From one day to the next and without prior notice, what was defined as “Europe’s largest used motorcycle retailer” has closed its doors and is in what would be something like “bankruptcy administration.” All since this past Monday, when the British used motorcycle chain Superbike Factory closed.
A peculiar situation that reminds us of how fragile the market is, and how everything can go wrong quickly when a giant is managed and business mistakes are made or unforeseen events arise. Although the situation in this case, of what was Europe’s largest hoarder of used motorcycles, is more of a financial problem.
And, as the latest available accounts reveal, corresponding to the period of 2024, the company managed to sell 15,036 motorcycles, a significant growth compared to 2023 when that figure stood at 13,588 units. Seen from the outside, the feeling is that there was significant growth and everything was working.
But the reality is more complex and is that these sales represented a total of approximately 83 million pounds (about 97 euros), while in 2023 those income were close to 82. That is, selling more than 1,500 extra motorcycles only meant an increase in income of 1 million pounds.
Even so, Superbike Factory’s problem seems to be not so much in its sales but in the losses it accumulated, and which in 2023 were 6.8 million pounds to rise to 18.28 million in 2024. That is, despite increasing sales at the same time, the money they lost increased significantly.
They cornered the market, but the numbers didn’t match. Why?
This has been possible because, behind this firm, there was a private equity company that provided financial support to grow with investments in new facilities and, also, to face the operating loss. The causes that have caused a company, which was born in 2010 and gradually grew and grew for years before “exploding”, are not specified.
What does seem certain is that, as stated in their 2024 report and shared by Ride Apart colleagues, they were aware that a key risk was having financing providers to offer services to clients. And it seems that that is where the real problem may come from. For some time now in the United Kingdom it has been mandatory to say how much commission the dealership takes for managing the financing.
This opens the door to mere speculation that, perhaps, the business was based largely on the financing of vehicles, as is currently the case in the automotive market where the sale of loans represents an important income for stores and concessions.
In the end, managing a company is always complicated, but when you play with narrow margins to be competitive and crush the competition and the business is sustained with the bare minimum, a change, no matter how minimal it may seem, can ruin everything.
Is the interest of investment groups behind this collapse and the unstoppable increase in prices in second-hand models? That answer makes for a more extensive analysis, but you just have to take a look around the VO market, whether for motorcycles or cars, to draw your own conclusions.
