Please support local dealers, it trickles down to you...

My local mega brand dealer stocks zero bike specific parts. That means 2 trips for the most mundane part. They didn’t even have a tube for an 80cc bike. Combine that with the fact of pulling discounts from muti-year/bike customs they can swing as there is zero in it for me.

Being a small business owner I’ve always been a supporter of the mom and pop shops, but they really don’t exist anymore. At least in my area. Everything now is big dealerships and most around us are no different than car dealerships. Take a number, turn around and bend over. I wish our local dealerships were a 10% markup over RMATV or Motosport but unfortunately thats just not the case. If you’ve still got that local mom and pop dealership around you then consider yourself lucky and yes absolutely support them because they’re a unicorn at this point. 

I think with less people racing nowadays, certainly in the UK at least, it's ruined it for these smaller shops. I'm sure plenty of us on here headed to a local shop on a Saturday for a last minute part in order to be able to race Sunday. But now there's no urgency for people to get their bike ready to race, they'll just buy what they need online and miss riding. 

Somehow we need to get grass roots racing to be important again, especially in the UK. 

If your in the Cincinnati area, we try to stock most tube/tire sizes for offroad. 

We may not have every tire style/brand but we have most sizes in Dunlop. 

Also stock pretty much every Honda air filter we can obtain still as well as brakes, levers, chains, and much more. (Sorry we're Honda only for sales)

Service is also always willing to change tires/tubes on loose wheels for pretty much any brand. 

Honda of Fairfield (513)-858-1000

As far as tracks go, support 2 of the best local tracks around East Fork and Chillitown. Owned by none other then AP's dad!! 

unfortunately, there are no local shops within an hour from me anymore

You ever have anything positive to post?

I’ll pay 10-20% more if my local guy can get the same thing in the same time frame as the online stores. He does pretty good most of the time, but I probably buy 60-70% online. One thing I never do is bitch about prices to him or his guys, once I walk in his shop I follow through with whatever I’m wanting. 

I live in Red Deer Alberta area.  Turple Brothers is my go to. Family owned since 1956. 2nd oldest Honda dealer in North America.  I never buy online. I detest it. I live in the country. Getting shit delivered is a pain in the ass. 

I spread it around to my local dealers….1 shop I bought my new bikes from, while another I bought the majority of my aftermarket parts from because he has a very good stock of parts…tires, chain & sprockets, oils, goggles….and that shop operates a great practice track right on his property…. So I definitely want him to be successful….. Hard to beat RMC for oem parts…

If it is a local shop worth supporting, then I don't mind a trip there. If they look through me to the guy who wants an $X$ then I will pass. There some good dealers out there like Munn for example.

You mean support the guys who ripped everyone off with massive markups just a few years ago?   

I’m going to echo what others have said, I feel no loyalty to dealerships anymore. There are very few dirt bike dealerships, most are SxS/UTV dealers that are “forced” to carry some dirt bikes. 

Even the “Moto friendly” dealerships like Power Motorsports lost credibility and my business when they were firm at $13,000 OTD on a KX450 in 2021 even with the “Keefer discount”. 

If I had a local dealership that was ran by enthusiasts that stocked some basic moto parts, I would happily support them. They just don’t exist. 

I gotta say, it was pretty sweet having my Stark shipped to my door in a crate last week. No dealership BS, and I got to assemble the bike correctly. Most of the mountain bikes and road cycles I’ve been purchasing have been direct to consumer, and even the local bicycle shops understand why and don’t push back like they used to.

The dealership process is broken in our world, and especially the automotive world. It’s basically an unnecessary middle man that does nothing but drive up the final cost to the consumer. 

Its more than just the motorcycle and parts. I have made lots of really great life time friends from my local MC shops. 

There motorcycle industry used to have spring dating when the dealers could place large orders stocking up for the summer season. The dealers paid for the spring dating orders by spreading the 3 payments at 30 / 60 / 90 day payments. 

Typically the dealers shelves were stocked heavily with high wear items like spark plugs, tubes, tires, chains, sprockets, oils, gear, helmets and lots of other parts. 

When I was a distributor rep for Nichols we offered spring dating at the Indy trade show and gave great deals to the dealers to stock up.

I haven’t seen any of the distributors offer spring dating at the trade show in many many years.

I know you love my dick but  how about jumping on someone else’s for a change. Plenty of other swinging dicks not happy with the situation other than me.

The man was claiming somehow this trickles down to me. Care to explain how?

around here sponsoring local race series.  running mini/kids night racing series, sponsoring tracks.  Helping racers get to loretta's/qualifiers.  Not sure what they do around you.

At PU we have spring shows for the dealers and spring stocking programs and I'd assume WPS also has spring stocking progams.

This whole thing goes both ways for sure. I'm lucky that in my area that we only have one corporate store which is a ridenow (and actually they are pretty damn good) but I think all the others are family owned or small groups. But for sure SXS's have taken over but its because dealers can actually make money on them.  A dirt bike at full retail the shop might make a grand or so and everyone who rides expects deals on parts just because they race 3 times a year.  But shops do need to do a better job of servicing the customer and stocking the right parts.  Also simple stuff like offering drop shipping of the stuff they don't have in stock straight to your door is rarely offered on aftermarket parts.  It's more in the hands of the dealers to get customers to give them a shot than it is in the customer's hands. Ordering twice a week and just saying "i dont' have that, i can order it" isn't going to cut it in these modern times. Dealers have largely gone after the easier money in the 4 wheeled areas and street bikes and I can't entirely blame them but they still need to do a better job as a whole.  

What's preventing locally owned dealerships from being profitable?  

For those folks able to retire after selling the business to a car dealer with terrible radio commercials, hell yeah, you don't owe the industry anything.

I was taught by going through Kawasaki dealer management school many years ago that every dealership has 3 pieces to the pie. Sales department, Parts department and Service department. 

Every dealership profits have to pay for the buildings they operate out of, pay every employee you see,  pay for New bikes, pay for every part in the parts department shelf’s. 

Take out 1 piece of the pie and the dealership is on its way to closing. Parts departments can not afford to stock parts that people are not walking through the doors to purchase because they are buying so many parts on line to save a $1

Support your local dealers or their doors will be closed then where do you go to buy that new MC from? 

I have seen recently that lots of the old HD shops that have been around for many years are closing.  

MC industry profit margins are very low compared to all the other industries even though so many of you think profits are huge. They are not.

Last year I discovered that the new WPS owners had cut the industry standard mark up margin for dealers by 15% meaning dealers were paying more so it reduced the dealer’s profit margin to retail price a lot  By Cutting the throats of the dealers was my final straw and why I stopped supplying WPS on January 1st 2024 and we now are dealing direct with dealers at the industry standard margins so dealers can make enough profits to keep their doors open.

Because MC industry margins are low to begin with and everyone walking through the door wants a 10-30% discount on everything. 

If that's an issue, how do Ford dealerships stay in business with their ~2% profit margin on most new vehicles?

Service departments.

Quantity of sales is a huge factor. You can’t really be that dense can you?

So you'd rather not support local dealers and let the sport die?

Good call....not surprising to see you are ignorant enough to think that's a good solution to anyting.

Why don't you just go away?

Seriously.

You don't like anything about the sport the way it is nowadays and you don't ride, why are you here?

Don't worry pal, I know that you aren't man enough to respond and that in itself is enough to let me know that I'm right.

I'm all for supporting a good local shop but in the last 20 years the trend hasn't been good.

Shops that used to be good either closed or were absorbed into a bigger owner situation and the culture of the shops changed.

IE, the core enthusiast type employees left and replaced by warm bodies in need of a small pay check.

Reduced places to ride/race no doubt has had a negative influence on local grass roots racing.

That and the explosion of online retail I just don't see how we ever revert back to the good mom and pop type shops so by all means support them if you  can.

Im as guilty as anyone using RM but I make a point to throw some business to Munn's when possible and I'm in a different state. 

Do you really think that comparing a moto dealer to a Ford store that sells thousands of cars a year is the same?

Automotive operates very differently that the MC industry does and so far they have not been good for the MC industry’s operation. Dealerships taken over by automotive have a very different feel to them. Just like walking into a car dealership.

As far as I know PU is the last family owned distributor not taken over by a automotive group.

Retail is dead. Commodity products are more efficiently bought direct/online.

Service is why we need local shops. Who is going to fix your bike when there is a recall? Who is going to service your shock? Online retail markets can't deliver the service.

Dealerships are the last place I’d take my bike to for any type of work other than warranty work. A small, independent Moto guy out of his own shop or your own garage are the way to go 😎

I’ll support them by financing my bike through them after negotiating the best price for me, then I will bring my bike back to them for needed services that I don’t feel comfortable doing.