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[iski]

https://motorbikewriter.com/harley-plans-rewire-future/

Harley-Davidson plans to Rewire for future
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New strategy for Harley from the German-born interim CEO Jochen Zeitz.

[RivRaptor]

Interesting read if you can get through the Corporate speak.  He (Jochen, CEO) seems to have a better head then the last one but his choice of a Duwire for that promo pic would say otherwise unless he is just playin both sides for now while he is hinting at a refocus on core products.  Personally I think the new CEO would should have been sitting on one of HD's flagship bikes, a CVO! (CVO for a CEO!)  But I understand his position.

Here are some quotes. decoded:

"Rewire Strategy"
We're in trouble!

"Over-indexed on new riders & New Market growth & lost focus on critical profit sources"
Millennials have no money, better concentrate on the Boomers & Xers!

"To implement his plan he launched an internal management restructure & established a CEO round table of select dealers & former HD leaders"
Soup guys only known Soup!  Maybe we should give the customers what they want instead of what we want!

"Enhance our core strengths"
Make money!

"Better balance expansion into new spaces"
Back out of the Duwire slowly as to save face because we bet the damn farm on it!

[FLSTFI Dave]

Not sure he got it with the follow baby boomers to the grave and focus on customers.   

I fit the description of both.  I have bought 7 CVO bikes since 2009, and 8 other Harleys since then.  On my 7 CVO bikes the quality has gone down on each and every successive bike.  They also started de contenting them while raising the price over 10K between first and last CVO both road glides. 

Sounds to me like the rewire is no rewire at all, continue to screw our loyal customer with lower quality, and higher prices, they will keep paying it.  Millennials are too smart to buy buy an inferior product for a higher price.

With as crappy as the quality of my 19 CVO is and the over 40K cost.  I am not sure I will buy another CVO.   I mean I cant go 6500 miles with out needing a new front rotors.  The seat at 10K miles looked like it had been left out side for a couple years and had 50K miles on it.  Well now the second seat looks worse with only 11000 miles on it than the seat on my Fatboy with 435K miles on it and 18 years old.  My iPhone 11 Pro still won't make phone call with boom audio yet works with my older truck older car and my wife's 8 year old suv. 

If they want to focus on boomers, maybe they should focus on quality and making sure all their promised features do in fact work.  Not a Goldwing fan, but they do have quality, and they are reliable and their features do work for a crap load less money.

[grc]

Ever notice that all the new guys they've brought in have totally avoided talking about the other elephants in the room, quality and customer service?  If you won't openly talk about your real problems, you probably won't fix them either.

Jerry

[iski]

Ever notice that all the new guys they've brought in have totally avoided talking about the other elephants in the room, quality and customer service?  If you won't openly talk about your real problems, you probably won't fix them either.

Jerry

Bingo!  Winner!

[Threephase]

Why does an “interim CEO” feel the need to lay out a “five year plan”. He is making changes to management to better align with his vision. Maybe, just maybe, he should actually “get” the job permanently before making all these structural changes to the company. Because if he does not get job, all of his “changes” will have to be undone, at the expense of shareholders and ultimately us purchasers of the product. JCPenney spent a fortune correcting the mistakes of their former CEO.

I still believe a motorcycle company should be led by a motorcycle rider.

A photo of a shoe salesman wearing a brand new leather jacket supplied to him at a photo shoot while standing over a company’s albatross does not give me the warm fuzzys.

[iski]

When this new CEOs background is taken into account, one could expect a sales spike for HD in Kenya as long as it is environmentally sustainable & eco friendly.

[RivRaptor]

Not sure he got it with the follow baby boomers to the grave and focus on customers.   


By making the Generation that made them (HD) what they are, they would begin to recover economically.  The assumption is to do that they would have to improve quality & features without skyrocketing prices which seems to me at least some of the major bitches.  My quick attempt at humor was probably not the best choice of words so I edited the post, also to reflect the Gen Xers cause I was born in the crossover year.

[Para Bellum]

Everybody blames Levatich for the problems...but we should think about Wandell's (the previous CEO) actions and the effect on HD's current troubles.

Wandell is the one who cut quality to the bone and raised prices.  That's what made our bikes unreliable and short-lived.  Sure, it reduced MoCo's costs, so it increased profits...which increased the stock price...but it led to hard feelings with both the long-time faithful and the recently arrived. 

Investors loved it, as did Wandell's bank account.  We know how riders felt about it, but it took a while for the low quality to be recognized widely.  We can thank HD's strategy of "they all do that" and "never seen that before" and "no recall needed" for delaying recognition of across-the-board quality cuts and the inevitable loss of sales. 

When Wandell realized riders were getting wise to his plan, he decided to quit while things were good, before the decrease in profits sank the stock prices, and his reputation was still good.  He left a complete chit-show for the new CEO, who probably made sure he had a great Golden Parachute in place...since he was guaranteed to get fired.  The $25 to 30 million he made the last 4 years, plus his retirement package, make him set for the rest of his life.

There was no way Levatich was going to turn HD around; not with the die-off of loyal customers, the lack of a Millenial market and their low opinion of HD, no Millenial money, no bikes for Millenials, the cost of bringing in a new engine and tranny.  He also had to spend more money to get higher quality parts.  Any of these factors could have prevented a turnaround; the combination of them made it impossible.

Now Zeitz has realized he's in deep doo-doo, and, since he's a relatively young man, he wants to avoid "retirement" and save his reputation.  So he's working hard to blame it on Levatich by abandoning all of the old strategy.  Trouble is, in the current China-virus economy, fancy marketing tricks and big promises aren't going to work. 

HD is a mortally wounded company, and I expect them to file for bankruptcy within 5 years.  With any luck, it will be bought by some riders who are astute businessmen, but it will be a generation or two, along with a major culture change, before it gets back to the glory days.  It's Wandell who killed it.  Levatich was just collateral damage.

[ultrafxr]

Deleted duplicate post.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ultrafxr]

Thank you Para Bellum for your insightful post. I totally agree that Wandell was a disaster. Levatich was a long term H-D employee and a rider / enthusiast. I’ve met and talked to him a couple times and I don’t think he was the total problem by any means.  He was in a lose, lose position imo and I doubt the new interim guy will do any better. But I could and have been wrong. Time will tell.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[J.D.]

I see HD heading towards a very similar fate as Sears.

[mark]

I see HD heading towards a very similar fate as Sears.

...and Sears sold motorcycles too.

[2smoke]

Everybody blames Levatich for the problems...but we should think about Wandell's (the previous CEO) actions and the effect on HD's current troubles.

Wandell is the one who cut quality to the bone and raised prices.  That's what made our bikes unreliable and short-lived.  Sure, it reduced MoCo's costs, so it increased profits...which increased the stock price...but it led to hard feelings with both the long-time faithful and the recently arrived. 

Investors loved it, as did Wandell's bank account.  We know how riders felt about it, but it took a while for the low quality to be recognized widely.  We can thank HD's strategy of "they all do that" and "never seen that before" and "no recall needed" for delaying recognition of across-the-board quality cuts and the inevitable loss of sales. 

When Wandell realized riders were getting wise to his plan, he decided to quit while things were good, before the decrease in profits sank the stock prices, and his reputation was still good.  He left a complete chit-show for the new CEO, who probably made sure he had a great Golden Parachute in place...since he was guaranteed to get fired.  The $25 to 30 million he made the last 4 years, plus his retirement package, make him set for the rest of his life.

There was no way Levatich was going to turn HD around; not with the die-off of loyal customers, the lack of a Millenial market and their low opinion of HD, no Millenial money, no bikes for Millenials, the cost of bringing in a new engine and tranny.  He also had to spend more money to get higher quality parts.  Any of these factors could have prevented a turnaround; the combination of them made it impossible.

Now Zeitz has realized he's in deep doo-doo, and, since he's a relatively young man, he wants to avoid "retirement" and save his reputation.  So he's working hard to blame it on Levatich by abandoning all of the old strategy.  Trouble is, in the current China-virus economy, fancy marketing tricks and big promises aren't going to work. 

HD is a mortally wounded company, and I expect them to file for bankruptcy within 5 years.  With any luck, it will be bought by some riders who are astute businessmen, but it will be a generation or two, along with a major culture change, before it gets back to the glory days.  It's Wandell who killed it.  Levatich was just collateral damage.

Right on! Levatich was in a no-win situation and the writing was on the wall. Matt was with the company for many years and he lives only a few miles from the Pilgrim Road Plant. Matt is a personable guy, the kind that will stop and talk if you run into him at the grocery store. The people that work at that plant are members of the same community that he is in. Wandell was a hatchet man that was shipped in to do the dirty deeds of the slash-n-burn management philosophy. Mission accomplished. Now he's back on the golf course ready to go and do a hack job on the next place some board of mis-directors wants to cripple. The formula is so simple and it has been done thousands of times before: close plants and sell the assets to show a profit, lay-off people (shows an instant cost savings), immediately source parts that are cheap (once again instant cost savings), stop any R & D in new product and shutter any new projects (another quicky way to show an influx of cash) and then get-out with a big fat paycheck before the chit hits the fan. Now you have a pile of smoldering ashes of something that took years to build. The original 13 had their personal fortunes and everything on the line. They gave everything to build the company up and make it one of the greatest success stories ever. Wow! didn't take long to tear it down! Now, how do you save it?

[J.D.]

Two very well written posts 

[iski]

Two very well written posts 

Agreed. The diagnosis is very good, but the patient is on life support & appears to still be dying.

[J.D.]

When it's all said and done, the rise and fall of H-D will be an interesting case study.  Classic example of having the goose laying golden eggs but also an appetite for goose meat.

[G 97]

Good companies fail in good times and this is what Harley did. They became so focussed on customer analyticals and data mining customer segments with outreach and youth that they never established a product connection. They then replaced top management with outside non motorcycle related people from Johnson Controls, Pepsi, Pontiac and food companies etc. This all resulted in loss of focus and direction. They had a firm grasp on customer demographics and analytics but completely dropped the ball with product development, quality control and the rider connection. They completely mismanaged the MV Agusta acquisition - costing them well over $150 million in losses, then promoted the guy who spearheaded the deal to CEO. They never were able to leverage the Buell product towards youth outreach or any significant new customer acquisitions. Their dealer development, outside of them encouraging the dealers to build Taj Mahal facilities, is non existent. No salesmanship, no used inventory strategies, no service improvements. Just glorified order takers. Now they are scrambling to diversify into electric, adventure and sport street motorcycle segments which, ironically they had with both Buell and MV Agusta. A text book case of mis management. RIP

[Eqcons]

Not sure he got it with the follow baby boomers to the grave and focus on customers.   
 they should focus on quality and making sure all their promised features do in fact work.  Not a Goldwing fan, but they do have quality, and they are reliable and their features do work for a crap load less money.

You hit the nail on the head, Dave.  I posted this on another board in response to more of their plans for the future:

"It really doesn't matter who is at the helm of HD, they continue to get it wrong. Pricing is now ludicrously high, and they put it up year on year, while reducing the spec of the bikes. In their never ending search for cheaper Chinese suppliers, quality gets worse. Reliability is a joke; low mileage water pump failures on the 2014 and up wetheads, until the design was changed, are legendary, Sumping and oil transfer problems on the M8 engine, lifter failures on the 110 TC engine. The list goes on. I've bought my last HD (I bought seven in 13 years, five of them top of the range CVO FLH models) and I won't be replacing my 2014 FLHTKSE - they are just not worth the silly price. I can buy a fully loaded BMW CAR for the same price, and I would be surprised if it ran for as few miles as my Harley does with parts failing. To survive, HD need to get real with the price, the quality, and the reliability!"