INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Dealernews Research

By Don Musick

THE FASTEST WOMAN ON EARTH

522.783 mph!

On August 27th, 2019 in the Alvord desert of Oregon, professional racer, TV personality and author Jessi Combs broke a land speed record that had stood for more than 40 years. Sadly, due to a mechanical failure in the front wheel of her jet-powered racer, she lost her life pursuing her goal of becoming the fastest female ever.

Nearly a year after her death, Guinness World Records officially recognized her accomplishment naming her

“The Fastest Woman on Earth.”

As an inspirational trailblazer, Jessi Combs is a fitting choice to set the tone for this month’s article. I’m sure that you’ve seen her on Overhaulin’, Garage Squad and MythBusters to name a few, but she’s probably best known for her appearance on All Girls Garage. Making its debut on the Velocity channel in 2012, All Girls Garage “…taps into the expertise of three women repairing cars and motorcycles in a shop setting. The women approach complex projects that rival those undertaken by their male counterparts in order to prove they have what it takes to run a female-dominated car shop.’

Ironically, All Girls Garage represents only one of the 16 male-dominated programs currently airing on the Velocity Channel (click for a full list)!

A lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, Jessi was also the author of Joey and the Chopper Boys, a children’s book published in 2015. The back cover reads:

“Joey is a little girl who loves motorcycles. In this book she is uprooted from her small town home and has to move into the city for her father to find work. Joey finds herself without her friends and the path to make new ones proves difficult. With a strong mindset, instilled by her father, to never give up we follow Joey through a tireless effort to prove her self-worth. The book conveys that anyone can do anything they dream if they believe in themselves.”

At the 2016 SEMA show (Specialty Equipment Market Association), Jessi partnered with Theresa Contreras of LGE-CTS Motorsports as co-creator of the IAmTheRealDeal.com website with the goal of “inspiring more women (and men) to build their ideas, go fast, and get dirty.”

The Jessi Combs Foundation was founded posthumously in 2019 with a mission statement of: “To Educate, Inspire and Empower the next generation of female trailblazers & stereotype-breakers.”

REPRESENT! The question we’d like to ask is: “How are women represented in management roles in powersports dealerships?” For answers, we’ll turn to our annual survey of powersports OEM dealer networks. This data product profiles dealer networks of 160+ powersports OEMs in the U.S. and 120+ in Canada, but for this analysis we’ll stick to the U.S. Our data is merged with InfoGroup’s financial profile data which also identifies principal contact by name, gender and title. Sweet! Now we can do a little number crunching!

First things first…. Powersports dealership management is still dominated by men. Women account for only ~10.9 % dealership personnel as a whole. So, to put things on a level playing field, let’s compare management role profiles for each. In Figure 1, we’ve plotted the relative percentages of management roles/titles by gender for the top 16 categories. Role identification as “Owner” is the largest category for both genders; however it accounts for nearly 50% of male dealership management vs 33% for female management. Also notable is that the female “Manager/Site Manager” categories outpace their male counterparts by 48.0% to 35.7% which may suggest a more even-handed allocation of responsibilities. Collectively, the next four roles (President, CEO, General Mgr. & Vice President) show little discernable gender disparity at 11.7% male vs 9.2% female.

Continued from page 35

MORE GENDER GAPS?

There are a couple more stats that we can tease out of the InfoGroup profile data; 1) estimates for annual revenue & credit scores and 2) actual employee counts. Since we’re dealing with estimates for 1), this is a bit hand wavy but employee counts are not. Table 1 summarizes the results:

HALLMARK!

Lots of birthdays coming up next month so a visit to the card shop was in order. I found a great new series from Hallmark called “Just Wink “and happened to find the card below. Seems like a good place to stop!

From his first motorcycles (a Honda S65 and an S90) when he was 16 to 50 years later, Don Musick has never stopped twisting the throttle. Although his accomplishments in the research arena have surpassed his MX career Don has over 25 years experience with major manufacturers in the Powersports and Automotive industries specializing in e-business solutions for retail distribution networks. His solution portfolio includes the development and implementation of manufacturer/dealer extranets, consumer-direct commerce portals, manufacturer/dealer e-channel integrations as well as development of web-based sales force automation tools. For most of his career, Don has been fascinated (his wife would say obsessed) with geographic market analytics, dealer location planning and sales territory optimization. He founded Genesys Technology Solutions (GenesysTech) http://www.genesystech.com/ to develop new tools and market intelligence products to help manufacturers understand the competitive landscape of their industries, recognize opportunities and grow their businesses. A Spartan to the core, Don earned a B.S. in Physiology and PhD in Biochemistry from Michigan State University. Contact: dmusick@genesystech.com