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Harley-Davidson Annual Dealer Meeting
Harley-Davidson Motor Company worked with Shook Kelley to bring a new retail context to its Annual Dealer Meeting, providing inspiration ideas for dealership retail environments during the four-day private event.
Every year, thousands of Harley-Davidson dealers and staff from all over the world converge in one place to talk shop and learn about the latest developments, ideas and innovations coming out of Milwaukee. For both the 2013 and 2014 shows, Harley-Davidson Motor Company worked with Shook Kelley to bring a new retail context to its Annual Dealer Meeting, providing inspiration ideas for dealership retail environments during the four-day private event. For the first time in a long time, retail innovation became the buzzword among the Harley dealer’s network.
Harley came to Shook Kelley to build on our extensive prior experience working with both Harley corporate, as well as a number of Harley dealers around the nation. In those projects, we brought new retail experience ideas to the dealership environment. While Harley is unquestionably one of the greatest brands in the world in terms of loyalty and culture, the brand’s extension as a retail experience doesn’t always live up to expectations in many of its locations worldwide. Shook Kelley was tasked with translating the Motor Company’s ambitious plans for retail innovation into a built environment that could engage the dealers network and get them to consider ways to improve their retail experience. As a bigger, broader goal, Shook Kelley’s immersive design experience sought to find ways to more accurately and meaningfully make the Harley brand tangible at the dealership experience. If the brand’s place could tap into just one fraction of the overall community culture experience, it would spell a huge improvement for the dealers.
While Harley is one of the greatest brands in the world, its retail experience doesn’t always live up to expectations
For the Annual Dealership Meetings, Shook Kelley created temporary immersive experiences that revolved around a variety of product categories, dealership services and other points of community engagement found in virtually every dealership around the world. For example, design vignettes demonstrated different ways to merchandise motorcycles, combining dramatic lighting with rustic floor and wall textures that best complement the bike’s metal chrome finish. Wall graphics discussed the best retail practices for how to space motorcycles on the sales floor in order to promote good circulation and give prospective buyers the room to pause, admire a bike and imagine themselves on the open road. In other areas, Shook Kelley prompted ideas about how to build spaces that could bring the powerful Harley community together, in order to strike up a conversation among fellow riders or to invite riders to talk with members of the dealership’s team about how to customize their ride.
Dealers we talked to were excited about the Shook Kelley designs, and wanted to find more ways to bring better retail practices into their dealerships. And the Harley corporate team was excited enough by the first year’s results that they brought back Shook Kelley to revise the project for the next year’s Annual Dealership Meeting.
The project sought to convene people around the Harley brand on two different levels. For the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, executives and brand innovation leaders wanted to bring together their dealership network—a notoriously “rebellious” group of savvy entrepreneurs—to have more conversations about how to improve their retail experiences in the dealership. While many Harley dealers already perform well in product categories like t-shirts and motorcycles, other dealerships lack the expertise to take the brand to the next level experience. Because just another lecture about retail innovation was not enough, the Meeting’s immersive design environments created the ultimate classroom for dealers: showing, not telling.
On a more immediate level, the new retail innovations that Shook Kelley created all sought to convene riders inside of a dealership experience. While the Harley brand and its products were the star of the show, every experience and every vignette that Shook Kelley worked on was required to have some dimension that could engage with the Harley community and innovate on ways that riders could strike up conversations, make new friends and become part of the brand’s powerful tribe. While this great brand has taken on a life of its own, the dealership environment is the last and least leveraged frontier in further promoting this great community.
Every year, thousands of Harley-Davidson dealers and staff from all over the world converge in one place to talk shop and learn about the latest developments, ideas and innovations coming out of Milwaukee. For both the 2013 and 2014 shows, Harley-Davidson Motor Company worked with Shook Kelley to bring a new retail context to its Annual Dealer Meeting, providing inspiration ideas for dealership retail environments during the four-day private event. For the first time in a long time, retail innovation became the buzzword among the Harley dealer’s network.
Harley came to Shook Kelley to build on our extensive prior experience working with both Harley corporate, as well as a number of Harley dealers around the nation. In those projects, we brought new retail experience ideas to the dealership environment. While Harley is unquestionably one of the greatest brands in the world in terms of loyalty and culture, the brand’s extension as a retail experience doesn’t always live up to expectations in many of its locations worldwide. Shook Kelley was tasked with translating the Motor Company’s ambitious plans for retail innovation into a built environment that could engage the dealers network and get them to consider ways to improve their retail experience. As a bigger, broader goal, Shook Kelley’s immersive design experience sought to find ways to more accurately and meaningfully make the Harley brand tangible at the dealership experience. If the brand’s place could tap into just one fraction of the overall community culture experience, it would spell a huge improvement for the dealers.
While Harley is one of the greatest brands in the world, its retail experience doesn’t always live up to expectations
For the Annual Dealership Meetings, Shook Kelley created temporary immersive experiences that revolved around a variety of product categories, dealership services and other points of community engagement found in virtually every dealership around the world. For example, design vignettes demonstrated different ways to merchandise motorcycles, combining dramatic lighting with rustic floor and wall textures that best complement the bike’s metal chrome finish. Wall graphics discussed the best retail practices for how to space motorcycles on the sales floor in order to promote good circulation and give prospective buyers the room to pause, admire a bike and imagine themselves on the open road. In other areas, Shook Kelley prompted ideas about how to build spaces that could bring the powerful Harley community together, in order to strike up a conversation among fellow riders or to invite riders to talk with members of the dealership’s team about how to customize their ride.
Dealers we talked to were excited about the Shook Kelley designs, and wanted to find more ways to bring better retail practices into their dealerships. And the Harley corporate team was excited enough by the first year’s results that they brought back Shook Kelley to revise the project for the next year’s Annual Dealership Meeting.
The project sought to convene people around the Harley brand on two different levels. For the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, executives and brand innovation leaders wanted to bring together their dealership network—a notoriously “rebellious” group of savvy entrepreneurs—to have more conversations about how to improve their retail experiences in the dealership. While many Harley dealers already perform well in product categories like t-shirts and motorcycles, other dealerships lack the expertise to take the brand to the next level experience. Because just another lecture about retail innovation was not enough, the Meeting’s immersive design environments created the ultimate classroom for dealers: showing, not telling.
On a more immediate level, the new retail innovations that Shook Kelley created all sought to convene riders inside of a dealership experience. While the Harley brand and its products were the star of the show, every experience and every vignette that Shook Kelley worked on was required to have some dimension that could engage with the Harley community and innovate on ways that riders could strike up conversations, make new friends and become part of the brand’s powerful tribe. While this great brand has taken on a life of its own, the dealership environment is the last and least leveraged frontier in further promoting this great community.