William Herbert Davidson, son of William A. Davidson, one of the original founders of Harley-Davidson, was born in 1905.
He attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating with honours in business studies, and joined the family business in 1928. Instead of assuming a managerial position, he started his career on the shop floor and worked his way up the ranks of the company. He became a foreman, and then worked as manager in a variety of departments before becoming president of Harley-Davidson in 1942.
Davidson headed Harley-Davidson at a time when competition from foreign manufacturers began to put a strain on the their market share. He remained as president after the recreation company AMF purchased it. Conflicts with AMF’s strategy and difficult market conditions led to Davidson’s resignation in 1973.
We are all still using Otto’s four stroke from the 19th century…!
The new Harley CEO is Arty Starrs, who has taken over from ze sacked German woke bloke Jochen Zeitz. Similar to AMF, Arty (I assume it’s a trendy form of Arthur) comes from a Sports entertainment company Topgolf (whatever that is) and before that Pizza Hut.
He has a bit of a rep for getting companies into good order before selling them or moving on.
I think Harley have sold off 10% of shares to raise capital (as they are a bit short) to allow Arty to do his thing but also to bring out a new cheap small capacity machine.
Greta Tunberg and cheap shite bikes may see the end of Otto’s invention for the hoi polloi.
2024 Operating income down to $417M - a drop of 46% on the year
2025 Global registrations down by 28% in the first half of this year
The share value has been falling for the last couple of years and it aint looking better this year.
Maybe it was go woke, go broke as traditional Harley riders turned to Indian.
Or maybe their dying off older richer customer base isn’t being replaced by a new getting older richer customer base.
Or maybe their over designed chromed bikes are just too rich for anyone.
The numbers in the bank look pretty good in isolation but if they’ve had to sell shares to raise capital for new projects then they’d better be banking on a sure thing. 'Cause the live wire wasn’t.
It’ll be interesting to see what Arty comes up with.
Probably all of the above when it comes to the underlying cause of their current difficulties. I certainly wouln’t like to see them go under or (possibly worse) lose their identify. Which would probably kill them off, anyway.
