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www.PowersportsBusiness.com NEWS Powersports Business • May 26, 2014 • 5 4 • May 26, 2014 • Powersports Business NEWS www.PowersportsBusiness.com www.powersportsbusiness.com Editorial and Sales: 763.383.4400 Subscriber Service: 847.763.9565 EDITOR IN CHIEF: Dave McMahon 763/383-4411 (dmcmahon@powersportsbusiness.com) MANAGING EDITOR: Liz Keener 763/383-4413 (lkeener@powersportsbusiness.com) SENIOR EDITOR: Tom Kaiser 763/383-4424 (tkaiser@powersportsbusiness.com) ASSOCIATE DIGITAL EDITOR: Christopher Gerber DIGITAL PRODUCTION EDITOR: Heather Brown SENIOR ART DIRECTOR: Dodi Vessels PRODUCTION ARTIST: Kelsey Houle (khoule@epgmediallc.com) PRODUCTION MANAGER: Angela Schmieg VICE PRESIDENT/TRADE GROUP: Amy Collins NATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Allison Gruhn 763/383-4467 (agruhn@powersportsbusiness.com) NATIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGER Mark Rosacker 763/383-4433 (mrosacker@snowgoer.com) NATIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGER David J. 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Send editorial materials to EPG Media, LLC, 3300 Fernbrook Lane N, Suite 200, Minneapolis, MN 55447, 763/383-4400. No responsibility will be assumed for unsolicited materials. Powersports Business is a registered trademark of EPG Media, LLC. Copyright 2013 by EPG Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited unless expressly authorized by publisher. REPRINTS: For more information on e-prints or reprints from Powersports Business, contact Bernadette Wohlman, 763/383-4400 x2464. Printed in U.S.A. E-COMMERCE AND CUSTOMER SERVICE Though building bikes specifically for the North American market has been one way Triumph has responded to customers, it has also grown its PG&A e-commerce presence in order to add convenience to buying from the OEM and its dealers. In late 2012, the company announced the creation of a new e-commerce site in partner- ship with Bridgeline Digital, Inc., and UPS. Bridgeline launched Triumph's e-commerce storefront using its eCommerce Fulfilled plat- form, while UPS manages the warehousing and shipping of the PG&A. When creating the e-commerce system, Heichelbech was careful to assure that dealers get their fair piece of the pie. As he explains it, he's in the wholesale business, not the retail business, and Triumph relies on its dealers, so it has no plans to cut them out of the transactions. When customers order from Triumph's e-commerce site, the site is branded with their preferred dealership. The dealership's name then appears on each box and invoice mailed by Triumph. The OEM then gives dealers all of the margin on each item, minus a small service fee charged by UPS. "What they get is the customer sees it com- ing from their store; the customer sees it as a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week platform. What the customer sees is excellent, excellent customer service and delivery, so that's what I want the customer to think about when they think about Triumph dealers, and we can do that on a mass scale and leverage it versus each individual dealer trying to do it all themselves," Heichelbech said. Because Triumph now offers 24/7 sales online, the OEM has pushed itself to offer bet- ter customer service to its retail customers and dealers. In January, Triumph announced its new 24/7 customer service support, in which representatives at Triumph's Atlanta headquar- ters are available via phone or live online chat at all times. "What [e-commerce] allowed us really to do was first, up our customer service game. It's kind of weird hearing that about e-commerce, but if you're going to be in e-commerce, then you better have really good customer service because if you don't, you're going to get slaugh- tered," Heichelbech said. The customer service team, which has grown to about 15 people since the 24/7 service was launched, answers 60,000-75,000 inqui- ries annually. Representatives are required to answer each phone call by the second ring and respond to live chats within a few seconds. It's a policy that Heichelbech checks frequently, even shooting a live chat to his staff at 10 p.m. on Easter night. "The team is great. They literally get off on and are motivated by helping customers, and every time they do that, it makes them that much better, and I constantly am congratulat- ing them," he said. With that dedication and the new offerings, Triumph has pushed its e-commerce business from nothing to an expected $1.5 million in sales in 2014. "In the scheme of things, is it a ton of money? No, but that's not what it's for; it's for consumer convenience and the way they want to buy and allowing the dealer to provide that service and allow that dealer to be that shining beacon for Triumph," Heichelbech said. SELLING MOTORCYCLES ONLINE Next on Triumph's e-commerce docket are motorcycle sales, which are coming within the next 90 days, Heichelbech revealed to Power- sports Business on May 1. Though the move comes just three years after Triumph banned dealer sales of motorcycles on auction sites such as eBay, Heichelbech says the sale of bikes from Triumph's site will be different in that customers will pay full MSRP, freight, setup Harley-Davidson, Heichelbech had studied Triumph closely, as Harley-Davidson, Harley's Buell and Triumph were often competing for the same customers. But it was that study of Triumph that drew him to the British brand. "Harley was great and was great for me and for my career and to me," he said. "They treated me extremely well, and so to make a change, I had to go to a company that I thought had as deep of heritage, if not deeper, because I've got to be emotionally connected to the brand, and so my experience with Triumph as a com- petitor and understanding their story, under- standing their brand and their comeback and fighting and being the little guy, that was really appealing to me." Heichelbech started in Har- ley's sales department in 1990. Eventually he moved into dealer development before becoming the West Coast regional man- ager for the high-end Holiday Rambler motorhome brand, which Harley owned at the time. After that, he returned to motorcycles, but this time with the Buell brand, serving in sales and marketing roles. "Buell was a great fit. It allowed me to explore that and really cut my teeth in a startup company, for a lack of a better word. Erik [Buell] had started it, but it was still pretty much a startup company, with [Harley- Davidson] helping Erik get off the ground, so that was a whole different lane," Heichelbech explained. "It actually gave me the opportunity to get the experience of work as a startup, but then figure out how to inte- grate and work within a larger organization and leverage those resources for the startup, so we were constantly going between the two, and they acted and responded differently to different items, or different ways of presenting things, so that was a pretty cool experience." During his career at Harley-Davidson, Heichelbech gained a great variety of experi- ence, but he also grew his knowledge by lean- ing on his peers and supervisors. "There's just been great mentors at Harley over the years, whether it be Vaughn Beals or Rich Teerlink. Even though I didn't get to spend a lot of time with Vaughn Beals, Rich Teerlink was definitely a person who influ- enced my thinking and how to interact and just be a part of the employee team, the employee base," he said. "He was a big empowerment individual; he was big into you treat others the way you want to be treated, big into collabora- tion, and through collaboration, you're going to get a much better answer, a much better outcome. But ultimately somebody's got to be in charge, and he was in charge, so he made the tough decisions that had to be done, so he was a great mentor." Heichelbech added, "More recently it was guys like Jon Flickinger, who was the vice president of Harley and also president of Buell. He had a long history in Ford and a long history at Harley, and he just brought a tremendous way of looking at the business and researching the business and uncovering hidden value in it and also dealing with people. People would walk through walls for Jon Flickinger, includ- ing dealers, so that was another big one." As a self-proclaimed performance junkie, Heichelbech also spent many of his Harley years talking shop and riding motocross bikes and snowmobiles with Bill Davidson, Jerry Wilke and Scott Miller. Though those personalities drove Heichel- bech throughout his career in Milwaukee, it was another personality that brought him to Triumph. Heichelbech holds great respect for Triumph owner John Bloor and how he looks at the business, is willing to take risks, consid- ers the long term over the short term and helps employees develop. "The other thing was just the scope of the work, what I was going to be able to do, how much control and autonomy that they were going to afford me and being able to manage pretty much every aspect of the business, except potentially, manufacturing because it's done in the U.K. overseas," Heichelbech said. "That was very, very appealing, and I was just at that point in my life where I had been highly educated by Harley and had lots of experience, and I was just ready for the next step. The opportunity came, and it just happened to be with Triumph, so with all those pieces, I really said, 'You know what? It's the right thing for me.'" BUILDING BRAND AWARENESS When Heichelbech took the helm of Triumph North America, he made it clear that one of his goals was to grow brand awareness. Though he says the company still has a lot of work to do in that category, much progress has been made since 2010. The company's annual impressions have grown from 28 million to nearly 2 billion, and the Triumph Motorcycles Facebook page for North America has increased likes from about 35,000 to more than 705,000. Though those numbers are impressive, Heichelbech aspires for the brand to be even more prominent until he says he has "the ability to unaided ask someone about motor- cycling, and they say Triumph instead of Har- ley-Davidson or Honda." "Certainly, we've made progress, but nowhere where we need to be to take us out of that niche-feeling brand. I'm not going to be a household brand; I'm not trying to be a household brand, but I don't want to be a small niche brand, either. I do need to be, my opin- ion, Number 2, Number 3 at the worse," he said. "We've still got a lot of work to do, but the heritage is so steep in stories, and we're making new stories every day that, man, I've got a great palette to pull from and use those to create awareness, and that's what we're doing." One of the means to increasing brand aware- ness is entering more markets. Triumph intro- duced is first adventure bike the same month Heichelbech started at the company, and that segment has performed well since then, with the Tiger Explorer and Explorer XC joining the original Tiger 800 and Tiger 800 XC. "Getting into adventure was a natural, I think, and it just opened up a whole new set of customer for us, and the Tiger 800 was met with great success; it's been one of our best-sell- ing motorcycles; it still is today. In fact, it was up just looking this March, it was up like 100- some percent for us in the month of March, and the Explorer was up over 70 percent, so those two products have been great in expanding our reach but also still staying true to our heritage," Heichelbech reported. More recently, Triumph has made head- winds into the cruiser segment, with the announcement of the Thunderbird LT and Thunderbird Commander in the fall. Though the Commanders were just hitting showrooms in early May, the Thunderbird LT models are already moving well. "We showed [the Thunderbird LT] early on at our dealer conference in October, and they weren't skeptical, but they were hesitant, only because we've not been a big player in the cruiser market. They want to be; they see the importance of it, but typically that's just not been our thing, so they were very optimistic. But what has happened is as the bikes have been shipped to them, the LTs are going out as fast as they're landing," Heichel- bech said. Dealers are selling out of their orders so quickly that some have been selling their regional managers' demo bikes during the RMs' visits, he added. Though Heichelbech gets a say in which models come to the U.S. — like his decision a couple years ago to only bring in ABS-equipped units — he also occasionally contributes to the production of new bikes. Through his many trips to Triumph headquarters in the United Kingdom, he has devel- oped relationships with builders, so he and his team can share ideas for fresh vehicles or updates. The LT is one such model that the North American team worked closely on begin- ning two years ago. "We said the Thunderbird was a great suc- cess; Cycle World said it was the best cruiser two years in a row, however the cruiser cus- tomer in the U.S., though, demands a wind- screen, and he demands nice bags that are of good size, and he needs floorboards, and that seat has to be able to take you on a journey for eight hours without feeling like you just got beat to hell, and you've got to have a plugin for your cell phone," he said. "So all those things were put into the LT. The seat was lowered an inch, and that was another big one. It's like, 'Hey, the consumer over here is like standard size 5'8", we've got to lower the seat,' so they lowered the seat an inch, so they're listening to us, definitely, and they see the North American market as highly important to their global growth now and in the future." For that model, Triumph builders did their research, coming to the U.S. to talk to dealers and attending rallies to gather consumer input. "They really tried to understand the Ameri- can consumer. They came to Sturgis; they came to Daytona; they talked to dealers; they talked to customers," Heichelbech said. "They asked them what probably a lot of the cruiser custom- ers at the time thought were silly questions. 'What's this silly Brit asking me these questions for? Doesn't he get this, how this bike should be?' But it's all part of the learning process, and they jumped in." So far, it seems, the brand awareness has paid off in terms of sales. Heichelbech reported to Powersports Business earlier this year that sales were up 60 percent over the past three years, and the OEM has beaten the industry's sales performance for 27 consecu- tive months. HEICHELBECH CONTINUED FROM COVER Triumph's Thunderbird LT was built specifically for the North American market with heavy input from Greg Heichelbech's team at Triumph North America. P01x08-PSB7-News.indd 4 5/14/14 2:01 PM