Harley roars after the active woman

In her article titled Harley roars after the active woman author Julie Moran Alterio [The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News] says that Harley, seeing an increase in female buyers (10% of its buyers are women), is chasing the trend. Here are a few choice bits from the article. I don’t know whether to applaud or roll my eyes.

“Purely from a business perspective, women make up over 50 percent of the population. Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority group. African-Americans have excellent purchasing power. All of those groups certainly have the economic ability to be part of our future customer base,” said Kathleen Lawler, the company’s vice president of communication.

“Without question, helping our products to become relevant to the lives of women and minorities is going to take time, and we recognize that,” Lawler said.

“Riding a motorcycle isn’t necessarily the first thing that women think of, but we’re going to be talking to women and helping them become more familiar with it, particularly women who have active lifestyles.”

In the past year, “Harley-Davidson 101” events have been conducted for journalists from women’s magazines and publications in minority communities.

“The idea is role-modeling,” Lawler said. “If a woman sees that other women have done it, and hears them talk about how they did it, why they did it and how much fun it was, and how easy it was to get involved, they may say, ‘Wow, I can do that.'”