In 1903, Harley-Davidson Motor Company was launched by William Harley and his friends Arthur and Walter Davidson in the year. Their first intention of building a quality engine was to be established in races. But later on their plans took a different course. The bike that was supposed to race only became a transporting vehicle.
The first officially Harley-Davidson to be exported was distributed by a merchant by the name of C. H. Lange. It was distributed to Chicago, a city who was famous for motoracing and auto touring. Another of the Davidson brothers, William, joined the company, which soon burst the seams of its first manufacturing center and, by 1906, had to move to larger quarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Harley-Davidson’s encountered a lot of problems when they were just starting their business. This is a normal occurrence to all business that started from scratch. They need to establish themselves in the business and at the same time they need to prove the quality of their product.
In 1990, they have 31 percent of international sales which costs 8 million from the total of 4 million. Harley-Davidson bike became famous to Japan, Germany, Australia and Canada. This great achievement was followed by a problem. Foreign distributors and dealers needed two things to grow more and to expand in the market share. The first was the local pricing of currency. As their distributor and dealers from different countries they need to stabilize a price that they would all agree to. It was difficult to do so because of their need to cover currency exposure. Harley needed to sell its motorcycles to foreign dealers and distributor with the local currency. They have difficulty in finding solution to benefit them all.
Then the manager of international finance John Hevey had an idea. It was to introduce the idea of risk-sharing to their system. This idea was not new during their time. The thought of risk-sharing is plain. They need to maintain the exchange rate from the quotes Harley have given as price of foreign currency. This allowed the foreign dealers and distributors to be assured of predictable and stable prices.
Harley-Davidson should continue with this arrangement as long as the dealers and distributors conform to their agreement.
After several years of hardwork Harley-Davidson achieved their goal. They went international and became famous to many places as manufacturer and distributor of the bike. The Harley-Davidson came to be America’s most recognized motorcycle.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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