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Almost all the brands and under one roof. No hassle sales and a first class F & I department.
We are a Dealernews Magazine “TOP 100” award winner for 9 years in a row. Best in the U.S.
We are the only dealership in the Northwest United States to have won Suzuki’s prestigious “SUPER SERVICE AWARD” for the past two years. This award means a lot, because it is awarded based on actual customer satisfaction survey cards. Our customers voted us the best.
SoundRider.com, the Northwest’s largest motorcycling online magazine has a reader poll and this year Skagit Powersports won 7awards and also top Yamaha dealer, top Suzuki dealer, top Kawasaki dealer, top KTM dealer, top Ducati dealer. Skagit Powersports also won awards for “Top 5 Motorcycle Dealership Overall” and “Top 5 Dealership Look and Feel”.
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History
Skagit Powersports was purchased in 1992 from a tired old man who wanted out. Yamaha and
Kawasaki were the brands we sold and we operated there for three years. We moved in 1996 to the Freeway (I-5) and built a 14,000 sq ft store. We added Suzuki almost immediately and within two years we expanded to 18,000 sq ft In 1999 we added Guzzi and Ducati, purchased the acre behind the store and built a 7,000 sq ft warehouse. In 2004 we again expanded the showroom and service department adding 5,000 sq ft to total around 23,000 sq ft. We recently added a nice service writing area with a comfortable customer waiting room complete with a flat screen television. Sales have kept pace with our growth and have expanded more than ten-fold since 1992. Along with the new service writer addition, we added a second F & I office. It was something we needed for particularly busy days. Another great addition to the store was the installation of five large flat screen televisions mounted throughout the showroom. Each television plays DVDs appropriate to the area of the store.
Uniqueness
There are no motorcycle dealerships in the Northwest like Skagit Powersports (SP). The showroom is always fun and interesting, even at the expense of stocking a machine that might not sell. Some of the brands we carry have no logical place in a business the size of ours. Customers appreciate and understand our style and our quality. We have an award winning children’s department, a women’s department, and more accessories than any shop around. We are the only dealership in the Northwest to have won Suzuki’s Super Service Award the last two years. It is based on Customer Satisfaction. Another honor for SP in 2006 was the Sound Rider readers’ poll conducted by that Seattle based on-line motorsports magazine. Votes from Washington motorcyclists were tallied and SP won 7 awards including Best Overall Dealership, Best Kawasaki, Best Yamaha, Best Suzuki, Best KTM and Best Ducati Dealer, plus Best Store Look and Feel, Something new we tried this year was track days. It’s always been an interesting idea and an experience every sport bike enthusiast needs to have. Pacific Raceways, our local track, is two to three hours and five traffic jams away making the Wednesday morning trip to the Track Day more daunting than anyone would care for. What we did to make it possible to have track events was hire a motor coach and a semi truck. Bikes are dropped off at the store, picked up by the truck and hauled down to the track. The bus picks us up at 5:00 a.m. and we’re there by 8:00 a.m. ready to unload our bikes. After a day of riding we load up the bikes, climb aboard the bus and party all the way home. It has turned out to be a big success and for 2007 we will do more dates. Our Trackstore and MX team have had a good year, taking the 2006 Washington State Team Motocross Championship. The MX program gets bigger every year and our support for the riders grows because of our relationships with our sponsors. All of the companies that signed contracts with us on our new corporate MX team project are still with us and are more financially committed that ever. They provide us with their products and we increase the sale of those products in our region. MSR has gone from third place in the region to first and other companies have too. In the 2007 MSR catalog we were thanked for our efforts. It’s full speed ahead at Skagit Powersports.
Advertising
Over the years we’ve tried all available media. Local radio works along with print ads in
newspapers and nickel type publications. As always, we still use Maverick Marketing. Every year
we look at sales, future trends, and our past years advertising to decide on the new advertising
budget and the allocations to each medium. That part of the equation has been fine tuned; however
there are many other forms of advertising we are always exploring. It is confusing whether
something is advertising or promotion. I’ve decided the following are advertising:
We sponsor three National level factory-supported motorcycle racers, Landon Currier (Yamaha),
Tommy Weeck (KTM) and Paul Neff (KTM). Paul is representing the US on this year’s 15DB
Trophy Team in New Zealand. Look for our graphics on his bike. Next year Tommy will ride for
the KTM factory. Our Track Store goes to about 60 events per year selling supplies to keep the
racers going. All of our MX racers use our custom graphics that list our corporate sponsors. We
give each buyer of any machine a tee shirt and a long sleeve with our logos.
Direct mail is very effective. We average three mailings per year on our carefully maintained
mailing list of 8,000 customers. We use F.U.S.S. also; the O.E.M. offerings don’t seem quite as
complete. Fuss also has an excellent press release dept. For 2006 we teamed up with KYMCO to
run an endurance motorcycle road race team in the northwest. After mixed results, we look forward
to the 2007 season.
Community Involvement
Skagit Powersports does a lot in our little valley. We help youth sports, school projects and activities and a lot of
fundraisers. The Boys and Girls Club, Economic Development Council, and Rotary all have big
golf tournaments where we offer prizes for a “hole in one”. There are a few auctions to which we
donate scooters and quads including the Burlington Rotary and Chinook Youth Center. The new
city library has a reading room with our name on it. We participate in fairs like the Navy Safety
Day and donate bikes to the State Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider education program.
We sponsored a flattrack ATV and motorcycle race series at the local sprint car dirt oval and
participated in the Ducati Northwest ride-in. Our warehouse is the official clubhouse to two
motorcycle clubs; the Chiefs, and the Northwest Cascades chapter of the Star Touring and Riding
club, Chapter 154. We also are home to the Skagit Ducati Club.
Statewide we have been working for a year or so on two projects, one is WOHVA, Washington Off-
Highway Vehicle Alliance and the other is an 0RV park in Eastern Washington. This park uses
County, State, and city streets along with BLM trails to connect all the small towns in Eastern
Washington. Dirt bikes and four wheelers will be legal so families can go from a hotel to a
restaurant to trail riding all day to a hotel in another town. We’re making good progress. WOHVA
is a coalition of all the OHV clubs and enthusiasts in the State into a Non-profit Corporation with
the goal of increasing and enhancing off road riding opportunities in Washington State.
There will be a political action arm, an educational arm, and a recreational arm. It will be similar to
COHVCO in Colorado.
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Bill Cameron at Skagit Speedway
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 Gary Lawver
Puget Sound Trialers -
Senior Champion
2005, 2006, 2007
U.S. 2007 NATIONAL SENIOR 55 #2 RIDER |
More History
In 1993 Pete Bangs, Bill Cameron and Gary Lawver purchased a small two-line dealership in Mt. Vernon, Washington, for a song.
"He had Kawasaki and Yamaha in an old chicken barn, and with our three incomes put together we qualified, which we wouldn't nowadays, to get the two lines," says Cameron.
The trio leased the 4,000 sq./ft. chicken barn for three years, extending the lease an extra year with the intention to buy. Inspiration, however, challenged them to the possibility of constructing a new building in a different town. So over the Skagit River and into Burlington they went in July of '96, opening shop in a new 12,000 sq./ft. building designed by Jim Rasmus and his Retail Design Associates team.
"Jim Rasmus gave us three or four floor plans and we took the one that fit us best. It was one of the best things I ever did because I had it all cockeyed. He designed it so the flow was right, so people were going in the right direction and the traffic flow of the parking lot was correct," says Cameron about RDA's participation with the new store.
Four years later they built a 7,000 sq./ft. metal structure across the street to act as their warehouse, but its future may include a different use. "I designed it so it can be split in half and house two, two-story office buildings," says Cameron.
Three thousand sq./ft. was added to the dealership in 2001 with another 5,000 planned for this fall--an addition that's going to be built whether they need the extra room or not. But the expansion does and will serve an important purpose.
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The ever-expanding facility isn't the only reason Skagit has a six-county customer base (see "Profitable Mobility"), but it definitely helped catch the attention of the OEMs. Home to no fewer than 12 different brands at one time or another, Skagit has the mentality of a '60s era recreational drug user when it comes to motorcycle manufacturers--experimental.
"Bill likes to get everything," laughs co-owner and service manager Gary Lawver. "It drives Pete and me crazy! He wants to sell everything, but it's hard to get technicians 'cause they have to be able to work on everything," he says.
Nonetheless, the team's managed to strike a symbiotic balance between the atypical and the mainstream. The three Japanese OEMs in turn make up the lion's share of sales, supporting the costs and idiosyncrasies of Skagit's unconventional lines.
The owners' enthusiasm for the business and eager willingness to experiment are apparent not only in the models they choose to stock, but in their attitude toward customers.
"If there's anybody with any passion who comes into the store that has anything to do with our business, we will support him. If a guy comes in here and he's using a Gixxer 1100 motor in a mini-sprint, we'll still help him," insists Cameron.
Why Not?
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Skagit Powersports
1645 Walton Drive Burlington WA 98233
Phone: 360.757.7999
Fax: 360.757.1090
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