Also in Patriot over the weekend. They're my stomping grounds. I walk in and see my #1 salesman polishing a bike. I ask him how's it going and he says, "There's a lot of people kicking tires but I need to sell a bike." So, the misses picks up a '10 SG Trike. I think I made his day. Made the misses' day too. Now that part was sweet!

 

I'm sure th economy has made things worse, but this is the slow period anyways, as far as sales go. At the shop, the only people we would normally see this time of year, are tourists, but between gas prices and lousy weather, we're not seeing many of them either.

 

Last week at local dealer I was the only customer and no sales people except
for one sales girl and she didn't even know what model bike I was looking at.

 

I have stopped into a few dealers here in Northern Cal over the last couple of weeks and fewer people mulling around than I can remember. Warranty mgr was working the reception counter when went into one of the local dealers. Sacramento HD announced closing their sister store in Elk Grove. Auburn, CA HD closed a couple of months ago.

A sign of the times

 

The dealership I work at is still doing decent business. Don't know how crowded it has been since I have been working over at our PDI/Collision center. All I know is at least halfthe bikes that come in have to be PDI'd ASAP since they are already spoken for. Gotta head over to the main store tommorrow to order some fork tubes for the Dyna I'm rebuilding. Be interesting to check out the traffic.

 

Call it Karma or whatnot, but the three local dealers here (all Rossmeyer's) have been slow for quite a while and somehow managed to get even slower. A couple months back when it wasn't so damn hot out, we were at the Ft. Lauderdale store on a Saturday around noon and we were the only bikes in the parking lot AND the only customers in the store. Fluke? Nope. Anytime we ride by those places you can see tumble weeds they're such ghost towns. A lot has to do with the people though, you just get treated like garbage it that attitude is coming home to roost.

However, central Florida where we bought our bikes (Seminole HD) is always busy every time we ride up there. Not hundreds of people or anything stupid, but clearly their way of treating people is keeping them afloat during these tough times and it shows when compared to what we've been seeing here for some time now.

I think the silver lining could be that bad businesses may die off while those that continued to make efforts in customer service will have earned the business they receive which could ultimately lead to a better balance between consumer affordability and merchant profitability. Wouldn't that be nice to have that again.

 

Thunderbird here in Central New Mexico is still packed everyday, but the next closest dealer is in Santa Fe 75 miles away. Today they had large groups from Switzerland and Ireland for fly and rides and a quite a few looking at bikes. parts accessories and gear was packed with shoppers too.

 

I got a card last week from Alamo City HD stating that they had 300 '09s in stock.

 

Local HD Dealer closed this week. Not a great loss though since their overall service sucked really bad and folks would rather drive another 50 miles out of their way to a dealer with a good rep.

 

Hotter than schit here. I enjoy the occasional 90* cool days though.