History has a habit of repeating itself. HOW many times do we have to watch the same horror film??.
My mate Martin owns and runs Alf England in the Midlands. When I got to know him and his brother Dave they had a small shop selling Honda motorcycles in Bedworth and Dad Roy was in charge with Maurice, and Eileen cooked the books. Their bread and butter in those days was the Honda range of small scooters the C50, C70 and C90s which were fantastic commuter bikes and sold like hot cakes. Fast forward to today and Alf England is now a Yamaha Premier Dealer in an amazing premises on Leicester Road in Bedworth, the shop used to be a Vauxhall car dealer so it super spacious and has a huge front window onto the main street.
Over the years we often chat about business and the motorcycle market and stuff and several times over recent years we have seen a car dealership group decide that they can do the same thing with motorcycles totally NOT understanding that the 2 businesses are totally different cos a car is a necessity (to go to work) whereas a bike is passion.
I remember Motorcycle City and the Carnell Group, back in 2013 they were retailing 10 percent of the new bikes sold in the UK, see this article in Motorcycle News. But they went from boom to bust in less then 20 years as they simply grew too fast and lost control of the business. So fast forward to 2024 and what do we see?? The Completely Motoring Group which started as a car business and then dived into the motorcycle market with the Completely Motorbikes chain that purchased several innocent UK motorcycle dealerships.
What they did next was dodgy, to say the least. They opened a massive warehouse on an industrial estate in Hinckley (in the Midlands) and called it a distribution centre so they presumably paid rates as a warehouse whereas they actually sold bikes from this site. Mmmm. They had a fleet of vans so where they had an authorised dealership (say for new Yamaha bikes in Gloucester) they would simply move the new bike to Hinckley and sell it as if they were authorised to sell new Yamahas in the Midlands (which they were not). Even more dodgy. AND the stupid UK bike companies allowed them to get away with it probably cos they just wanted the sales so all of the authorised dealers followed the dealer rules and then lost the sales to these criminals. Sob.
And the news?? You guessed, Completely Motoring Group which includes Completely Motorbikes are now in the hands of the Administrators. WHAT a suprise (not).
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