FortNine
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2020–2025
14:12 · 5M views · May 17, 2020
FortNine explains how Harley-Davidson ended up in decline, from a narrow lifestyle niche and an aging customer base to the pandemic hitting a company already in trouble.
Recommended as an entertaining overview of Harley's decline and as a case study in selling a lifestyle rather than a product.
5 comments from Hacker News
You are correct. This very entertaining 11 minute video from Fortnine (still one of the best channels on YouTube) does a great job explaining exactly how HD wound up where they are today: this video
It's nuts, right? I mean, I ride, but I know plenty of folks who are subscribed to the F9 Youtube channel who don't just because so much of the content they do scratches nerdy itches. Some of my favorites, in case anyone's interested: * Ryan's periodic "check out this weird bike from the past" clips are always great, but I really LOVE the one about the Honda Rune: [LINK] * Their "trilogy" of sorts about Harley, and the hows and whys of their odd and honestly self-defeating decisions, are all great, but my favorite is the one that compares an Indian Scout to its then-corresponding Harley model; the Indian made 43% more power, and it's all down to Harley's genuflection at "tradition". [LINK] The other two are "why millions ride HD" ( [LINK] ), which kinda lays the background for the tradition at work in the aforementioned video; and "How HD killed itself" ( this video ), which is more about their demographic problem. * They did a "how to deal with dealers" video that is really a thinly veiled tribute to a particularly excellent and longstanding dealership, which is just lovely: [LINK] * And my personal favorite is the FANTASTIC film homage built into Ryan's vid about the Ducati Desert X, which he ended up buying: [LINK]
That's because the company started dying longer ago. Their stock price today is around 30$. In the early 2000s it was around 90$. Also, like the other comment mentioned, HD has been playing a lot of financial tricks over the last 20 years to prevent the stock price from declining (e.g. buy backs to artificially inflate stock price, take a look at the number of outstanding shares: [LINK] , a reduction from 280 million to 150 million in the 2005-2019 time period). EDIT: I recommend this video for a summary.
Harley Davidson is on the ropes long term though. They made the mistake of pitching their entire product at a very singular niche and the people in that niche are now getting older and in many cases too old to ride. Fantastic overview here this video Simply put HD make nothing that appeal to rides my age (41) and younger.
> I've always got the impression from their marketing material that the Europeans are selling a product, whereas the Americans are always selling a lifestyle. A lot of people say the same thing about Harley-Davidson motorcycles. FortNine had a video made the rounds a little while ago: * this video