The Harley Davidson Experience

Harley-Davidson, you can call it a “machinery manufacturer” (“guys who make motorcycles”). I call it …

Well …

A Harley-Davidson executive (not the editor of Motorcycle Management) says,

“What we sell is the ability for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him.”

“It took me years and years,” Harley CEO Rich Teerlink explains over dinner, “to convince Wall Street that we’re not a ‘machinery manufacturer’ but a ‘lifestyle company.’” When Mr. T made that “sale” in lower Manhattan his market capitalization increased by … $10B or so.

Harley sells … EXPERIENCES! How else can you explain their third quarter of 2004 results: HD’s revenues were a scant 2 percent of General Motors’; their profitability was … 50 percent of GM’s!

Harley-Davidson sells … EXPERIENCES!

And the bigger point: SCINTILLATING EXPERIENCES … are the … ulTimaTe “professional service.”

Mr. Pine and Mr. Gilmore provide us as referent the … “experience ladder.” “Raw materials” are the bottom rung. Then “goods.” Then “services.” And then at the apex …EXPERIENCES.

I like that. And I also wish to alter it.

I’ll keep raw materials, goods, services. Then I want to add “SOLUTIONS” as the next step up the ladder. (The IBM, UPS, GE bit.) And then, indeed, we can move to Messrs. Pine and Gilmore’s … EXPERIENCES.

Quoted from Tompeters!