What modifications are currently popular, and what parts would you like to have custom made?

I'm researching a new business venture manufacturing custom car and bike parts.

This site was recommended to me at Calne Bike Meet

Many thanks in advance

Well you'd be up against the might of Touratech and Wunderlich for a start who make everything from fancy GPS mounts, racks, panniers, light bars, levers, footrests and so on through to pressed aluminium tat that is no use to anyone. Have a look at those company's sites for an idea of what people bolt on to their bikes anyway.

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You're best aiming your business at those who ride the £10,000 + pretend adventure bikes. Make stuff for the big GS's, 1200 Tenere, KTM 990 etc.

These guys love nothing more than spending vast amounts of cash on things they don't really need which make their massively overweight and inappropriate bikes even more ridiculous.

However, the competition out there is VAST and experienced. Have a look through the Touratech catalogue and copy what they sell and see if you can make it cheaper. They sell mostly mass produced Chinese shit which is HORRENDOUSLY marked up in value. That's where your market is.


If you aim at the proper overland travellers though, you're going to struggle. They prefer to make stuff themselves, bodge what they already own or just get on with what they have.

Unless you can make something very useful and unique. But unless you ride and travel yourself, you're going to need to do some extensive market research.

Good luck.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

It'll be a tough crowd on here. Most people want to buy petrol and tyres.

The Adventure bike rider site may be more receptive. Even the likes of the CB500X look to have billet ashtrays and goodness what else available pretty much as soon as they are launched.

If its a case of trawling for specific design issues or unobtainable parts, some of the single model sites could be useful, but as Ted and Reggie have noted, for every one who'll buy a thing to keep the whatsit out of the doo-dah, ten will just tape it up.

Can you do a thing for a Moto Guzzi Small block that'll stop my pipe going out on the motorway?

Good Luck with the venture.

Andy

Thanks for the help with this so far.

Dealing with china carries with it many hidden costs.

Distribution

Imagine paying someone at the minimum wage to unload a shipping container full of M10 nuts (for the purposes of this discussion). Then take the customers order for 5 and pack/post them to the customer. Thats probably a minimum of 15 minutes work. Because the customers address and order is individual it still requires manual input. Automated distribution require big capital investment and often in reality costs much the same as employing people due to the finance repayments.

Communication

The next hidden cost of dealing with china, is the language barrier. With European languages you can get away with a dictionary and a popular phrase book. The Chinese use around a page to express one line of English. For both sides to understand each other a skilled translator needs to be employed.

If you want some examples, try looking at how ebay items are described by the Chinese, then try looking at people in the UK blindly repeating the Chinese descriptions. Then imagine trying to have a technical discussion with them about dimensions or performance in a given application.

Conclusion

To put things in context, I could manufacture those 5 nuts in around half an hour. Because im the taking and dispatching the order, I don't have those distribution and communication costs to deal with. If I have the materials in stock, then I can get on with that pretty quickly at a similar cost to that of the Chinese produced goods with lots of glossy retailing.

Have a look at Migsel, Rugged Roads and Zen Overland. They are small manufacturers making adventure bike parts that are mostly pretty useful. Eg the rack on my bike is by Rugged Roads- it's along the same lines as the Touratech jobbie but is just a little bit better thought out- it's bigger for a start. My Migsel GPS mount is a work of genius and so much simpler than the TT one, although it doesn't have the option to lock, but hey, those big pockets in adventure styled jackets take a GPS.

PS my bike has Touratech racks which are extremely well made, but don't tell Ted

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Ooh... bitchee!

One needs to attend just a single Touratech event to see the line up in the car park.

It's like you've just gate crashed a Tory Stockbrokers convention.

And there's a reason that Touratech only aim their products at a certain rider/bike combinations.

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

There’s an echo in here.

As a business I think this is a tough market or possibly two. On the one hand we have what for want of a better description (and to wind Ted up) I’ll call the “Demokratik Peoples Riders”/market 1. These are the guys buying petrol and tyres and carrying their stuff in a duct taped bin liner or a hemp sack with hand painted flowers. Then there is what I will call (because it made me smile) the “Tory Stock Broker”/market 2. There is a huge overlap as the some of the market 2 guys do get a bit of holiday.

Market 2 has the spending power, is larger because you don’t need a year off work to join and is in many ways less demanding. Market 2 however feeds to some extent off Market 1. Someone writes a blog where their three thumb indicator switch system results in a walk across the Kalahari (or a trip on the AA van in Surrey) and the market wakes up. The manufacturer who comes up with a laser cut Titanium extra thumb and matching switch cover has a product. Market 2 will buy it because it engages them with their interest. Market 1 will copy it in sculpted epoxy glue and baleing wire or possibly might buy one or two. The Touratechs of the world will be there with something similar, splitting the market almost instantly.

Market 1 people will however then go out and use it to destruction. If this hacks them off because the manufacturer didn’t UPS one to them, they will blog it and market 1 will stop buying. This is a rather classic fashion cycle, but speeded up by the interweb. Anyone who was making aluminium boxes in the late 90’s for example better have now added a soft bag range or got out of the market because we all know Zega boxes leak and leave grey crud on your best shirt and break your leg if drop them on yourself.

IMHO you need to find the niche, get in quickly with a few market 1 guys in order to ride the market 2 wave and then move on. I don’t know what the niche is that a metal cutting company could get into. I fear it is highly model specific. Think Tourateck yellow bits, things to move exposed sensor etc?

From a previous, similar contribution

https://sites.google.com/site/pooratrek/moto-guzzi

Andy

So basically I have to sponsor market one with free parts in exchange a good review that market 2 will read.

Sounds about right yeah.

Give it to people who will use it but not pay for it for exposure and advertising.

That will make people who won't really use it pay for it.

Got it ?


The big companies like BMW, touratech etc do A LOT of sponsoring and marketing. For example, BMW will put on big adventure tours to push their new 'adventure bikes'. They did it with the F800GS Adventure.

What you will see in the magazines and photo shoots is big smiles on people with muddy BMW's looking like they're just conquered the world.

What you will never see is the ten vans which followed that trip full of spare bikes, spare parts, trained technicians etc.

Touratech do a lot of the same. They know that 99.9% of the people who buy this 'adventure' equipment will NEVER use it or test it. So they make it cheap and crap. Touratech stuff is mostly SHIT. I used to fit it to bikes for a living. Some things are okay but mostly is cheap Chinese made crap help together with zipties and old cheese fasteners.

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

From my point a view it would be cheaper to engineer the quality into the parts rather than supply a support crew

Oh, there's loads of us on here who'll give whatever bits you produce a thorough field test - just to help with product development you understand

New models could be a key. Get a "test ride" on a new bike the day they come out and have a metal bracket to replace a nasty plastic looking one, protector for the exposed whatsit etc. before TT do. You'll need to hang about on the single marque chat rooms to see what annoys.

The Bonneville Scrambler for example used a round front brake reservoir the polishers hated. I thought it was great that the caps looked interchangeable front and rear. The rear brake was also mounted below the disk to act as a collector for tree stumps. There was money to be made in brackets to mount a standard Bonneville reservoir and move the calliper above the swing arm.

Andy

I'm happy to do stuff like that, are there any journalists or someone else who could right some reviews for me afterwards?