Victory Offers Online Customization
September 21, 2006
budlight
Victory Motorcycles, a Subsidiary of Polaris Industries, is now offer online customization until October 31. Victory’s website now lets you modify to your hearts desire any of four models. They have teamed up with legendary bike builders Arlen and Cory Ness, to let you create the right bike for you starting around 16 grand. I think this is more of a publicity stunt as they are requiring you to create an account before you can even start customizing.
While this idea is by no means novel it might just help them to sell more bikes. The reason the other major manufacturers are scared to do this is because it cuts out your dealer network. Victory, however doesn’t have as strong of a dealer network to damage(most Polaris dealers in my experience don’t end up keeping the Victory line and look upon it as more of a burden than a reward). Another problem I see with online ordering, is where do you get parts for that bike and how do you know what model it is. When the consumer is the one building his own custom bike he is normally of the mindset to be able to make something work and fix and take care of his own issues. However, an internet consumer isn’t as likely to be able to resolve small problems or to find non standard replacement parts.
