How Victory Motorcycles Can Save Itself From Defeat

It’s a generally accepted principle that brands succeed based on two broad assumptions: they have the ability to evolve as the nature of their business and their consumer evolves (think Apple) or they produce a product that is so beloved and even culturally ingrained that to change it would be foolish (anyone remember New Coke?).

Very few brands fall into that rarified second category; most have to change or they’ll end up withering on the vine. Nowhere is that more true than in the motorcycle industry. And no motorcycle brand exemplifies this more than Victory. These days, it seems that Victory Motorcycles is at a (pardon the pun) crossroads, at the intersection of Evolution and Stagnation.

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I have a fondness for Victory bikes – without them, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. Full disclosure: my motorcycle writing (and riding) career, such as it is, started with a job writing content for the Victory website. I wrote a bunch of feature articles about Victory bikes for the Victory website, and gained a real appreciation for both the precision engineering that went into them and the loyalty felt by Victory riders toward the brand – loyalty that was earned, in my opinion, as the bikes were and remain superior to the ones produced by Harley-Davidson, the company that Victory had placed in their crosshairs. It’s no trade secret that Victory’s aim was to capture at least some of H-D’s dominant market share; much of their marketing work was and still is not-too-subtly aimed at Harley riders.

This is what most of our readers picture when they think of Victory riders. Photo courtesy of Victory Motorcycles.

It’s an effort that’s been marginally successful – of course, saying that you are the second biggest producer of American motorcycles isn’t really saying a whole lot, all things considered. And while I do admit to having some pro-Victory bias – it’s hard not to, considering that they gave me my first motorcycle writing job – at this point, I’d never consider buying one of their bikes. So in that light, I’d like to propose a somewhat radical alternative to the folks at Victory.

Stop trying to compete with Harley.

Let’s look at what happened with both brands last year. Harley put two brand-new production models, the Street 500 and the Street 750, on the market. That in and of itself was a fairly radical move – the last time H-D rolled out an all-new bike was over 13 years ago. Add to that the fact that the Street is squarely and unapologetically aimed at a demographic outside of Harley’s traditional target buyer – new, young and/or urban riders. Harley also introduced the LiveWire project – not only is it an electric bike, it’s arguably a sportbike, and clearly a radical departure from the traditional Harley stylings. And given Harley’s recently announced plans to have the LiveWire project tour Europe and Asia, it’s a fair bet that Harley will be putting the LiveWire into production in some form.

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