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Royal Enfield Appoints New CEO

By Jensen Beeler 02/02/2011 1 Comment

The world’s oldest motorcycle brand is about to get some new blood, as Dr. Venki Padmanabhan has been named Royal Enfield Motors new CEO. Serving Royal Enfield for the past two years as COO under then CEO R.L. Ravichandran, Padmanabhan has a bevy of management experience, which has seen him serve as the Managing Director of Chrysler’s South East Asia Global Sourcing Office, along with other positions at General Motors and Mercedes-Benz. While Padmanabhan has been at Royal Enfield, the company has posted 21% growth in sales volume, 54% growth in sales turnover, and double-digit profitability (that’s the business equivalent to a triple-double).

Reporting to Siddhartha Lal, the Managing Director of Eicher Motors Limited (Royal Enfield’s parent company), we imagine Padmanabhan’s marching orders will be to continue the strong growth the company saw under Ravichandran, and to continue to expand into emerging markets, while solidifying Royal Enfield’s position in India against outside producers.

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Save the ‘Ring

By Jensen Beeler 12/27/2010 3 Comments

No, we’re not encouraging you to step away from any planned New Years Eve wedding proposals, but the Nürburgring Nordschleife does apparently need your help. Known throughout the motorsports community simply as the ‘Ring, the Nürburgring Nordschleife track plays host not only to car and motorcycle enthusiasts, but also serves as a formidable test track used by many OEMs when developing new vehicles (recently the track has also been a place for manufacturers to lay bragging rights for quickest lap times in sports cars).

It seems however that the ‘Ring, despite its popularity with track enthusiasts, is not the profitable endeavour that the German government thought it would be. Four years ago plans began to be implemented that would see other attractions added to the Nürburgring venue, which have reportedly done nothing to help boost the profitability of the track, and now in May of this year the ‘Ring was turned over to the same pair of businessmen responsible for that transformation, with the goal of boosting the track’s revenue, and that’s where the controversy starts.

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Add Another Chair to the Table – Harley-Davidson Creates Board Seat for Levi Strauss CEO

By Jensen Beeler 09/22/2010 30 Comments

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.

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Mission Motors Changes Management Line-up – Appoints Jit Bhattacharya as Interim CEO

By Jensen Beeler 02/11/2010 6 Comments

Mission Motors has announced today that they have replaced co-founder Forrest North in his role as company CEO. The move signals a change within Mission Motors that shows the company focusing on bringing products into production and putting them into consumers’ hands. In their announcement, Mission Motors’ Board of Directors have begun their search for a long-term CEO with experience in product development and automotive manufacturing, but in the interim the company will be headed by its current COO Jit Bhattacharya.

The transition, while seemingly drastic, is one that every startup must face as it moves from a visionary and industry challenging mindset to a functional and operational capacity. This movement in management is one that virtually all startups face at some point or another, and something we’ve talked about here in some detail in our “Tradition is not a Business Model” series, so it’s announcement at this point in time isn’t terribly surprising to this author, and storied lesson in entrepreneurship that transcends even into the motorcycle industry.

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Brammo Adds CIO To Executive Staff

By John Adamo 05/18/2009 1 Comment

Over the past few weeks Brammo Inc. has added some amazing talent to it’s executive staff as they prepare to of Toyota Financial Services. That is about all google turns up about Mr. Hom. Now that he is with Brammo, the EV king of social media, we have a feeling that will change. If Brammo stays true to form we should see a press release soon complete with twitter handle so you can congratulate Ron personally. Just keep it under 140 characters.

Source: Brammo

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Changing of the Guard for Harley-Davidson and MV Agusta Management

By Jensen Beeler 04/07/2009 1 Comment

As we noted late last week, Jim Ziemer, President and CEO of Harley-Davidson, will be leaving the Milwaukee company soon. Replacing him will be Keith E. Wandell, former COO of Johnson Controls. Along with Mr. Wandell, there is further shuffling and addition in the Harley ranks. Matt Levatich has returned from running MV Agusta, to become Chief Operations Officer. In turn, replacing Levatich at MV Agusta is the Italian Enrico D’Onofrio, former CFO at Ducati. D’Onofrio will take the position of Managing Director of MV Agusta. How about that for three letter bingo?

While we expect that these names have been gracing the lips of Board Members for some time, the announcement of their appointment happily coincides with harsh criticism made in the media of Harley-Davidson’s current financial problems, and general mismanagement. We can only hope that the timely appointments will also mean timely changes for Harley-Davidson.

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