Upgrade to enjoy this feature!
Vital MX fantasy is free to play, but Premium users receive great benefits. Premium benefits include:
- View and download rider stats
- Pick trends
- Create a private league
- And more!
Only $10 for all 2026 SX, MX, and SMX series.
Blaming buyers for not making enough money at your dealership is laughable. It's your choice to be in the business you're in and publicly blaming customers for your lack of profit is ridiculous. We need to learn to buy? Maybe you need to learn business.
Get with the times people.
I can't tell you online what the exact numbers and dealer costs are without getting in trouble from Yamaha, so I guess you'll have to take my word that I have my 2014-2016 price sheets sitting right in front of me. Yes, there is a holdback from Yamaha on bikes that we get (usually six months after the sale is complete), but even that is only usually 2%-3% of dealer cost (again, roughly $300). And believe it or not, Yamaha charges $357 in freight for each bike they send us, which cancels out that holdback right away. So, after you take what Yamaha makes us write a check for (or finance if you can't afford to write a check for it), add in the freight charge that shows up on the shipping invoice, and take out holdback that we get six months down the road, it ends up costing us about $1000 less than full MSRP (what we call "true dealer cost").
The reason we sell them is a mix between passion for the sport and requirements placed by manufacturers. Our online store (spam: partspitstop.com) sells a lot of OEM replacement parts, and if we want the ability to sell those parts, we are required to sell the bikes on the showroom floor. That's why we sell Arctic Cat. They break a lot so we sell a shit ton of parts for them. We've adapted over the years to the changing consumer base and have established a very large online presence, so we do ok with the parts side of things (at least in our PMA). Luckily the dealers that do this don't have to rely on making every nickel and dime possible on new bikes, so that's why you find large dealerships willing to sell them at such a low margin: they know that dude is going to come back and spend SOMETHING on parts...
The other reason is volume. If you know that you can sell 100 bikes at $300 profit a peice, or sell 50 bikes at $600 a piece, doesn't it make sense to sell the larger volume option? You gain market share and establish a larger customer base. Then all you can do is hope that those customers will shop at your online store or come back in to buy things from your brick & mortar...
90% of dealerships that I know of are in large, modern buildings along main thorofares where rent / mortgage is definitely not cheap; they have several employees who are having to be paid; they have high overhead due to the cost of inventory, utility bills for said large building, insurance, etc. etc.
A man's personal or business finances are none of my business, but it just puzzles me how everyone who works at or owns a dealership talks about ho much money they LOSE on everything they sell, but yet continue to open up the doors every day, and most of them are still paying a lot of money for advertisements at the local tracks, radio / tv commercials, etc. Wouldn't you just cut your losses and stop advertising so people can come in and rob you blind as they purchase a vehicle on your showroom? Wouldn't you rather just keep the vehicle on your floor as opposed to giving it away or taking a loss on it?
The Shop
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Oh shit, wrong forum.
Sad thing about dealers these days is that they just aren't what they used to be 30-40 years ago when I got into this stuff. Mom and pop or enthusiast owned dealers have dropped off the face of the earth over the last decade or two. Need a crank pressed? They can't do it. Need a fresh bore? Can't do that either. What performance parts work? Don't know. Can't make you a decent deal on gear because they don't stock much of that either.
Here locally we used to have a Yamaha dealer who was in Baja at least once a year faithfully. The Suzuki dealer and the Honda (Honda/Triumph/Can-Am) dealer were always taking it to each other on the flat tracks and the Honda dealer had bikes on the flat tracks, Triumphs finishing second on the high banks of Daytona , Can Am's setting records at Bonneville and little outboard boats winning national championships all developed, built and tested by him on the dyno he built himself. That man was a mechanical genius.
Now they are all gone and every single line sits under one roof of a 50,000 sq foot building. I guess some of us got the change we were demanding.
Like movie theaters are really concessions stands, that use the movies to get people in the door to buy their overpriced popcorn/soda/candy?
.
Oh Hell,
Narrator lets go get a beer.
Booth
And as far as keeping a vehicle on the showroom rather than giving it away or taking a loss, how does a dealer make room for the new product coming in? Part of the dealer agreement is to purchase so many units per year which translates to parts per year, etc. Riding gear is a big one. We usually start cutting our inventory back around April since we know the new gear will be out around August. That helps us to sell through what we have in the store and make room for the next years lines. You can't stock fully all year round and then take on the next years products. At some point, you have to get off of the product.
And in the meantime, there are still expenses. Motorcycle dealerships aren't "big" business. The profit everyone seems to exist isn't there. Can dealerships make money? They sure can. Is it a fast lane to a large bank account and the good life? It isn't.
Shane
There's data out there that suggests the average life-span of someone's ORV career is 20-25 years and they'll end up spending on average about $30k over that 20 year period. Where they spend that $30k and how we get them to give some of it to us it is up to the dealerships. I'm just trying to get my piece of that pie, just like everyone else is...
Pit Row
And prebuilding bikes with all these accessories makes no sense because you'll likely put on "the wrong accessories" because Joe Customer doesn't like/want that brand for any number of reasons. At the same time, the dealer doesn't technically "own" those bikes on the floor, they're floor planned, or financed, and you have to deduct that from their potential profit as well....every month a bike sits on the floor, the more it costs them to sit there...and not one bike, but all the bikes...it adds up, every month, it adds up.
This thread is another example of people in the industry, who know what they're talking about, who live it every day, helping you and telling you how the industry works, about the business of motorcycles/motocross, and you want to argue with them about it and call them liars and that they're wrong.
The shop was recently landscaped. We hired...wait for it..... one of our customers who does landscaping. You see how that works?
On my car purchases I asked them to do there best, they did, and I purchased.
As for purchasing bikes from the shop. Of course I never paid MSRP. It's call a PERK for working at a dealer, dum-dum
I was the one that made the point about accessorizing bikes...and they don't have to accessorize all of them...leave a few/some/most...whatever demand dictates) stock to sell to those who don't want what is on the customized bike.
If there are issues with the dealer not owning the bike, or other contractual reasons why it can't be done...then I get it.
But I really think the number of people that are going to pass on a new tricked out bike because it has the wrong pipe on it, is minuscule.
If the dealer could keep the mark up on the accessories even close to what they could buy them for from an online retailer (sell them at cost, just to move the bike, or mark up 5% or 10% whatever they can get away with and still have the price inline with the online retailers for the same stuff), it would be a no brainer for most people (assuming they are the type that will be modifying the bike anyway.
I'm currently shopping for a new bike...I'm likely going to purchase a new YZ450. Right now, I can call every dealer in the region and beat them up on price and everything else (which dealers hate), because its the exact same bike, but if there was one dealer that was selling an off road ready (desert tank, skip plates, sparky, stabilizer, hand guards, suspension revalved, etc.-all the stuff I'm going to do to it anyway) and the prices on those additional parts are comparable to what I could buy them for on online...I'd pay extra for the convenience AND they've tilted the shopping table in their favor because no other dealers are doing that, and there isn't an easy apples to apples comparison I can use to beat them up on price. (and maybe they've got a boring looking stocker sitting next to it, that I could buy.)
I'm not one that is going to care if they've got a Scotts or GPR stabilizer, or an FMF or PC sparky or if the tank is IMS or Clark...if they're already on there it LOOKS (which is all but the most serious riders care about anyway) good and is ready to roll...I'm down. And so are most of the kids that are financing their bike to the hilt (along with their $60K lifted Powerstroke in the parking lot).
It just seems crazy that dealers just keep doing the same things over and over and over again and complain they don't make any money...do something different. Set yourself apart. Make your product better/different than the competition to justify higher prices and/or so your customers can't shop as easily.
I've beat this dead horse enough...and I'll drop it now.
It's a shame more people don't see the value in doing things this way...
Has anyone mentioned the folks who were trying to sell dirt bikes at Costco? What happened with that?
Post a reply to: Hey Dealers: Buying in the next 48 hours, give me your quotes..