Not an insider, but I ask questions before starting a relationship with a company.
Hmmm. We had the opportunity to support dimsport and the rapid bike products and we're a bit busy to take on something that big right now.
You know... I'm really bummed about the Ducati EFI market in the US. No one seems to ever get it right. It is as though the manufacturers come here looking for importers or dealers and go about it all weird. Like they don't understand the US market at all. From my observation, many Italian manufacturers want you to pay up front for tons of product and then they're not too excited about follow up support. Kinda like what I read out of moto-us's story.
Every time I have inquired with various industry folks about efi solutions for Ducatis, I'm left with the feeling they do not want a network of small local shops pushing their product and prefer to have 1 to 5 heavily invested dealers. This is totally backwards to how the US market works. The US is too big for the small approach. Have big importer who doesn't retail to the public (but most foreign manufacturers are too greedy not to) and then dedicate their efforts to dealer support. Then they end up with a vast number of local points of resale for their brand.
When you shun the local small dealers, then they are against your product and won't mention it at all. And if inquired about, they will dismiss it. Why? Because it's not easy for the local guys to get it, sell it, support it, etc. What good is the best device in the universe if the local dealer only makes $20 or $40 on its sale and they have to put a lot of effort into its support?
6 or 7 years ago, I wanted to sell FIM to folks, but the market was setup in such a way that only BCM could actually make enough money doing it that it was worth the effort. So people asked me for FIM and I simply referred them to BCM. The *one* time I didn't there was zero% dealer margin for me. I did it anyway, as it was part of a huge order and it made a great difference to my customer if there was any way I could get it for him and save him the aggro of buying it. And then the part was an out of box failure. I just pass the inquiry to BCM asking them to handle it and the customer then said he understood why I recommended against FIM at the time.
Ah well. No real info from my post other than I'm bummed that there is drama and I'm bummed for customers who end up negatively effected by this situation. Hopefully, desmoworks (the US importer??) and DimSport will be in a position to make good for all the RB equipped riders and the next thing we hear is how awesome it all works.
We all just want to: [moto]
