How the Royal Enfield is getting personal

Raman RV, a 45-year-old Hyderabad-based businessman, owns a Royal Enfield Classic 500. Maintained in mint condition, it was impossible to tell that the bike was a decade old. A few months ago, when he felt it was time to get a “new” ride, he did what any other Royal Enfield buff would do: Decided to get it customised. Buying a new bike was not an option — any Enfield enthusiast will tell you that once you own this motorcycle, you simply don’t part with it, not even for a new model from the Royal Enfield stable.

So, Raman, having decided that he wanted his bike to stand apart from the 100,000-odd Royal Enfield club in the city, took the motorcycle to East India Motorcycle Revolution (EIMOR), a Hyderabad-based bike remodeling company. What emerged a few days later was a shiny, matt black Classic 500 with a dash of yellow here and there. Raman spent a neat ~60,000-odd on the machine for the paint job, tyre replacement and modifications. “It was worth every rupee,” says the passionate biker, pleased to have got his very own stamp on the bike.

A modern classic, yet retro looking, the Enfield’s basic form remains fairly simple and lends itself well to customisation. Besides, its easy-towork-with and easily available components make it a motorcycle that can be turned around within a day without changing its structure or engineering. This explains the high demand for customisation, which has over the decades spawned a robust ecosystem to facilitate it. Today, the country has dozens of big and small Enfield customisation companies as also an army of well-networked, independent, dedicated Enfield mechanics.

So it was only a matter of time until Royal Enfield (RE), the company, also officially branched out into customisation. It finally did so in October last year with the launch of “Make-it-yours” (MIY), a digital solution to enable customers to personalise their motorcycles.

MIY is another step in the journey RE embarked upon in 2016 when it launched the “Custom Program”, wherein it started collaborating with motorcycle artists across the globe.

“Over the last decade, the trend of personalising and accessorising one’s motorcycle to enhance riding performance and aesthetic appeal has grown tremendously,” says a Royal Enfield spokesperson. “Passionate motorcyclists often use aftermarket accessories to personalise their motorcycles to suit their riding style and for ‘self-expression’. However, the options for creating a personalised purchase experience were practically nonexistent.”

But with the MIY, the customers can do so right at the time of booking the motorcycle. Enabled via an app-based, 3-D configurator, MIY offers innumerable combinations in terms of colour ways, trims, graphics and genuine accessories.

Without revealing the numbers, the RE spokesperson says the company has received “encouraging response for MIY” for the Meteor 350, Interceptor 650 and Continental GT 650 models.

The entire exercise — from processing the order to execution — is done in-house and is not subcontracted (see box). With this, says the spokesperson, the RE has become the first Indian motorcycle manufacturer to transition from the made-tostock to made-to-order concept.

Those like Bobbee Singh who have for long been in the made-to-order Royal Enfield business out of pure passion are, however, not entirely impressed. “Companies cannot get into the whole essence of customising a motorcycle,” says Singh. “There are many people who want to own something that is unique, and not something that can be bought off the shelf. Companies can do these things, but it doesn’t really sing the same song.”

Founder of Old Delhi Motorcycles, Singh is for many in Delhi the go-to man for customising the Royal Enfield. He personalises the bikes to such an extent that no two look alike — beginning the exercise by first listening intently to understand what the biker he’s servicing is all about, their likes, interests and so on before getting down to creating one modelled around the person’s unique personality.

“There has always been a big fetish for custom-made bikes globally,” says Singh, adding that the pandemic has further fuelled the motorcycle culture. The pandemic created a sense of boredom, and there were those who could afford to get rid of it by getting their bikes customised, going on long rides, and so on. “There was a sense of urgency that came in: ‘What if my dreams remained unfulfilled?’” he says. If anything, the pandemic has added more heft to the trend of customisation.

Saikat Basu, co-founder of EIMOR, agrees: “We have seen enquiries growing by 50 per cent since the pandemic began.” On an average, his firm customises 40-45 bikes a month and does five to ten high-end paint jobs. Depending on the level of customisation, the cost ranges between ~40,000 and ~3 lakh.

However, while Covid-19 has fuelled demand, it has also affected supply. The migration of labour back to their homes has impacted the supply chain and the lead time for sourcing motorbike parts has doubled.

For the Royal Enfield, this might actually be a good time to get into customisation — personalising the iconic bike at source.