For more on this subject, tune into Episode #356 of GarageCast
We say this in almost every 20 Group room we sit in: powersports has something most industries would kill to manufacture and can't. Passion.
Your customers aren't buying a motorcycle, an ATV, a side-by-side, or a PWC because they need transportation. They're buying an experience. They want adventure, community, identity — and honestly, they just want to have fun.
That passion is one of your biggest competitive advantages. But we'll be blunt: passion alone doesn't guarantee profitability. As this business gets more sophisticated, the question we keep putting in front of dealers is this — how do we hang onto what makes this industry special while building something more sustainable underneath it?
Some of the best answers come from borrowing a few lessons from automotive, without trying to turn your store into one.
Passion Is Powerful. Process Is What Makes It Scale.
One of the most useful things we've picked up from watching operators like Michael Maledon is the value of looking outside your own four walls. Maledon's path went from law and M&A into automotive dealerships and eventually into powersports — and that outside exposure changed how he thought about running a business, managing people, evaluating acquisitions, and rolling out technology.
That outside perspective matters more than people give it credit for.
Powersports has historically lagged automotive on CRM, inventory management, digital retailing, pricing transparency, and data analytics. We don't say that to knock the industry — we say it because that gap is opportunity sitting in plain sight. We're finally seeing tech companies build tools specifically for powersports instead of trying to cram automotive software into a market it was never built for.
Here's what we tell every dealer before they sign another software contract: the winners in this next wave won't be the dealers who buy the most technology. They'll be the ones asking the better question first — what problem are we actually trying to solve?
Technology should make your dealership easier to operate, easier to buy from, and easier to work for. If it isn't doing one of those three things, it's just another line item on your P&L.
Takeaway we come back to in every meeting: Technology should make the dealership easier to operate, easier to buy from, and easier to work for.
Your Best Technology Might Still Be Your People
Here's a lesson we don't want this industry to lose while it's chasing every new platform: great businesses are still built by great people.
One philosophy Maledon carried from automotive into powersports is one we repeat constantly to clients: people, people, people.
The strongest leaders we work with don't try to be the smartest person in every department—trying to be can actually become a liability. Hire talented people. Give them real responsibility. Listen to them. Let them push back on your assumptions.
This matters most in acquisitions and ownership transitions. We've watched new ownership groups walk in and immediately want to rip out processes, swap out staff, and make a statement that they've arrived. We'd push back on that instinct every time. The better move is to understand the people already there before you touch anything. Sit down with employees one-on-one. Ask what they're good at. Ask what frustrates them. Ask where they want to grow.
Institutional knowledge is worth more than most new owners realize. Sometimes the person best equipped to transform a dealership is already clocking in there every day.
Takeaway: Before you change the people, understand the people.
Culture Isn't a Soft Concept — It's a Business Strategy
Culture sounds like a fluffy HR topic right up until you sit in a dealership where it's broken. We've seen it firsthand — culture drives turnover, customer experience, online reviews, recruiting, and yes, your bottom line.
Employees don't learn what matters from your handbook. They learn it from what leadership actually rewards. If a manager lets a top performer get away with toxic behavior because the numbers are good, that's now part of your culture — whether you meant it to be or not. If leadership treats customers fairly even when there's an easy windfall sitting on the table, that becomes part of your culture too.
We watched this play out during the high-demand years. Some dealers realized they could jack up prices simply because inventory was scarce. Short-term, the math looked great. But the operators we respect most — the ones playing the long game — understood something worth more than that extra gross: trust. A customer who believes you treated them fairly when you held all the leverage might stay with you for decades.
Takeaway: Customers remember how you treated them when you had all the leverage.
Transparency Might Be Powersports' Biggest Untapped Opportunity
If you want to see the gap between automotive and powersports in one place, look at pricing.
Customers are used to shopping online and knowing exactly what something costs before they ever walk in. Then they come into a powersports store, and a unit advertised at one number suddenly grows after freight, setup, and other fees get layered on. Even when every one of those charges is completely legitimate, it can feel like a bait-and-switch to the customer sitting across the desk — and that's a dangerous spot for any industry to be in.
We're not telling dealers to stop charging freight or setup — you have real costs getting a unit ready for delivery, and your techs deserve to be paid for that work. The issue is clarity, not the charge itself. OEMs and dealers both have an opportunity here to rethink how pricing gets communicated so the customer understands the real transaction price earlier in the process. Automotive is way ahead of us on all-in, transparent pricing. It's worth paying attention to.
Transparency doesn't kill your margin. Done right, it actually makes that margin easier to defend, because the customer understands exactly what they're paying for.
Takeaway: Transparency doesn't destroy margins. It removes suspicion.
Inventory Discipline Beats Inventory Volume
Here's another automotive lesson we bring into every inventory conversation: inventory is not the same thing as opportunity.
Too much inventory creates pressure everywhere in your store. Units age out. Floorplan expense climbs. Discounting starts. Margins collapse. Eventually you're advertising aggressively just to turn metal into cash — and at that point, you're not controlling the market anymore. The inventory is controlling you.
OEMs have a role in this too. A healthy industry needs healthy dealers. Pushing excessive inventory into a network might help a wholesale number look good this quarter, but it can quietly erode retail profitability and brand value over time. Dealers and manufacturers share the same customer at the end of the day — the incentives ought to reflect that.
Takeaway: A healthy OEM needs healthy dealers — and healthy dealers need disciplined inventory.
Adaptability Beats the Perfect Playbook
The biggest trap we watch dealers fall into is confusing a favorable market with great management. When demand outpaces supply, everybody looks like a genius. Inventory shows up, inventory sells, margins hold. Then the market shifts, and that's when you actually find out what your business is made of.
The dealers we respect most keep asking themselves:
The right answers from three years ago aren't necessarily the right answers today. That's exactly why adaptability might be the single most valuable skill a dealership can build.
Takeaway: Never confuse a great market with a great business.
Where This Leaves Us
Powersports doesn't need to give up its personality to grow up. If anything, it's the opposite. The passion, the lifestyle, the sense of community — that's exactly what automotive companies would spend millions trying to manufacture and still couldn't fake.
The real opportunity is combining that passion with stronger fundamentals: better people, better technology, tighter inventory discipline, clearer pricing, stronger OEM-dealer relationships, more education, and — above everything else — better long-term thinking.
We don't think the best powersports dealerships of the next decade will look like car dealerships. We think they'll look like professionally operated powersports businesses — sophisticated enough to run on data and technology, but still deeply connected to the communities and lifestyles that built this industry in the first place.
Because the goal was never just to sell another motorcycle, ATV, or side-by-side. It's to build a dealership — and an industry — that customers, employees, and manufacturers still want to be part of ten years from now.
Key Takeaways We Bring Back to Every Dealer
