Quote:
|
Its my understanding that a contaner of bikes where locked up in customs becuse of paper work issues, and not sent to dealers. Big loss of money for Dixie. And is this why there calling it Quits.
|
dgrewe, without this turning into one of those "the past sucked" threads... I think that is what Steve and the factory are trying to figure out how to eliminate.
Steve, correct me if I have my facts in a wad here.
This has been a problem since waaaay back. All the importers have always tried to keep a "just in time" inventory so they don't get swamped warehouses. This means they only order bikes when dealers order them.
Bikes come late in October after the dealer meeting pre-orders, sit in customs until November and get to dealers finally in mid December. Then another container comes in January, out of customs in February and no one wants to buy them by March since everyone is waiting for the July announcements of next years models.
One large initial shipment in August (before the Spaniards take their 3 week "holiday") of 500 bikes would be ready for dealers to sell in September.
I like the combine dealer orders with Canada idea. But, do the Canadians get the US spec bike, or does the US get the European spec bike? Do they come into Canada first or the US? Questions, questions.
European spec EC's have never really done all that well south of the 49th parallel and West of the Canary Islands either. (I actually had a few Europeans buy XC's and DE's from me and I shipped them
back to Europe for them. Sold a few DE's in Canada too.)