A robust foundation for the futureThe mountain of market data that has been released since the last edition of IDN - data for the full year 2015 - makes good reading, at last! The good news is that with ACEM confirming EU motorcycle registrations growth of over 10 percent, and this being the second year of growth, we can now confidently say that the demand for PTWs is finally headed in the right direction.
That said, since the market's nadir in 2013 was a "tale of two halves" (the first six months of market decline was followed by the first indications that the bottom of the curve had been reached), Antonio Perlot of ACEM is right to suggest that the market still needs to wait until mid-year 2016 before getting too excited.
The significance of that will be that if the early results being seen already for this year continue, then by July this year we will have seen, or should have seen, some 36 months of stability and steadily accelerating growth, since registrations reached their low-point in the summer of 2013.
Although the pattern so far has been far from universally positive everywhere, with some markets still seeing monthly or quarterly fluctuations in 2015, and some (France and Austria for example) appearing to be lagging behind the rest of the EU, overall we are in a better place now than at any stage since the start of the downturn in 2008. Although markets such as France and Austria appear to be locked into their own cycle and trail, with the recovery being seen elsewhere by two or three years, at least the trends there are also now positive - by the end of 2015 both markets appeared to have reached or were close to reaching their own low-points.
Of course while good news of this kind is much needed, the context in which it needs to be analysed is of the utmost importance. The wider economic indicators, globally, aren't universally positive at this time - there is much talk of softening consumer demand worldwide and signals that more economic instability could be only a matter of months away.
Indeed, though we have seen aggregate growth in new motorcycle registrations in the EU of nearly 20 percent in the past two years, that means we have still lost more than 40 percent of a market that in 2007 was at peak-cycle only in the context of another decline that had set in at the end of the last century.
As BMW Motorrad supremo Stephan Schaller was careful to point out in his keynote speech at the ACEM conference in September last year, ours remains an industry that, in total PTW terms, has lost half of its sales in less than a decade, and that if anyone thinks it will only take four or five years to get that back, or that it will look, smell and taste the same as it used to when and if it does come back, then they are likely to be very disappointed.
Demographic changes, social upheaval and continuing economic uncertainty mean that the motorcycle industry, dealers, manufacturers and parts, accessory and apparel vendors are all going to have to continue to work very hard indeed to sustain the present return to growth if the industry is to substantially eat into that market loss any time soon.
The motorcycle industry has some wonderful assets - ones that would be the envy of many consumer markets - the long-term passion and commitment of its hard-core customer base, the marketability of its product offerings (their "sexiness"), and the resulting lifestyle options they give, the increasing recognition that two wheels are good for urban mobility and potentially better for the environment than most other motorised alternatives - all these are "good things", but almost above all the market's ability to innovate its way into a viable future and respond quickly to public taste and opinion makes our industry unique among specialty leisure and transport spending choice options.
Innovation was the theme of last year's ACEM conference, and that has always been a hallmark of the motorcycle industry throughout its history. It has never stood still - it has always responded to consumer needs and to technology.
In the course of the thirty years up to the recent downturn the industry changed completely - it saw what we now refer to as the "Japanese superbike revolution", it saw the advent of ever more stringent regulations, the development of technology such as fuel injection and the use of ever lighter materials - all of which resulted in the market of the 'naughties' being unrecognisable from the market of the fifties, sixties and seventies.
So too the "lost decade" of the downturn has seen radical changes in consumer attitudes towards transport in general and to the expectations they have of the motorcycle ownership and riding experience.
In just the same way that the protests of 'Detroit' over laminated windshields, seat belts and roll cages were eventually consigned to the dustbin of naivety, so too the riders entering the market now are concerned about safety, are concerned about environmental footprints and are concerned for their creature comforts and the ergonomics of the products they are being invited to buy - in a way that was unheard of thirty years ago.
There is no doubt that our industry can and will embrace these changes as opportunities, it is already doing so, but let nobody think that continuing to do so will be an easy ride, and let nobody think that we have any kind of divine right to success.
All success is hard earned. The turn-around we have seen so far has involved most businesses in considerable pain and much re-building of their product offerings, whether it be motorcycles or parts and accessories. It has seen dealerships - franchised and independent - having to endure a decline that was out of tune with the years of experience they had and hard work that had been put in, and there is more of that ahead for all concerned.
However, an aggregate growth of nearly 20 percent in two years is a robust foundation for the future.
