the Harley-Davidson store in Barrigada will be relocated to Asan at the old Joe and Floe’s location. The move which has been in the planning phase for over a year will begin late September or early October.
The move will take a week to complete. Neilsen said "We’re going to shutdown for a week while we make the move. The service department will be setup first and then the showroom. I was going try to keep operating but its just not realistic. It’s going to be a mess so we’re just going to shutdown but the Harley-Davidson store at the mall will remain open.
The renovations to the new location began in April. On June 26 the construction phase of the renovations will begin. The whole process is scheduled to take about three months. The cost of the renovations and the move will be about $450 000.
Neilsen said there were a couple reasons why the decision was made to relocate Harley-Davidson to its new location. "One Harley prefers to have the dealerships in stand alone buildings. They don’t particularly care for them in strip malls like we are now. The other reason we chose that location is the visibility "" it’s out on Marine Corps Drive it’s close to Naval Station and the parking area. We have a lot of parties hers."
Customers are especially looking forward to the added parking space. Neilsen said that when Harley-Davidson has its anniversary party at the Barrigada location they need to block off one lane of the highway. "Last year we had over 400 bikes here. We did a motorcade that had over 200 bikes participating." On Tuesdays Harley-Davidson holds a function called the Harley-cue. During the Harley-cue it is common for there to be 40 to 50 bikes parked outside the showroom. He said "They’re looking forward to the Tuesday nights down there " he said.
The new location is about 10 000 square feet. He said "The larger showroom doesn’t necessarily mean Harley-Davidson will bring in more bikes because you still have to sell them but they’ll be displayed a lot better. It’ll be a more professional environment than we have now."
Unlike the current location the new location was actually designed by Harley-Davidson. "Harley-Davidson designed the store for us. It’s going to be a Harley-Davidson designed store. This one here (Barrigada) was just put together. The new store will have genuine Harley-Davidson fixtures " Neilsen said.
He said Harley-Davidson has been very helpful. "They sent out a design engineer who actually did the design. He worked with us. He didn’t just come out here and dictate. Harley is a very supportive company. Harley is very good about dealer communications as well. We get daily correspondences. We get stuff almost daily from those guys."
While the impending relocation of 8 000 marines did have an impact on the decision to relocate to Asan it wasn’t the deciding factor. "The majority of our customers are local clientele. Roughly 85% of our customers are local and 15% are military " he said.
The new location will have the same business hours as the old location. On Mondays Wednesdays Thursdays Fridays and Saturdays it opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 6 p.m. On Tuesdays the store opens at 8 a.m. but because of the regularly scheduled Harley-cues it doesn’t close until 9 p.m. On Sundays it is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Neilsen said of the new location "I think it’s going to be very impressive. It’s going to exhume Harley-Davidson more so than this store does because it’s going to be built as a Harley-Davidson store. It will have the Harley feel to it and the Harley look to it."
"The nice thing about this business is that almost all of your customers at least become casual friends because you ride with them you see them. We feel we’re pretty close to our customers." MBJ
