TRADE TALK:
BIKE DEALER FEELS NEED FOR SPEED
FULL THROTTLE: “Race Sunday, sell Monday” is a mantra as old as automotive marketing. It’s still very much valid at motorcycle dealerships like Vancouver BMW Ducati that sells around 200 new and used machines annually. And it is the boss who does the racing. That’s Patrick Visser, 65, who began riding British KTT Velocettes and Manx Nortons in his native Dutch National Championship events in 1966. More recently, he’s ridden a Yamaha FZR400, Honda CBR600 and Ducati 848 in Mission-Seattle- Spokane- Portland competition, and is looking for a Paul Smart Replica like the machine that got Ducati into superbike racing a decade ago.
Visser is such a track devotee, he named two of his three sons Mike and Geoff after heroes Mike Hailwood and Geoff Duke. What turns his crank today, though, is no all- out racer but the BMW R1200GS model he calls “probably the most important to come out in the last five years.” It’s a $ 22,000- or- so-water- cooled development of the German maker’s classic “boxer” series that succeeds an oil-and-air- cooled model.
“I will never be without a GS or GSA,” Visser said, the “A” standing for the Adventure model with 700- km range and multi- surface suspension. Clients may be less lucky initially as most of the dozen- or- so GSs the $ 7- million- a- year dealership ordered for 2013 delivery in October are spoken for. Still, Visser and partners Brian Arsenault and Doreen Walmsley have many other machines at the 12,000- square- foot Grandview Highway building they acquired from dealership founder John Valk in 2009. There’s also the inventory at the 3,000- square- foot Ducati Richmond dealership owner Visser opened in February with a related five- bike racing team. BMW, Triumph, Aprilia and Moto Guzzi models are stocked at the larger Pacific Motorsports dealership he, Walmsley and a silent partner own nearby.
Visser’s entrepreneurship stretches beyond two wheels. Leaving his father’s machine- and- fabrication shop for Canada in 1974, tool- and-die maker Visser later founded Lougheed Machine Ltd., in Maple Ridge, and still manufactures truckmounted hydraulic cranes for his Vanguard Cranes Inc. firm there. He also founded and 10 years later sold Coast Marine Industries ( later Progressive Marine) to build tugs and fish boats on New Westminster’s old Star Shipyard site. As for keeping himself in one piece and walking without a limp after decades on the track, “I’m still a middleof- the pack rider,” Visser said.
THE ABC OF B& B: Randy Vogel, 47 has raced most of his life, too, albeit around the buoys and in open waters. You’d expect that of the scion of a clan long evident in the “Victor” section of Royal Vancouver Yacht Club’s membership roll. He kicked off the Vancouver Area Racing Council’s regatta season by sponsoring a reception there recently. Vogel, who raced around on foot as a 25- year mortgage broker, now does it only aboard “the smallest and cheapest boat in the family.” It’s an ultralight Martin 242 sloop that can ghost along on mere zephyrs but is jail- cell austere below.
What a contrast to Vogel and wife Pam’s day- to- day business. That’s BB Vancouver, which operates fourunit Hycroft Suites on West 15th Avenue and the five- suite Granville House B& B 30 blocks to the south. “We thought we’d done the wrong thing,” Vogel said of paying $ 500,000 for their first property, a 1929- built former adult- care home, and the same again converting it just before 9/ 11 struck the visitor market. Then, when business grew ( not to mention today’s $ 3.5- million assessment), “We’d done the right thing.”
Right enough for them to buy the character- looking but three- year- old 5050 Granville in 2007 and equip it with superior, five- star amenities. Rates range from a low- season $ 125 suite to a high- season $ 1,000 whole house. Average stays at kitchen equipped Hycroft are four days and two at Granville House. And booking, which for B& Bs long relied on postage- and- paper, is all online and instantly confirmed.
Vogel and former chain- restaurant cash manager Pam Kehler planned to rent out their first purchase, but honeymooning at Salt Spring Island’s Hastings House changed that. Now, after missing out on a 10,000- squarefoot Granville Street mansion, they’re seeking a third B& B or an up- to- 100-room hotel. His ideal would be the Broadway- at- Granville building that once housed RBC’s residential- mortgage centre.
“I love my South Granville neighbourhood,” he said. “Halfway to the airport.” As for B& B operators’ risks: “The nice thing about this business is that, if you fail, you’ve still got a nice home.” IN FOR THE COUNT: What banker wouldn’t like the sound of a new counting machine’s cascading coins? Certainly not TD Canada Trust’s senior retail- banking VP for B. C. and Yukon Jane Russell, who succeeded Ray Chung two years ago. She’d earlier served a four- year hitch as commercial- banking senior VP here after heading a Toronto- based “middle office” group of 1,000 handling TD legal documents and funding residential and commercial loans.
Retail banking at that level is an encouraging career step for generalist Russell, who joined TD in 1988 “because it was the only bank to have business grads ( she’s from Queen’s) go straight into business banking.” She literally grew with her employer, which reportedly had 15,000 staff globally then and 90,000 now. Meanwhile, TD mushroomed in the U. S., acquiring Bank North ( now TD Banknorth) in 2004, Commerce Bank in 2007 and South Financial Group in 2010. There are 1,300 U. S. branches now, 900 of them with the jangly coin counters Russell loves. There are 56 so far in her 157- territory, 3,500- staff zone that has added six branches yearly since 2009. The latest was in Port Coquitlam March 3. Busy branches, too, averaging 64- hour business weeks across Canada, for seven days at many.
As for Canadian acquisitions, TD picked up Chrysler Financial and MBNA’s credit- card portfolio in 2011, then Epoch Holding Corp. and subsidiary Epoch Investment Partners a year ago. Lifelong jock Russell likely enjoys such hurly- burly. She’s a former hunter- jumper competitor who played on the Queen’s tennis team, then got into supposedly low- contact flag football at which B. C.- based teams “cleaned our clocks.” Injured, she took up business- sensible golf.
As for TD Group’s corporate- hierarchy championship games, attendees at its April 3 AGM learned that president/ CEO Ed Clark will retire Nov. 1, 2014 and be succeeded by acquisitions leader Bharat Masrani, with whom Russell once worked and who was named COO.