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Don’t adjust your computer screen, you’re at the right website…and no Harley-Davidson hasn’t taken over A&R, but the Milwaukee company certainly has been busy the past few weeks. To recap, Harley-Davidson recently agreed keep its Monemonee Falls and Tomahawk plants in Wisconsin after the labor unions agreed to workforce concessions (getting paid $215,000 a head for each laid off worker in the process) and the Wisconsin Department of Commerce handed out a $20 million tax break.

That victory was offset by Harley-Davidson getting dumped last month by long-time ad agency Carmichael Lynch, with a classic “it’s not you, it’s me” press release (which if high school dating us taught us nothing, means it really is YOU). Meanwhile this week, Harley was dumped in a different fashion when Interbrand, the world’s largest brand consultancy firm, dropped the Bar & Shield brand 22 places on its T0p 100 brands list, down to 97th, and devalued the Harley-Davidson brand by over $1 billion in brand equity. This is of course nothing compared to the coup de grâce, where Harley-Davidson sold MV Agusta for €1, after buying the bankrupt Italian brand for $100 million two years ago.

Hoping to right the ship, Harley-Davidson announced today that it has created a 13th Board of Directors seat, and filled it with Levi Strauss & Co. CEO R. John Anderson.

Brammo Inc. filed the appropriate forms with the SEC yesterday stating that it has raised $12.4 million in Series B funds, in what is still an open round of financing. Brammo hopes to raise a total of $30 million in the Series B offering, with the use of funds likely going towards expanding Brammo’s reach into the Asian and European markets, as well as building out the company’s product line into other target segments.

Also in the Form D filing with the SEC we get a glimpse of the people behind the company’s management, which includes a presence from Brammo’s initial investors Best Buy & the clean-tech venture capital group Chrysalix, as well as Brammo’s CFO Bruce Gilpin. New to the ranks is David Kurtz from Alpine Inc., an oil and gas exploration and development firm that is leading the Series B round with another firm that is so far unknown.

Through an Enterprise Zone tax credit, the Wisconsin Department of Commerce has handed Harley-Davidson a $25 million tax break for coming to terms with its labor unions in the company’s Tomahawk and Monemonee Falls production facilities. In a move that saw , the Bar & Shield brand has disclosed to the SEC that the agreement will save the company $50 million in annual operating expenses, but not before the company writes off a one-time charge of $85 million in restructuring costs, which includes the severance packages for laid off workers.

Interbrand, the leader in brand consultancy, ranks the Top 100 brands each year according to their brand value, with brands like Google, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds usually taking the top honors. Interbrand’s method looks at the ongoing investment and management of the brand as a business asset, and then assigns a dollar value to that asset.

In motorcycling no brand is worth more than the Bar & Shield of Harley-Davidson, and the Milwaukee-based company is an Interbrand 100 regular. Dropping nearly 24% of its brand value this year (the most out of all the Interbrand 100 companies), Harley-Davidson fell from 76th on 2009 rankings to 98th in 2010, losing over a billion dollars in brand value in the process.

Harley-Davidson has just announced that it will be giving out a 10¢/share dividend for the third quarter of 2010. Being paid on October 15th to anyone who owns Harley-Davidson stock (NYSE: HOG) on October 1st, 2010, holders of HOG common stock will get a chance to be rewarded for investing in the Milwaukee brand. It’s not clear at this time if Harley-Davidson intends to keep the cash dividend for future quarters, or if this is one-quarter only event.

With HOG currently trading at $28.43/share, this announcement means essentially an automatic 1.2% investment gain for stock owners, however contact your financial advisor before placing any orders…you shouldn’t take stock advice from a motorcycle blog.

It’s hard to make strategic business partnership announcements sound sexy. Between all the hyperbole about how two companies are going to shift the industry paradigm and synergize the supply chain matrix, the average consumer’s eyes glaze over, and drool starts seeping out from the corners of their mouths. So bear with us on this one, because the announcement (or is the term Brammouncement?) of Brammo and Flextronics is an important one not only for the Ashland based company, but also for the electric motorcycle industry as a whole.

Some of the biggest problems facing any startup in the motorcycle industry are distribution and assembly. With the demand for electric motorcycles being a global issue, electric motorcycle startups, which are based primarily in the United States, have to not only grow their businesses domestically, but perhaps more importantly they need to foster a presence abroad in foreign markets.

With Europe and Asia easily out-pacing the demand in the US for electric transportation, an issue of contention for cash-strapped startups like Brammo has been how to grow globally and effectively with their limited budgets. The solution in this case for Brammo, is partnering with Flextronics, and using their scalable global production facilities.

Workers at Harley-Davidson’s Menomonee Falls plants have caved to Harley-Davidson’s labor restructuring ultimatum today, voting to approve a seven-year labor contract that would see 275 jobs cut and a two-tiered workforce implemented in the company’s Wisconsin-based production plants. The vote comes after Harley-Davidson threatened to move its Wisconsin production outside of the state (Kansas City being one of the alternatives), which would see the unions losing its entire 1,350 member workforce.

Erik Buell Racing has quietly been “tipping” sites off to the fact that Buell’s record label, Rat Pak Records, is selling t-shirts for a Erik Buell Racing 1190RS motorcycle. What is the 1190RS you ask? “The 1190RS will be the new street bike from Erik Buell Racing! The design is currently in the pre-production / testing stage and is not yet available for public sale,” says the website (Asphalt & Rubber brought you the first teaser of the 1190RS way back in July). However, a video of the pre-pre-production 1190RS will be up on September 14th, officially making this a teasing of a teaser video (are you still with us?).

Before you Buell fans start getting all in a tizzy, we have to break the news that the hype being generated about the EBR 1190RS is more about raising money for Erik Buell Racing, than announcing an upcoming motorcycle. Erik Buell & Co. have been making the rounds to investors looking for capital to build-out its production line, reportedly with little success. With a company built around a “never say die” attitude, Erik Buell hasn’t given up looking for cash (buy more t-shirts people!), and the 1190RS announcement is a way for EBR to show that there is a market demand for its motorcycles. Once the market is proven to exist, EBR is hoping investors will then open up their wallets.

After putting Wisconsin on notice that it was shopping around for other places to build its motorcycles, Harley-Davdison has reached a tentative agreement with local labor unions that would keep the Bar and Shield brand in The Cheese State. Harley and union officials have not disclosed the terms of the deal, but both the Harley-Davidson and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers are recommending approval of the deal. The terms of the deal are expected to be released next week, so union members can vote on the contract on September 13th.

UPDATE: Cycle News has indeed closed its business doors.

Rumors are rife that Cycle News has closed it’s doors after nearly 50 years of motorcycle print publishing. Once the pinnacle publication of the industry, Cycle News has slowly seen its readership get eaten up by conglomerate driven publications like Cycle World, Motorcyclist, and Sport Rider…and of course web-based motorcycle news sites like yours truly. As Superbike Planet’s Dean Adams puts it, “if true, this is truly the end of an era for the motorcycle publishing industry,” we couldn’t agree more.

Carmichael Lynch, the ad agency behind Harley-Davidson’s “Screw it, Let’s Ride” campaign, has just announced that it will be parting ways with the Milwaukee motorcycle manufacturer. In a pair of “it’s not you, it’s me” press releases, the two companies, which have partnered together for the past 31 years, cite different reasons for their mutual departures.

Harley-Davidson CMO Mark-Hans Richer said in the company’s statement that, “our strategies have been moving away from a singular consumer target and a one-size-fits-all agency solution. Rather than accept this new reality, Carmichael Lynch chose a different path and we respect that.” Meanwhile according to Advertising Age,  President of Carmichael Lynch Doug Spong said that, “Our agency leadership came to the consensus that we’ve taken the Harley-Davidson brand as far as we can. It’s in our best interest to part ways.”

We just think that Harley-Davidson is on Step 1 of our three part strategy on How to Save Harley-Davidson.