UK’S project frenzy
Covid is a nightmare for many motorcycle businesses. But not if you sell project bikes…
We’ve had the busiest year on record in 25 years of business,’ says Jason Jones of West Coast Imports in Somerset. ‘It’s unbelievable. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing – plus email, Whatsapp, texts, ebay messages… we’ve been swamped.’
Until recently West Coast Imports brought in 1980s and ’90s bikes from Japan, registered them and prepped them for sale by servicing and Mot’ing them. But with only Jason and his brother Glen in the workshop there was a limit to how fast they could get bikes ready. ‘So we thought we’d have a crack at selling them as projects,’ says Jason.
And the floodgates opened. ‘We cleared half of the shop [that’s 180 bikes – it’s a big shop] during lockdown. We never thought we’d shift that amount of bikes in such a short period of time. Even old stock was going – some stuff we’d had for nearly ten years. ‘Most buyers were stuck at home, they’d done all the DIY, finished their projects and wanted something new that they could maybe earn a few quid from. And on top of that we’re getting overseas buyers which has never happened before. I’ve just sold one to Texas.’
Glen and Jason had inadvertently been preparing for this demand deluge. The duo have something of a buying addiction and over the years had been cramming their Minehead shop with TZRS, RG500S, VFR400S, XTS and anything else they had a crush on. ‘Yeah, we’ve got a bit of a buying habit. We tend to buy with our heart rather than our heads, so we’ve effectively been stockpiling for five years. ‘Before Covid we had about 350 bikes in stock and we got to the stage where we couldn’t get any more in. It was crazy – we couldn’t MOT bikes or do service work because there were so many bikes in the way. We had to move 40 bikes to get into the service bay.’ So what’s selling? ‘RVFS, TZRS, RGVS, RG500S, XTS, XLS, TZS, TS250XS, Serows… the list goes on,’ says Jason. ‘Prices for projects vary from £5-6000 down to £1500. We’ve got a guy in Japan who’s the country’s biggest Honda dealer and he knows the sort of stuff we’re looking for. We’ve got a container coming in in a couple of weeks with some lovely stuff if you’re interested…’