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07-16-2008, 11:12 AM
| #1 (permalink) |
| Throttle Jockey   Join Date: May 2004
Bike: several
Location: Decatur, GA
Posts: 3,372
|  Suzuki reorganizing
American Suzuki Chairman Rick Suzuki, who's grandfather founded Suzuki in Japan, has stepped down after leading the company for 10 years. Suzuki had hoped to double last year's sales fugure of 100,000 cars in the US this year (14th overall), but sales are actually down over 5% and earnings are down even further. He was replaced by Kinji Saito, formerly President of American Suzuki. The parent company, Suzuki Motor Corporation, said it is going to reorganize all US operations. Rather than operating three separate business units for cars, bikes, and boats, the three will be combined in to a single company under the American Suzuki name. This should cut costs by eliminating duplicate organizations (allow them to fire a bunch of people). They fired their ad agency also, and hired Siltanen & Partners of California. I am a big fan of Suzuki motorcycles, so I don't think this is good news. The motorcycle business will now be run by the car guys. Worldwide, motorcycles are a rather small part of Suzuki's business (they are the largest manufacturer of small cars in Japan), so I doubt motorcycles will be a top priority. With the dollar falling and raw material cost rising, the profit margin on motorcycles is already stretched thin. Unable to lower prices to boost sales, with credit harder to come by, and Americans hesitant to spend money on "toys", Suzuki motorcycle sales are down over 7% this year in the US. On the plus side, Suzuki is coming out with a new inline 6 cylinder sport bike, the 180 HP Stratosphere. That should be cool. On the cruiser side, the only change for 2009 is the colors: no new models. |
