opening a buisness

i am not sure if i am in the right place for this... but im really interested in opening my own shop in time to come. at the moment im doing a motorcycle maitnenance and mechanics course in college and will be lookin to open my own MOT centre / bike shop. I genuinly think the chinese market of motorcycles is an up and coming trend as they are producing alot more better machines than they were a few years back, well if my plan works out i would want to deal in some chinese motorcycles the ones of better quality and sell them but i dont have a clue who to talk to about things such as ordering bikes from the better companys and places to go for parts backup. I have been using the site made in china but to be fair it just confuses the hell out of me... i am just looking for some help and guidnece on following a dream. :icon10:

Go for it!

But, you'll need to plan on spending time in China to find suppliers, making arrangements and establishing the all-important "relationships" with the Chinese vendors.

Lots of horror stories out there about products not arriving, etc, and not just in the motorcycle industry.

Several people here can introduce you to industry people when you are ready to move on it.

Good luck, and never give up on your dreams.

thanks for giving me that advice. Do you know anyone else i could talk to on this matter so i have different points of view on the subject. Being on this forum i am looking at bikes similar to the pitster pro range and the bikes galaxy are producing... the "better" quality bikes with the better looks compared to some of the other chinese motorcycles on the market, I am after the bikes that looks are identical in most ways to the bikes from the japanese such as kawasaki, honda, yamaha and suzuki. KTM also as i own a smc 150 which is based on a ktm but is made in the galaxy factory which i found out by using this forum... any more info you could give me would be much appreciated. :)

First off you would not want to buy from a factory, you would buy from a distributor that does that, you as a shop would not have the volume in sales to import, you would go bankrupt taking that approach. If your just looking to sell and service locally, then find the brands and distributors and check them out, see who would be supplying you and parts. If your going to china then you’re a wholesaler or distributor, not a shop.

Another thing is that find out, how ever you can, how many of the models you like are imported, too many mean they are too many and it all turns cut throat and you will get stuck holding costs you cannot recover. If you like a certain brand and somebody is selling them up the street and the distributor is willing to sell them to you as well that’s big red flag. Prices wars lead to bankruptcies, then also some distributors sell direct to customers online they will cut your throat, they will sell it cheaper to customers and you will get stuck holding the higher cost bikes.

You do not want to deal with the Chinese they have no contract enforceability, the distributor that sell you bikes you would want a contract with, that they will not undercut your costs and sell under your costs to others, you also want exclusive rights in a defined area, or tell them to piss off.

The Chinese will sell way more into a market then can viably be sold, you do not want to be stuck in that, unless you get the bikes for very low costs and if that’s the case then something is being cut out like support and parts, often they do not exist.

In the US there are more dealers dropping Chinese then picking them up and that is because they intentionally flooded the markets. They over sold and without exclusivity, they would see several orders for 100 bikes in a market segment that may legitimately only have a potential sale of much less as positive and for them it would be. In reality here in the USA they are still selling 2006 models and many of them went through auctions, so the costs were written off and the prices now as low as original costs or less. How would you like to order some more in that scenario? Guess who would be more then happy to sell them to you?

So you need statistics how many imported and typical sales of that type in a certain region or area? Distributors should do that and manufactures should agree to that, but these people are not doing that.

You may say cool bike and well made, there may be 100 customers for them and then there may be five hundred in the port and you are about to order five for your shop and your cookies will be all smashed by the end of the year.