The Next Big Trend in Motorcycling

0:00Hello. I'm RyanF9, and the next big

0:02trend in motorcycling

0:04is right over there.

0:05Let's go see.

0:09So, to guess our future, we have to know

0:11our past. And historically in

0:13motorcycling, life has always imitated

0:15art. The '80s and '90s were the sport

0:18bike craze, and uncoincidentally, it was

0:20the golden age of the action movie hero.

0:22We got Tom Cruise on a [music] GPZ 900.

0:26We got Neo on a Ducati 996. We got Ethan

0:29Hunt on a Triumph Speed Triple. It's no

0:31wonder we sold so many sport bikes. What

0:33we saw in the theaters on Sunday, we

0:35bought in the dealerships on Monday.

0:37But, then in 2002, something happened.

0:40Movie sales peaked at 1.2 billion

0:42tickets a year. It's only gone down

0:43since then by more than half, thanks to

0:46something called the golden age of

0:48television. By 2010, 90% of households

0:51would spend more on cable than they

0:53would in the cinemas.

0:55And to fill that need, the networks

0:57designed a bunch of single-location,

1:00stretchable to 25 episode series to feed

1:03to the monster. We're talking Monster

1:05Garage, Biker Build-Off, American

1:07Chopper. And it's no wonder in the early

1:102000s then that we saw the rise of

1:13Harley-Davidson. You see, the cruiser

1:15culture, the chopper culture, and the

1:17creative spats that went along with it

1:19made for a useful stick for filling out

1:21this filler content. In 2003,

1:24Harley-Davidson waitlist for a

1:26motorcycle was over a year for the first

1:28time ever. By 2006, they sold 350,000

1:32motorcycles. That's almost three times

1:34what they do today.

1:36Yamaha's well, they they developed the V

1:38Star brand, which was supposed to be

1:40this sort of custom cruiser sub-brand of

1:44Yamaha. Suzuki was rearranging their

1:46cruisers under the Boulevard name. You

1:49had Honda launching the Fury, which is a

1:51factory chopper. The cruiser revolution

1:53of the early 2000s was very much

1:56televised, at least up until IG killed

1:59the TV star. You see, Gen Z watches 19

2:02hours and 45 minutes of Instagram and

2:04TikTok every week, but less than seven

2:07of television. So, for the first time

2:09the majority of our content is

2:11user-generated. It's homegrown. And what

2:14else could we expect in the 2010s but

2:16the cafe racer craze? Suddenly, everyone

2:18wanted a shed build, something that

2:20looked like what their favorite

2:22mustachioed influencer was posting

2:24about.

2:25And we see in the 2010s Ducati's

2:27Scrambler line. We see the resurgence of

2:30Royal Enfield. We see Kawasaki's W's,

2:32Yamaha's XSRs. All of the momentum in

2:35the 2010s is with these bikes that are

2:37made to look more retro and more hashtag

2:40authentic than they really are. So, if

2:43we take this life imitating art model

2:46and we fly it into the future, then we

2:49would expect to find our next trend in

2:50the AI algorithm. Because nowadays,

2:53content is not so much chosen by us as

2:55it is force-fed to us. But, there's a

2:58way we can win with that. You see, no

3:00longer do you need a long-standing brand

3:02that can spend millions to put their

3:04motorcycle into a movie or even hundreds

3:06of thousands to put it on TV. All you

3:08need to do is film a sizzly 10-second

3:10with a clickable CTA and be able to ship

3:13that product DTC. Then you pay the

3:15algorithm a few bucks to spit it into

3:17the feed of precisely who you think your

3:19customer is going to be and you're going

3:21to start to convert sales. And sure

3:23enough, in very recent years, the

3:25largest and fastest growing motorcycle

3:28manufacturer has been Surron. One of the

3:31most hotly anticipated bikes of the

3:322020s was the Sondors Metacycle. Despite

3:35the fact that the bike was dog and

3:37the brand disappeared 5 minutes later.

3:39It didn't matter. There's no end of

3:41brands that you've never heard of

3:43converting tons of sales on Alibaba via

3:46Instagram. We can consider this

3:47Lionhead's Valor as a sort of example of

3:50that. This is a company that I'd never

3:52heard of until they sponsored this

3:54video, and it's

3:55Californian in the same way that the

3:57California roll is. But, for $1,700

4:01shipped to your door, you have a torque

4:03assistance motor. So, it adds power the

4:06more power I put in. That is a much more

4:08natural way to do pedal assistance. It's

4:10just more expensive

4:12than a typical cadence sensor. And yet,

4:15we have it here. We also have two 3,000

4:18W hub motors, which are good for 62 kph

4:21in closed course only, wink wink.

4:24There's a very well-known set of buttons

4:26that will unlock that for you. As is, it

4:28ships in the box capped at 32. But, this

4:30is really quite a bit faster and quite a

4:33bit cheaper than most of our legacy

4:35manufacturers are willing to build. Yet,

4:38it's stocked with parts that must have

4:40fallen off the truck on the way to those

4:42legacy manufacturers. I see a proper

4:45Shimano derailleur. I see Kenda fatty

4:49tires. I see a 960

4:52Wh battery. I'm getting 100 120 kph on

4:57this. And the rear shock, despite being

4:58designed by rear shock,

5:01actually works because it's mounted to a

5:03sensible linkage rather than the piece

5:06of square iron that the Anioki had. And

5:08speaking of, the Anioki took a bit

5:10longer to build than this did. And this

5:12is also torture tested in the factory,

5:14whereas Anioki left it to the end

5:15consumer to find the weak points,

5:17usually in week one. So, you can see how

5:20a skeleton brand can run on skeleton

5:23margins, but deliver a very high fun

5:25factor to the end consumer for a cheap

5:27price, 1,700 bucks. I'll put a link

5:29below in case any of the kids want to

5:32know more about this.

5:34But, if life imitating art

5:39is what brings us to AI artistry and

5:42therefore the fly-by-night motorcycle

5:44for the younger audience, then I'm

5:46suspicious of our entire model because

5:49you can also look at the demographic

5:51shift to predict the next trend in

5:52motorcycling, and in that case, it'll be

5:55anything but a kids game. See, I graphed

5:58motorcycle licenses by age group in

6:002016, '17, '18, '19, '20, '20, '21, '20,

6:04'22, and this is brilliantly painful

6:06data to look at because you can see

6:07every year fewer and fewer and fewer

6:10young motorcyclists, and every year more

6:12and more and more old ones. Now, a lot

6:15of people misunderstand this as painting

6:17a picture of the death of our industry,

6:19but it's not that because if you graph

6:21total licenses, they're actually going

6:23up. There are more motorcyclists than

6:25ever. It's just that they're getting

6:26into the hobby later in life than ever

6:29before. In 1985, the median age for a

6:33rider was 27 years old. So, they had no

6:36back pain. They could pay a few thousand

6:38dollars to hop on a Japanese sport bike

6:40like the GPZ and get twice the

6:43power-to-weight ratio of the contem-

6:45porary Lamborghini Countach. It's no

6:46wonder we sold so many sport bikes back

6:48then. But in 2003, the median age of a

6:51rider had jumped up to 41 years old.

6:53Now, they had an enlarged prostate, and

6:55they also had more financial freedom to

6:58buy the aspirational brands of their

6:59youth. We have talked about Harley's

7:01success in the early 2000s, but Triumph

7:04also saw record growth in that era. In

7:062018, which was the last year the MIC

7:09published this data, the median age of a

7:11rider had jumped to 50. So, if we want

7:14to know what the next big trend in

7:15motorcycling is going to be, we should

7:17ask ourselves what we would want when

7:19we're 60 years old. Or rather,

7:22how many motorcycles we would want when

7:24we're 60 years old. See, older riders

7:26like to collect, and this is reflected

7:28in the data. If you graph motorcycle

7:30licenses versus motorcycle

7:32registrations, the registrations outpace

7:35the riders two to one. There's way, way

7:38more bikes and and that many more

7:40riders.

7:42And

7:43if this is becoming a collector hobby

7:45and it's more about what you own than

7:48what you ride, then every manufacturer

7:50is going to struggle to defeat their own

7:52vintage market. But, we may see some

7:55success on the new side of the industry

7:56with the horses that are nice to add to

7:59the stable. Longest waitlist in recent

8:01memory is the Honda Trail 125. That's a

8:05wistful nostalgic bike, a slow bike,

8:07unlikely to be your only motorcycle, but

8:09one that filled a nice spot in a lot of

8:1160-year-old garages. Another really long

8:13waitlist was a Stark Varg. That's very

8:15different. It's electric. It's

8:17incredibly fast, incredibly low range.

8:19So, also unlikely to be your only

8:22motorcycle.

8:23But, one that appeals to a 60-year-old

8:26who's done with doing top ends

8:29and also has 20 grand to spend

8:32on a dirt bike. So, okay. If the

8:35demographic shift brings us to these

8:37add-on bikes as the next trend, and

8:40looking at it through the lens of the AI

8:43algorithm, life imitating art brings us

8:46to the startup motorcycle or the

8:47fly-by-night brand, then we probably

8:50need to be suspicious of both of our

8:51conclusions. Because, look at the EICMA

8:54releases, they're all over the place. It

8:56doesn't seem that the manufacturers are

8:57coalescing their efforts into either of

9:00these directions. In fact, the only

9:02thing that these bikes have in common is

9:03that they're all [music] produced in

9:04conjunction with the best seller in

9:07China or in India.

9:10So,

9:10if we're not finding the next big trend

9:13here,

9:14perhaps it's because the next [music]

9:16big trend

9:18is over there.

9:19Thanks for watching.

9:27>> [music]

9:31[music]

9:38[music]

9:47[music]

9:55>> Mhm.