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      10-14-2019, 05:02 PM   #38
The HACK
Midlife Crises Racing Silent but Deadly Class
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes View Post
Harley is a niche. Niche markets are sweet if you have one, but far more companies *thought* they had a niche until someone came by and did what they do better, quicker, cheaper more efficiently, etc.
Or if your niche market is locked into a specific demographic that AGES without being able to bring in younger buyers to supplement.

Harley's problem isn't that it's a niche, but the typical buyers are getting OLDER AND OLDER and dying off. If you can't shake the stigma enough that middle age and retired males are the only ones that would buy one, you can't keep the 20-30-40 year olds to buy their first, let along 2nd/3rd or 4th motorcycle, you'll eventually run out of abled body buyers when your retired owners die, and your middle aged owners/buyers retire.

There's a good reason why 15 years ago, in the early 2000s, Harleys were all the rage (Harley Davidson F150 pick-up. Anyone remember that?). The same middle aged male who buys it for their mid-life crisis, these guys are retiring and buying another Hardly Ableson on fixed income isn't such a good idea...And today, middle aged male who suffers from their mid-life crisis aren't buying HDs since they didn't bother to even remotely shed that mid-life crisis male image back in the 2000s.
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