Ducati Thailand

[thaiguzzi]

Dunno whats going on, just a heads up.

Ducati Udon closed at the beginning of last month.

Always thought they did well sales wise, well stocked showroom, nearest Ducati dealer a fair way away.

Ducati Thailand are recommending all existing customers to go to their nearest dealer for servicing, either Buriram or Ubon...

 

Rumours going round that Ducati Chang Mai are closing.

Whats going on?

 

[findlay13]

Ducati in Ubon are tied in with "M2" which has Triumph ,MotoGuzzi, Stallions, and a couple of other Chinese brands,They are also tied in with MG cars.So as the  Confucious said "many brands make light work" Haha.No idea about anything going on though.

Maybe they weren't finacially viable enogh to stand alone ?

 

 

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by findlay13

[Kwasaki]

2 hours ago, findlay13 said:

Maybe they weren't financially viable enough to stand alone ?

Nail on the head or nut on the bolt. ????

[DILLIGAD]

Dunno whats going on, just a heads up.

Ducati Udon closed at the beginning of last month.

Always thought they did well sales wise, well stocked showroom, nearest Ducati dealer a fair way away.

Ducati Thailand are recommending all existing customers to go to their nearest dealer for servicing, either Buriram or Ubon...

 

Rumours going round that Ducati Chang Mai are closing.

Whats going on?

 

Ubon? (Maybe Udon?)

 

 

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[thaiguzzi]

1 minute ago, DILLIGAD said:

Ubon?


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Me testing a Desert Sled outside Ducati Udon Thani last year.

 

Anybody from the CM area confirm up there?

[DILLIGAD]

Ducati in Ubon are tied in with "M2" which has Triumph ,MotoGuzzi, Stallions, and a couple of other Chinese brands,They are also tied in with MG cars.So as the  Confucious said "many brands make light work" Haha.No idea about anything going on though.

Maybe they weren't finacially viable enogh to stand alone ?

 

 

 

Been in there many times and never seen a Duke. MV Agusta, yes but never a Ducati.

Is there a separate shop (like Vespa, Sisaket)

 

 

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[Damrongsak]

You farang no buy enough big baht bike.

[NCC1701A]

We have a beautiful Ducati dealership in Hua Hin that is a few years old. They expanded the size of their building but did not fill it with anything. Most likely Bangkok, Pattaya, CM and Phuket? will stay open.  

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by NCC1701A

[Nickymaster]

Sales are declining rapidly. Much more competition the last couple of years. Big big market is getting a bit saturated i guess. There are A LOT of second hand bikes for sale now.

 

"Ducati overall, down 16.1% last year, third lost in a row, selling less than one/third of 2015, despite the local plant"

https://motorcyclesdata.com/2019/07/20/thailand-motorcycles/

[eisfeld]

Ducati Khon Kaen is closed for renovations for 3 months. They tell people to go to Korat or Buriram for service which are 2xx km away. That makes servicing pretty much a day trip.

 

If you go to the official Ducati dealers page, you wont find any dealers listed for Udon or Chaing Mai anymore: https://www.ducati.com/ww/en/dealers/chiang-mai/ducati-chiang-mai

Though I'm not sure how up2date this page is as the dealer in Phuket is still the old one that closed a while ago when the Volvo owner took over. And I'd think in CM they would be able to turn over enough to make a profit, they also have collaborations with tour companies and CM after all is very big-bike popular. The Ducati CM FB page is only accessible if you have a FB account so I cant see it.

 

BMW to my knowledge still hasn't opened a new dealership for bikes in Phuket after the old one closed earlier this year.

 

Doesn't look good overall. With the looming recession we might see a few more dealers closing down. I don't think the manufacturers give all too big support to dealers who are struggling.

[thaiguzzi]

3 hours ago, Nickymaster said:

Sales are declining rapidly. Much more competition the last couple of years. Big big market is getting a bit saturated i guess. There are A LOT of second hand bikes for sale now.

 

"Ducati overall, down 16.1% last year, third lost in a row, selling less than one/third of 2015, despite the local plant"

https://motorcyclesdata.com/2019/07/20/thailand-motorcycles/

Mmm, interesting , thanx.

Concur, re S/H prices, some absolute bargains out there at the moment.

[findlay13]

The Enfield dealer in Ubon used to sell stallions also now I see a lot of small bikes [chinese knock offs of the honda cub I believe] looks like they're all struggling.I could possibly be mistaken about Ducati in Ubon.I know I've seen Guzzis there I thought Dukes too.MV Augusta? All those Italian bikes look the same to me,Hahaha.

 I think the theory is correct that they can't be  economically viable as stand alone dealers .

Edited July 26, 2019 by findlay13

[findlay13]

18 hours ago, DILLIGAD said:

Been in there many times and never seen a Duke. MV Agusta, yes but never a Ducati.

Is there a separate shop (like Vespa, Sisaket)

 

 

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There's a few together Triumph is alone then the  MG car dealership then another showroom all separate but all in the same M2 group

 

[eisfeld]

Yea the second hand market is surely also gaining traction in Thailand. There was a boom for a couple of years where factories were built here and prices came down a lot. The big bike market grew immensely. Now all this bikes who are a couple years old are ending up on the second hand market. The economy was on the up so people had money to spend. Now the economy is going down so more people want to (or have to) sell their toys but also buyers are more price concious so might go more for second hand which in turn reduces sales for dealers.

 

Being a dealer is not so super easy sometimes. You gotta have at least 5 staff (2 sales @15k, 2 mechanics @30k, 1 misc) which should get one already to over 100k THB expenses per month. Plus various others I'd say you need at least 200k to keep the lights on. Even if the dealer could get 1k THB per bike serviced for themselves, that's at least 5 bikes per day, every day. i think an average of 2-3 bikes per day is more realistic which would cover less than half of the fixed monthly expenses. How much does a dealer make on a bike sale? I don't really know but they probably have to sell 3-5 bikes a month. http://udon-news.com/en/company/ducati-udon-thani mentions 120 bikes sold a year or 10 every month. That should easily get them into the black numbers. But not sure from what year those stats are and what more recent numbers would look like. 10 a month does seem a bit high for a place like Udon imho.

 

If noone is ready to take over the dealership when one closes down, that means that the financials are just not that great. You have to invest quite a lot in the building and showroom bikes up front.

 

The company that ran Ducati Udon (Wattanayont Capital) is also running various other dealerships from Suzuki to Triumph so they are not a small company that's not able to handle their financials. Hmmm.

[findlay13]

35 minutes ago, findlay13 said:

The Enfield dealer in Ubon used to sell stallions also now I see a lot of small bikes [chinese knock offs of the honda cub I believe] looks like they're all struggling.I could possibly be mistaken about Ducati in Ubon.I know I've seen Guzzis there I thought Dukes too.MV Augusta? All those Italian bikes look the same to me,Hahaha.

 I think the theory is correct that they can't be  economically viable as stand alone dealers .

I'm wrong again .I think they were MVs I told you all Italian bikes look the same to me Haha. KTM also there maybe.

 

 

Edited July 26, 2019 by findlay13

[MartinL]

It's not just the more expensive bikes that are losing dealerships.

 

I'm a bit weird in this respect - I like Stallions bikes  !!

 

There used to a dedicated dealer in Khon Kaen, one in Mahasarakham plus generalist bike shops selling Stallions among other makes. KK and MSK have both closed. The small shops no longer sell Stallions.

 

Yamaha and Suzuki small bike dealers in my home town have closed after many years of operation. The Suzuki shop also sold big Kawasakis as an agent for the official Kawa dealer in Korat, who was the son of our Suzi dealer. The only single-make dealer left here sells small Hondas.

 

The KK Stallions shop seemed to do a roaring trade but it seems that single-marque dealers selling lots of small, cheap bikes with (I suppose) a small profit margin are no more viable than small sales volume, expensive bike dealers, at least here in Isaan.

[DILLIGAD]

I'm wrong again .I think they were MVs I told you all Italian bikes look the same to me Haha. KTM also there maybe.
 
 

Your right about KTM (for the time being!)


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[Nickymaster]

6 hours ago, thaiguzzi said:

Mmm, interesting , thanx.

Concur, re S/H prices, some absolute bargains out there at the moment.

Correct. Absolute bargains out there. Just came from Red Baron in BKK. Bikes with 2000km for only 65% of new price. You would be crazy to buy a new bike nowadays. I think they have like 100 used bikes in their showroom. Amazing deals. I recommend everybody who is looking for a bike to give them a visit.

[jackdd]

3 hours ago, eisfeld said:

Even if the dealer could get 1k THB per bike serviced for themselves, that's at least 5 bikes per day, every day.

I don't know in detail how it is at Ducati, but for my Triumph: Small service 2hrs labour at 700 = 1400 THB, big service 6hrs labour = 4200 THB (they always tell me that i can bring my own oil / parts, so i think they don't make much money out of the service parts). That's quite a bit more than you anticipated per service. But from visiting Triumph shops, as well as other big bikes shops (for example Ducati in Udon as well as Khon Kaen), i'm quite sure that these shops never ever have 5 bikes to service a day. Maybe one or two bikes to service per day in average. Most big bikes are just not ridden much, the 1 year service interval will usually be due before the kilometer based service interval.

 

I sent the manager of Triumph and Ducati Khon Kaen (same company as Ducati Udon) a Line message, but didn't get an answer yet, maybe i will get some more details.

Edited July 26, 2019 by jackdd

[alacrity]

Benelli have gone the same way. Little appreciation of biking heritage here. Loved my Hailwood replica.

[eisfeld]

49 minutes ago, jackdd said:

I don't know in detail how it is at Ducati, but for my Triumph: Small service 2hrs labour at 700 = 1400 THB, big service 6hrs labour = 4200 THB (they always tell me that i can bring my own oil / parts, so i think they don't make much money out of the service parts). That's quite a bit more than you anticipated per service. But from visiting Triumph shops, as well as other big bikes shops (for example Ducati in Udon as well as Khon Kaen), i'm quite sure that these shops never ever have 5 bikes to service a day. Maybe one or two bikes to service per day in average. Most big bikes are just not ridden much, the 1 year service interval will usually be due before the kilometer based service interval.

 

I sent the manager of Triumph and Ducati Khon Kaen (same company as Ducati Udon) a Line message, but didn't get an answer yet, maybe i will get some more details.

Right, so let's say they get 2500 THB per service on average. But like you said it's maybe 1-2 bikes per day so still far away from being able to cover the running costs of a shop. But at least 3-5 new bike sales per month should keep them afloat.

 

Interestingly I couldn't find what company is running Ducati Khon Kaen, they don't seem to list it anywhere. The domain used to belong to Ducatisti Co Ltd which is Ducati Thailand. Sure it's the same as Ducati Udon? Seems weird to me that they'd close the Udon branch while investing in the Khon Kaen one. Maybe consolidate costs? Then things would make more sense because all Udon customers would just move to Khon Kaen. But then again they should not do that in parallel...

[jackdd]

5 minutes ago, eisfeld said:

Sure it's the same as Ducati Udon?

Yes, sure, as i said, i know the manager.

Here the first hand info:

The company which was running the Ducati Udon and Ducati Khon Kaen is done with Ducati, they don't work with them anymore.

He told me there were too many problems with Ducati Thailand, i don't know the details. He told me the sales in Udon were not great, but ok, without the problems with Ducati Thailand they would have kept it.

Nobody bought Ducati Udon, so this gets closed.

Ducati Khon Kaen was sold to another company, they renovate it and will reopen when they are done.

Edited July 26, 2019 by jackdd

[thaiguzzi]

2 hours ago, Nickymaster said:

Correct. Absolute bargains out there. Just came from Red Baron in BKK. Bikes with 2000km for only 65% of new price. You would be crazy to buy a new bike nowadays. I think they have like 100 used bikes in their showroom. Amazing deals. I recommend everybody who is looking for a bike to give them a visit.

Not just Red Baron in BKK.

If you go on the net, the two main bikes for sale sites are Kaidee and SmokyBike.

A lot of the bikes on there are from 3 or 4 of the big BKK dealers, D Big Bike and Mib Super bike spring to mind.

Fantastic deals to be had.

Re, Ducati Thailand, i had a pm confirming CM will cease selling new bikes, and also there is friction and dissatisfaction between head office and independent dealer franchises regarding projected sales figures and actual realistic sales figures.

[eisfeld]

1 hour ago, jackdd said:

Yes, sure, as i said, i know the manager.

Here the first hand info:

The company which was running the Ducati Udon and Ducati Khon Kaen is done with Ducati, they don't work with them anymore.

He told me there were too many problems with Ducati Thailand, i don't know the details. He told me the sales in Udon were not great, but ok, without the problems with Ducati Thailand they would have kept it.

Nobody bought Ducati Udon, so this gets closed.

Ducati Khon Kaen was sold to another company, they renovate it and will reopen when they are done.

 

Thanks for the first hand information, very informative and interesting! If you hear more juicy details about the problems with Ducati Thailand my PM inbox is open 24/7 haha ????

 

It all makes sense now, again thanks for the first hand info.

 

Pure speculation on my part: Ducati Thailand put too many requirements on the dealership and maybe squeezed too much. This is not only happening with Ducati but some other brands, including japanese as well. Like I said, sometimes it can be tough to be a dealer as you're completely in the hands fo the franchise owner. It's not a business I'd like to get into in Thailand.

[eisfeld]

58 minutes ago, thaiguzzi said:

Re, Ducati Thailand, i had a pm confirming CM will cease selling new bikes, and also there is friction and dissatisfaction between head office and independent dealer franchises regarding projected sales figures and actual realistic sales figures.

Wow if even Ducati CM is closing (I'd assume they can sell quite a bit more than e.g. Udon) then something is really wrong with Ducati Thailand. Let's see how this plays out. A lot of Ducati owners will be pissed off due to having no local dealer anymore. Lets see how Ducati Thailand will handle this. I am sure they'll want dealers in these areas. I never heard anything bad about Ducati Udon/KK but I did about Ducati CM and also when visiting their showroom when I wanted to buy my Scrambler, I didn't have the greatest experience. Maybe it'll be for the better in the end? Time will tell. But with the problematic economy, it wont be an extremely lucrative prospect to become a dealer.

[findlay13]

On 7/26/2019 at 5:16 AM, Damrongsak said:

You farang no buy enough big baht bike.

Yep.I've bought a new Triumph Speedmaster in Australia with the Vin starting SMT so I assume  it's SpeedMaster the T meaning made in Thailand. With the exchange rate I paid about 480,000 bht about 3 months ago[currently about 460,000 I think] .They want 645,000bht in Thailand up from the intoductory price of 625,000bht. I'm wondering if they're using the Thai business model of " No customers? Put the price up."

The 650 Kawasaki I did buy there cost 240,000 bht which was  about  the Australian price at the time.If I was in Thailand full time I MAY have considered Triumph but probably not.

Edited July 27, 2019 by findlay13

[soihok]

Wow.

I really hope the Korat branch doesnt follow the same path.

Every time I go there I am the only one in the showroom (the service centre is also the showroom).

If it closed the nearest would be Buriram.

Ducati Korat is only about 4km away from home.

[LivinLOS]

Just to confirm CM Duci is apparently down and out.. Rumors of not making sales targets is what I hear.. 

The guy who opened the dealership must have taken a beating, large investment, multistrada tours for top dollar, noted paid PR on here only a few months back. Unsure but I think he wasnt long incountry and a rude awakening to what Thailand can do to someones retirement funds. 

[eisfeld]

19 minutes ago, LivinLOS said:

Just to confirm CM Duci is apparently down and out.. Rumors of not making sales targets is what I hear.. 

The guy who opened the dealership must have taken a beating, large investment, multistrada tours for top dollar, noted paid PR on here only a few months back. Unsure but I think he wasnt long incountry and a rude awakening to what Thailand can do to someones retirement funds. 

Damn. I also saw that they invested quite a bit into that dealership, even recently. Lots of promotions with tour companies (also on TV) and MotoGeo (check on Youtube). And now they just got shafted? That's hard.

 

So Ducati Thailand just sets some sales targets and if the dealer misses those, they get their contract revoked?

 

Since this hit Ducati CM as well as Khon Kaen and Udon (and maybe some others?) at pretty much the same time, it must have originated from the mothership. The weird thing is that all these 3 are in large cities. There are much smaller dealers in the country which we've not heard of closing down yet. So it's not just a "every dealer needs to sell X bikes per month" but rather based on either number of people living in their area or other metrics.

 

Potential new dealership owners should think long and hard as to what contractual relationship they would enter into and who in the end has 100% control over them.

 

Probably unrelated but it's worth noting that the Honda (cars) dealer in Phuket suddenly without warning closed down a few months ago, then BMW Motorrad in Phuket suddenly closed. Now 3 Ducati dealers have very suddenly closed. I have not seen such a big dealer shakeup in the recent years and it feels like more is to come.

[LivinLOS]

16 minutes ago, eisfeld said:

Probably unrelated but it's worth noting that the Honda (cars) dealer in Phuket suddenly without warning closed down a few months ago, then BMW Motorrad in Phuket suddenly closed. Now 3 Ducati dealers have very suddenly closed. I have not seen such a big dealer shakeup in the recent years and it feels like more is to come.

With the exception there of Honda, all would be premium market items.. 

Suspect the current economic picture and debt loads may be biting hard and the cracks starting to appear.