Things looked bad for the Canadian motorcycle industry last spring. By April, most of the country was under some sort of lockdown, including many motorcycle dealerships.
Along with the general worry over the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on health and the economy, moto-industry insiders were specifically concerned over the lockdown timing.
Motorcycling is tied to the seasons in Canada. Even in British Columbia and southern Ontario, the warmest parts of the country, most riders put their bikes away in the fall and bring them out for spring – and spring is also the busiest selling season for new bikes, and new gear. Dealers feared the lockdown would torpedo that sales boost, and potentially put them out of business.
We did see sales flatline in April, but we didn’t see lots of dealers going out of business. What did happen was weird, and unexpected.
The Great Dirt Bike Sales Boom
As soon as they were allowed to re-open, a lot of motorcycle dealers got really, really busy. Most of them opened by June. And then, people started buying motorcycles, hard parts, aftermarket accessories, and gear.
You won’t get specific numbers from the industry’s big players. However, if you talk to enough dealers, salespeople, distributors, importers, and other insiders, you will hear two attitudes.
Some people are just blown away by the amount of business they did this year. Others are grateful for the sales success of 2020, but still see the year as a missed opportunity.
This is partly because sales didn’t immediately rebound across the board. Jacob Black of Kawasaki Canada says “small-displacement, off-road recreational vehicles were extremely popular in 2020,” although “as the year went on all of our product lines performed well.”
The other OEMs have a similar story. In its latest update, the Motorcycle & Moped Industry Council (MMIC) says dirt bikes did very well in 2020, while the Street category saw an 8.9% drop.
The MMIC divides dirt bike sales into Off Road Recreation, Mini Bike, and Competition classes. Compared to 2019’s January-November numbers, these sales categories were up 61%, 47%, and 32% respectively in 2020. The Dual Purpose class was up 34%.
It’s not complicated to see why this happened. With family trips canceled, parents wanted something else to do with their kids.
Dirt bikes and dual-sport motorcycles are affordable, and most Canadians aren’t far from off-road riding areas. Also, you don’t need a motorcycle licence to ride a dirt bike.
“Here in Canada, the robust response to the virus meant that a lot of training and licensing was delayed until late into the year, and that had an impact on sales as well,” says Black. With street licensing and road testing unavailable in many areas, thanks to DMV shutdowns, Canadians headed off-road.
Even with customers in dealerships, there were other problems to figure out.
Thanks to problems in the global supply chain, many dealers couldn’t get enough bikes or ATVs to meet demand (remember, ATV sales are also an important part of the dealership profit equation in Canada).
Parts and accessories supply chains were also disrupted, as COVID-19 restrictions meant reduced warehouse staffing in North America, and massive delays in shipping outside and inside the country.
Parts Canada staff told me they had round-the-clock shifts. With fewer workers allowed in the warehouse, due to social distancing regs, they worked overnight to fill orders in a timely fashion.
Some companies were unable to get parts, period.
“We saw the greatest impact on the SWM factory with it shutting down for the longest and when it did reopen the workforce returned in stages at a reduced capacity,” says Mike Wells of Motorsports Canada, which imports niche brands like CCM, SWM and Zaeta. “For months we were not able to get bikes or parts.”
Steve Howland of Beta Canada said the Italian factory only shipped about 60% of the bikes ordered for 2020, although they were able to keep the parts supply open. Once the factory started up again, Beta went directly to 2021 models.
“We had more than doubled our volume for July and August,” Howland says. “Every market was up everywhere for our dealer network. We sold 100% of everything that came in and none of those bikes are on dealers floors today.”
Overall, at end of November, the Canadian industry sold more bikes per month in 2020 than every month in 2019, except March and April. That sort of sales success was completely unexpected.
Dealerships might have been busy, but there were problems. As mentioned above, street bike sales slid almost 9%.
Cruisers, retros, and touring bikes seemed to perform the worst; they saw a July sales spike, but not to the extent that sport bikes did. Their sales were much closer to 2019’s numbers, or worse, for the rest of the selling season. Considering these are high-margin bikes, this is bad news for dealers.
The Industry Looks Forward
So, what’s next?
After pulling victory from the jaws of defeat in 2020, you would think the Canadian motorcycle industry would be extremely positive about 2021. But, even the people happiest about 2020’s rebound are cautious about next season.
Part of the reason is, nobody’s sure about Canada’s national economic recovery. Without getting into too many gory financial details, the basics are: there’s still no federal budget for 2020, the feds are running the largest deficit ever since World War II and the bailout money that flowed so freely through the early days of the pandemic is eventually going to run out.
Plus, practically speaking, thousands of Canadians bought new motorcycles in 2020, and aren’t likely to turn around and buy new ones for 2021. Industry insiders worry the market may be flooded with used bikes for sale next season, making it harder to sell new bikes.
The 2021 selling season is already setting up to be weird. The traditional mid-winter show season is canceled, meaning thousands of showgoers won’t be able to check out this year’s new machines.
The shows made it possible for a lot of riders to see bikes that might not otherwise be readily available in showrooms, so this may have an impact on sales. Riders are less excited to buy what they haven’t seen.
On the plus side for the industry, COVID-19 did force many dealers to evolve upward. Laura Lenko-Graham of Parts Canada says pandemic restrictions encouraged many dealers to move into e-commerce, after years of reluctance.
This might not make a huge impact on motorcycle sales, but it does mean there are more options for customers who want parts, accessories or other dealership stock. Future lockdowns are less likely to cripple the income stream.
Longer-term, the biggest question from 2020 may be, will the dirt bike sales boom result in an increase in new motorcycle enthusiasts? That’s certainly what happened in the 1970s and 1980s, but how does that work out in the Information Age?
“We feel very confident that the new participants to off-road riding are mostly here to stay at least for a few years,” says Beta’s Steve Howland. He guesses the industry will hold on to half of the newcomers for the long term, and he’s especially encouraged about the number of young riders whose parents bought mini-bikes for them in 2020.
But, like every other company, Beta is moving forward carefully, he says: “We are a small company, we do not make decisions on volume increases lightly. For now we have made modest changes to our forecast and asked the factory for additional units as quickly as possible. At the moment, demand remains very strong.”
Ask around, and that’s pretty much the message everyone else is preaching, too – optimistic, but very, very cautious.
What About Racing?
As for the road racing scene: Colin Fraser, Canadian Superbike czar, says series officials knew they were in trouble in early spring, when the series lost title sponsor Mopar, and it became obvious that group events would be banned for the summer.
But, racers still wanted to race, especially since 2020 the 40th anniversary of Canada’s first national superbike championship. So, Fraser and Co. did something really outside the box – they ran a superbike series stuffed inside the shell of a track day, with no spectators allowed.
For 2020, CSBK ended up with a two-doubleheader series, with trackday organizer Pro 6 running race weekends at Calabogie and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (aka Mosport).
All CSBK had to do was enforce the rulebook; Pro 6 took care of the logistics.
This was a clever tactic; Pro 6 already had the “track time during a pandemic” problem figured out, and CSBK has a long relationship with Pro 6, due to its role as a Dunlop distributor.
The four-race series was enough for the FIM to give its blessing on the Pro Superbike title, which Jordan Szoke took after his fourth undefeated season.
It’s his 14th Pro Superbike title in Canada. CSBK did not award any other titles this year, which means Sebastien Tremblay loses out on another Pro Sport Bike title due to circumstances outside his control – he won both 600 races, but didn’t get any hardware for it.
A Plan for 2021
Surprisingly, CSBK officials have already put together a plan for 2021’s racing season. There’s very little “wait and see” talk coming from the series. Of course, there are still details to be confirmed, but there’s a solid basic outline for the season.
Once again, CSBK plans to work with Pro 6, with the trackday organizers doing the logistical lifting and CSBK managing the series regulations. Currently, there’s a plan for CSBK races at Grand Bend, Calabogie, Shubenacadie, and Mosport, with the possibility of multiple visits to one or two of those facilities.
Notably, there is no race scheduled for Quebec, and none east of Ontario. While CSBK is a national series, it continues to be geographically limited, with three tracks in Ontario and one in Nova Scotia.
Of course COVID-19 hasn’t helped, but the cash-strapped finances of the Canadian racing scene are hampering CSBK from growing back to its old days of being a true cross-country series, with races from east to west coasts.
Still, the industry is getting ready to back up the 2021 race season.
“We’re in the process of organizing our programs, and we believe that the organizers come into the year having learned a lot from 2020,” says Jacob Black from Kawasaki (who also races in the Lightweight Sport Bike support series).
“The fact they got anything at all through the door in this season in and of itself is reason to have faith in the season to come. The uncertainty around spectators is a concern, but there is also a renewed appetite for non-Netflix entertainment. In short, if we can have spectators, this will be a banner year. If we can’t, it will still be a successful one.”
One other big surprise for 2021: In early November, CSBK announced it was going to support Pro 6 in creating a new regional roadracing series, based out of Calabogie. With SOAR and Super Series already running in Ontario, isn’t the landscape going to get crowded?
Maybe, but it’s likely Pro 6/CSBK are planning on developing Quebec’s roadrace scene with this new series, as French riders love Calabogie, and it’s not far from La Belle Province. This could actually be a big part of building a future for CSBK, even in a year of pandemic fallout, as Quebecois racers are important to the series continuing forward.
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