| Author | Message | ||
     Buellinachinashop |
I was reading HD's 2008 financial reports and they state that Buell shipped 13K+ bikes and had sales of 120+ mil. Does anybody know what percentage of bikes they ship, sell? With 13,000 bikes shipped and 120 million in sales it's gotta be mid 90's you'd think? | ||
| Court |
Does anybody know what percentage of bikes they ship, sell? It becomes a bit of a "trick" question. Every Buell built by Buell Motorcycle Company is built to order. The order is placed by Buell Distribution Co. (a wholly owned subsidiary of HD) and Buell MOTORCYCLE "sells" the bike when it leaves the back door of the plant. Buell DISTRIBUTION company also makes motorcycles by order. The orders are placed by Buell DEALERS 3 times a year. When the bike leaves Buell MOTORCYCLE it is "sold" to Buell DISTRIBUTION. They handle further sale to the dealer, transportation, technical support, the dealer network, advertising, media relations, dealer relations and so forth. The answer to your question is "every one". That's not entirely accurate but it's close enough to provide a sense of the process and why total reliance on the numbers results in little of meaningful value for discussion. | ||
| Buellinachinashop |
So do those sales dollars refer to the Distribution sales or consumer sales? | ||
| Davegess |
They would be distribution sales. The customer sales dollars would go to the dealers and not HDI. One of the industry magazines publishes registrations by month by brand and this would tell you how many bikes are sold to customers. I don't know how to get the info short of having access to the magazine. | ||
| Froggy |
Thank you for posting this, I saw the numbers the other day and was wondering the same things  | ||
| Buellinachinashop |
Dave, I think HD has that registration info on their web page. I saw it there, but didn't look at it as an indicator of dealer sales...thanks. Froggy, I started digging into this because some boobs on a VR forum where saying how little Buell contributes to HD. I don't see 120 mil in sales as being small. | ||
| Froggy |
It is still a drop in the bucket compared to HD's numbers. | ||
| Glitch |
Approximately 3%. Get it...3%? Now you know where we got our name.  But 3% more or less is still positive cash flow. Positive cash flow is always a good thing | ||
| Buellinachinashop |
"It is still a drop in the bucket compared to HD's numbers." Seriously, accessories counts for 300 million of the over 5 billion HD sells. Crazy money for shirts and hats. | ||
| Glitch |
If it works, why not. If you had a bike company that could sell 300million bucks worth of t-shirts, tell me you would be selling t-shirts as well. | ||
| Buellinachinashop |
I'd pimp my mom out for 300 mil. | ||
| Court |
>>>They would be distribution sales. The customer sales dollars would go to the dealers and not HDI. Correct. The dollars in the annual report, written for HDI, represent sales, by HDI, to Harley-Davidson dealers. To find, as Dave pointed out, dealer to customer sales you need to go to MIC data for registrations. |
