and so on as has happened in the past.

Of course, if gas prices spike again, it'll be mayhem.
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Post by sunbunny »

My $.02 says that gas will drop ($3.25-3.50) as we approach the election. The government (house and senate) will try to say they are doing something to help the gas crisis so they are not the issue for the canidates. Also summer is over and winter is not here yet so there is a lull in the market. I believe this is only temporary. Once winter hits, the election is over, 2009 prices will go back up or stay around the $4.00+ price point. By then prices have gone up on everything else. Businesses are making decisions for next year based on gas prices not going down much. Europe and Canada are used to $5-6 a gallon for gas. Over all costs are alot more than we pay. Gas won't be sticker shock again until it approaches $4.50-$5. We saw gas go from under $3 to over $4 and the scooter market shot up. If it levels out around $3.50 we won't see a spike til $4.50+. I'm planning on purchasing one more scooter this Fall to save $ now and to be proactive for next year.

I'm not sure how all the turmoil in foriegn markets will effect us (not just Iraq!) also now that the Olympics are over China is not rushed to make any more improvements. The quality of life in other countries are changing and resources are becoming a hot market.
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