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www.PowersportsBusiness.com NEWS Powersports Business • May 26, 2014 • 5 4 • May 26, 2014 • Powersports Business NEWS www.PowersportsBusiness.com 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 and any other fees. "We are going to be the high-cost provider," he said. Triumph worked with its dealers to develop an e-commerce system for motorcycles that works for the wholesaler, retailer and cus- tomer. Though all dealers will earn retail mar- gin and sales credit for the bikes sold online and delivered in their territory, individual deal- erships can choose how involved they would like to be in the process. "In some cases, the dealer will select that we do a lot of the heavy lifting, and in other cases the dealer is going to select that they want to do some of the heavy lifting," Heichelbech explained. "What's the heavy lifting? Heavy lift- ing is, 'Hey, I want it out of my inventory, and I want to deliver the bike to the consumer,' ver- sus, 'Ship it from your warehouse, and you pro- vide a service for me to deliver to the consumer.' So we're trying to offer a range of services that any dealer can benefit from because not every- body's at the scale where they have their own delivery trucks, or can take care of the customer a certain way, so we need to scale it so all dealers can participate and be successful at it." Triumph decided to move forward with online sales as a convenience to the customer, as well as a way for dealers with wide territories to reach those customers on the outskirts who may not be willing to make such a long drive for their final purchase. "The Internet is just the way it is; it's revo- lutionized everything, and we as an industry, we as a brand, we just need to adopt it, and so motorcycles is the next thing. Yeah, it's a big purchase, but people want to buy and are dem- onstrating they want to buy when they want to buy at their convenient time, and they do that through the use of e-commerce," Heichelbech said. "It's not a play about bypassing the dealer; it's not a play about taking margin or reducing margin or selling things cheap on the Internet; it's purely about listening to the consumer and purely about trying to provide them the easiest way to interact with our brand; that's it. Because if you're complicated and you're challenging, there's too many other brands they can go to, which aren't even in the motorcycling world that will be happy to take their discretionary dollars, and we need to remember that." What he wants dealers to know as this new e-commerce option is added is, just as the OEM did with PG&A, it's going to continue to work through dealers as the only means of selling vehicles to customers. 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. See Heichelbech, Page 8 P01x08-PSB7-News.indd 5 5/14/14 2:01 PM