What makes a motorcycle shop tick...

There are three kinds of shops, whether dealer or independent. At the lowest level are those shops that thread Imperial bolts into metric holes, wrap Teflon tape on a part instead of fitting a new o-ring, and generally get by with as hacked a repair as possible, through ignorance or stupidity or both. Dealer or independent, this one is doomed to fall sooner or later, and history has shown they do indeed crash and burn. The next level is that shop that pretty much gets by without doing exceptional work, but just adequate. There are a lot of these folks, the middle of the bell curve, as they say, and in my own business I battle with them every day. Then, dealer or independent, there are the standouts, those that garner trust and admiration for their work and for their dealings with their customers. The difference between the dealer and the independent is in the lower two classes, as at the top there isn't much difference except in marketing, and we'll look at that uniqueness in a minute. They're both excelling. At the bottom and middle however things are very different. An independent who is operating at the bottom level dies off pretty fast. An indendent's lifeblood is its service reputation, thus a bad reputation dooms them. A dealership at the bottom however can go on for a very long time. Its service reputation has only a small impact on its business, which remember is really all about new unit sales. In fact the fortunes of the lousiest dealers are in a sense subsidized by their host OEMs, much like GM and the federal government, and thus they are somewhat insulated from the effects of their own incompetence, again like GM. There was a Honda dealer in a metro area of L.A. once whom we used to joke about that he got his customers off the bus stop. He pissed off so many he had no customer base, every customer was a new one, and most were immigrants from outside the country and therefore were not forwarned! The middle class of shop, dealer or independent, is fairly comparable. They're doing okay, probably losing customers but also gaining them. The middle tier independent will probably crash before the middle tier dealer does, for reasons already noted, otherwise they're similar. At the top level however, while both top dealer and top independent enjoy huge success, how and why is worth considering. Later.