■ Households using debt more responsibly: Harley-Davidson has a finance arm that offers loans for the purchase of its bikes, and such loans were part of the vast expansion of household debt leading up to 2007 and the wave of defaults since then.īut Harley's data fits a broader story in the US economy: households are becoming more responsible with debt. If the Republican Party had been as successful at expanding its appeal beyond middle-aged white men as Harley-Davidson, Mitt Romney would be president right now. ''In fact, through nine months, sales to outreach customers grew at nearly twice the rate as sales to core riders, thus ensuring new riders coming into the Harley-Davidson family,'' Wandell said. Harley is dealing with that by pushing particularly hard on what it calls ''outreach'' segments of the market, as opposed to the ''core customers'', who have traditionally bought the company's motorcycles.Īs the chief executive of Harley-Davidson, Keith Wandell, explained in an October conference call with analysts, the growth in sales to young adults, women, African Americans and Hispanics was going gangbusters. ■ Changing consumer demographics: The drivers of US consumer spending are more diverse, which can be a challenge for companies that are strongest among middle-aged whites. The missing motorcycles are part of that ''output gap''. The same is true of the US economy as a whole: economic output in 2012 was close to $1 trillion below the level the Congressional Budget Office estimates as the economy's potential.
In other words, it would take much stronger growth for Harley-Davidson's production to return to the track it was on before the recession. In 2006, the company shipped a whopping 349,196 motorcycles.
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