Top 6 Motorcycle Items Stolen From Dealerships

As prime riding season unfolds, shops are bursting at the seams with local traffic and travelers alike. It’s obvious when you walk in any shop—with the displays of motorcycle jackets, helmets, and gloves—that we make a good portion of profit from accessories and general motorcycle-related gear, not just bikes. Like most dealerships, we cater to a very specific clientele, so it is common for our customers to walk in dressed a lot like our gear mannequins. Casual wear? That too. With the competition of online retailers, we are constantly asked to price-match like items. We offer weekly discounts on specific items along with a dedicated clearance section—we are acutely aware that keeping the lights on means running a business with multiple profit centers: new- and used-bike sales, service, parts, accessories, and apparel.

Believe it or not, there is one discount that isn’t advertised: theft. I’m sure it seems unreal to riders with even a slight relationship to the store that someone would flat-out steal from the shop, but it happens.

1. Gloves and eyewear are some of the more lifted items we carry. Bungee straps are also pretty common. We sell a lot of these items, so it wouldn't be completely out of the realm of reality that we lose a few too.

2. Jackets. With more than one entrance into a dealership—it's not just the front door, after all—it can be difficult to keep track of things. Most riders bring their gear in rather than leaving it on the bike, but it takes a sharp-eyed counter clerk to notice when a rider has come in without a jacket and left with one.

3. Helmets. Yes, we've lost helmets. We try to keep the least popular helmet sizes on the rack so customers have to ask for a particular size.

4. Casual wear isn't a big problem, but we often find empty hangers in the changing room. We know by our inventory counts that T-shirt theft does happen.

5. Cleaning supplies will also find their way out the door without a receipt. Really, you ride a motorcycle but can't afford a can of spray wax?

6. Clearance items are usually located in a random corner of the store isolated from the more prominent real estate left for new stock from our vendors. Again, when we take inventory it reveals items gone missing. Maybe these thieves think they're doing us a favor.

If all this sounds kinda sad—well, it is. But the fact is we don’t have a big problem with theft and using a combination of store surveillance and alert store personnel we can keep it from becoming an epidemic.

You can help too. Remember that if this is your local dealer and you have a relationship with the staff, it’s worth the effort to keep an eye open for suspicious behavior. If you think someone is walking out the door with stolen merchandise, quietly tell one of the staff. We’ll take it from there. And we thank you.

Jeff Maddox is the sales manager for a multiline dealership in the Midwest. Questions for him? Email us at mcmail@bonniercorp.com.