From Dayton to Hog Heaven…

One of the coolest stores in Day­ton, Ohio is F&S Harley David­son.  Located on North Dixie Drive, the store is fam­ily owned; run by Jeff Stolzen­burg, his sis­ter Jenny, and his par­ents.  F&S is a mas­sive com­plex, filled with beau­ti­ful Harley David­son motor­cy­cles, Harley mer­chan­dise, a con­fer­ence cen­ter, stor­age facil­ity, repair garage, parts ware­house, and more.  They even have free cof­fee for guests, and I love free cof­fee.  One step through the front door, and you imme­di­ately begin to pic­ture your­self out on the open road rid­ing one of these beau­ti­ful machines.

When I worked in Day­ton as an Account Exec­u­tive, F&S was one of my favorite clients.  They were always fun to work with. They were not afraid to push the bound­aries, and they sell an unbe­liev­able prod­uct to a very loyal cus­tomer base.  Truly a dream account.  I still keep in touch with Jeff and the F&S crew, and they even hosted a fundraiser for the Epilepsy Foun­da­tion of West­ern Ohio for free last March.  Great peo­ple, and a great place to visit if you have never done so.

With that said, this year is Harley Davidson’s 105^th anniver­sary.  The com­pany is pulling out all the stops to cel­e­brate the anniver­sary, and Day­ton will be included in the mix as sev­eral cor­po­rate exec­u­tives from HD will be lead­ing a cross coun­try ride right through Day­ton.  The group, which should be siz­able, will be stop­ping at F&S in the after­noon on Mon­day, August 25^th, and stay­ing into the evening to answer ques­tions, press the flesh, and greet the Harley faith­ful from the Miami Val­ley.  This should be a really cool event, and some­thing that you Harley enthu­si­asts out there will not want to miss. When the ride leaves Day­ton, the group will be headed to Wis­con­sin, where the com­pany is based, to con­tinue the cel­e­bra­tion. Word on the street is that it is going to be leg­endary, with big name acts play­ing pri­vate shows over sev­eral days!

Part of the fun in Wis­con­sin will be the newly opened Harley– David­son museum, fea­tured in this month’s issue of Wired.  Harley fan or not, this is a great exam­ple of pulling peo­ple into the expe­ri­ence of the com­pany and its devoted fol­low­ers.  There are very few com­pa­nies that could open a museum peo­ple would actu­ally want to visit.  I stand in awe at the way in which Harley-Davidson has man­aged to cul­ti­vate such fierce loy­alty amongst its cus­tomers.  If I ever find myself in that part of the county, I am going to make it a point to visit. Clearly there is a lot to learn about motor­cy­cles and even more to learn about mar­ket­ing.

New Harley-Davidson Museum Is Heaven for Hells Angels