From the dealer’s Perspective
MOST MODERN COMPANIES ARE set up and run around something called ‘a business model’ and for many it’s a good thing to work from – a plan – but not necessarily if your line of trade is old motorcycles and their spare parts.
To succeed in this rather specialised game you’ll be needing an innate knowledge of the subject matter, a decent business brain, the ability to move with market trends and be pretty good at spinning a large number of plates at any one time, whilst answering emails and dealing with customers.
Selling old motorcycles isn’t the most straightforward of exercises and it’s unimaginably difficult to predict what will sell and what won’t; therefore a good and varied stock should aid sales.
CBG spent a day with David Wise, proprietor of Moto and his son Henry looking at the classic market and some of the bikes available. Perhaps one of the most surprising things is that the business isn’t automatically rammed with high end, big money bikes; but then again the likes of BSA Catalina scramblers, sand cast Honda CB750s and Munch Mammoths have a nasty habit of potentially tying up lots of money for long periods of time.
