If you’re ever about to buy a new or used Motorcycle – you should know of the struggle that the Industry behind motorcycles has had for the past decade. Or if you’re trying to get one of your bikes repaired or getting a service – have you become aware that most of the service outlets have shut down?
I don’t own a Motorcycle, not even a bike, but I have been part of the Industry for the past 5,5 years – as a consultant. It’s good that you don’t understand what you sign up for when you start an assignment – because otherwise you maybe hadn’t started. AVA MC has been a long project and it feels like we’re just getting started.
AVA MC has been around for “ever” in the Motorcycle Industry in Sweden but hadn’t managed to get into the digital world in a good way. When I met the company in the year 2019 it had a website, some social media action, even E-commerce. But once you started looking into the details – nothing really worked.
The management of AVA had been using several consultants to help with for example getting traffic to the website. But none of the consultant had a full understanding of everything digital; ecommerce, social media, digital marketing, google my business, newsletter, logistics, payments etc. Each person helping out focused on their own speciality but no one had the full picture before I stepped into the picture.
It took me three weeks to understand that E-Commerce hadn’t really worked for three years at AVA. A “simple” update in the way their Enterprise Resource Planning system handled orders caused this. The Website used Magento for E-Commerce and the supplier of the Magento system hadn’t updated according to the ERP-system-changes. A couple of people knew about the flaw that caused the system to show products not in stock as in stock and vice versa but they didn’t care enough to fix it.
The manager of the store had just ordered a large Google Ads campaign due to another persistent consultant that I managed to stop in time. Because if the E-Commerce actually didn’t work it would just aggregate everyone’s frustration about how bad the company was in terms of digital marketing. AVA was in a bad spot, if you can’t handle transactions there’s no use in marketing.
There’s never been anything wrong with the people handling the physical, actual deliverance of great service in the AVA MC’ store – but that’s not enough these days. You need to deliver a Digital Experience of first class before you enter a store – that is everyone’s challenge.
The owner of AVA listened to my “death sentence” of how everything didn’t work with growing anxiety but he realized I was right. Previous consultants had “sold” their expertise but hadn’t taken a complete overview of the problems so I got the “thumbs up” to get started fixing everything.
How many issues are there to fix for a company to go from really bad into becoming a front runner for first place in their Industry? I’d say at least 1,000 issues. As soon as you fixed one problem, the next problem arose.
It took a year and a half to shift the E-Commerce platform, the biggest hurdle? Getting 7,000 products correctly listed including images & descriptions. Once E-commerce worked, the real fight began; to have Digital Marketing in every channel possible so that everyone’s awareness of the AVA brand could start to change.
Once AVA’s digital marketing started to kick in it also helped their sales people to better understand what kind of Motorcycle brands that actually are generating solid revenues. Once the retailer’s own digital marketing got into place, they could better understand the customers’ changing perceptions of different bikes they are interested in.
I’ll start to wrap up this story now. It has taken another four years since the fixed E-Commerce got up and running. We’ve just released another version of our website at https://avamc.se that I’m very excited about which is the fruit of hard labor from many people involved.
As said initially, AVA’s digital story has just begun, and if you’re interested in hearing more – don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Have a Merry Christmas,
Lennart Svanberg
