For motorcycle accessory businesses like ours the good sales quarters are Q2 and Q4 and the slow quarters are Q’s 1 and 3. Most annual profit is made during Q4. This entire year will be an economic write-off, but hopefully Q4 will still be at least semi-ok.
Much will depend on clinical/medical/science stuff. Many different kinds of medical things are coming on fast. For example, blood tests which will be quick and free for everybody so one can learn if one has had the virus or not seem right around the corner. And related to this will be figuring out if the plasma from those who’ve had it can provide useful immunity to those who have not. This and much more should be here very soon.
On the political-economic side this pandemic is giving both sides (Conservative and Progressive) the leverage/scapegoat they need to advance their agendas and priorities much faster and more aggressively than usual. It’s going to be interesting to see which side’s agenda mostly prevails. Right now, the Conservatives seem to have the edge because of the generally more Conservative underlying biases of our current court system, and because they are (for the most part) in power across both the executive and legislative branches. But they may have overplayed their hand.
Regardless of which side prevails, it’s certain that the other side will put up a very strong protest/fight. There will be lots of ‘gaslighting’ for sure. Maybe some violence, too. This would be exactly how the FDR presidency went when they were putting together their radically Progressive agenda during the Great Depression. At the time they were broadly hated by so many but regardless they were successful at setting in place most of the pieces of a style of governance which today is generally considered normal by a majority of Americans.
It’s going to be almost exactly the same this time around, except it’s not yet known which side will prevail, or what the particular and specific details will involve.
What this means for small businesses like ours is unknown. It feels like everyone from the 1% oligarchs and plutocrats, to the homeless, to the Nobel laureates and Pulitzer prize winners are all improvising.
Which is what we are doing here, too.
All of my co-workers, wife, extended family and I are going stir-crazy, but because of all the extra downtime my bike has never been this well prepared: New tires, oil and brake fluid, etc...even little things like twist-grip throttle free play re-adjusted. I expect to begin motorcycle commuting soon as usual, and to be able to take a mid-to-late summer trip somewhere.
My guess is most of the mid-to-late-summer rallies and events will be well-attended and maybe even more-attended than usual because early summer events did not happen and most riders (if they are like me) still want to ride somewhere.
Come visit us this summer. We’d love to see you.
- Mr. Subjective, April 14th, 2020
PS – What followed the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 was the ‘Roaring Twenties’. Supposedly a pretty good time for everyone.
PPS - ‘ATGATT’ and the Virus.
During the months ahead living amongst other people IS going to be riskier than what we all are used to. Riskier compared to the normal we’ve experienced all of our lives. What do we do? How do we each manage the new added risks?
With our elective activity of riding a motorcycle we use a bunch of smaller linked tactics: Don’t ride and drink. Use turn signals. Whenever possible avoid riding during atrocious weather at night. Wear helmets and bright armored clothing (ATGATT*). Think paranoid in traffic. Keep the bike well-adjusted. Ride frequently enough to be moderately fluent. Etc.
We need to adopt this same sort of tactical approach with the new virus, and hope we don’t still get run over and killed by the dang thing. We are going to probably have to live with some increased level of ‘public health risk’ for at least another six or eight months unless there’s some kind of medical breakthrough. So the only way to approach this is with a quiver full of individual tactical measures. Which are now being presented in detail, ad-infinitum, just about everywhere.
We all will get on with our living long before the added risk of this new virus will be back to zero. That’s how we’ve always gotten on with living with tradtional annual flu virus’s. There’s now apparently a brand-new genie and it’s probably not going to get back into its bottle for some time.
Tactics. We’ll each get good with a bunch of small discrete tactics, and they will become normal.
* ATGATT = All The Gear All The Time
Good post. I agree that this is a truly unhinged time in America and I hope the Conservative side wins. But this expenditure of trillions of dollars will haunt us for a very long time as a nation, and I blame both sides and the media for “panic production”. All of the media figures act like they are having a panic attack on the news. That`s always encouraging, don`t ya think?
Anyway, good reminder on the riding stuff. Always pay attention to your surroundings while riding, no time to be thinking about anything else. That`s how I achieve my Nirvana on a bike, by paying absolute attention to my riding, there is no room for other thoughts. Peace.
Last couple weeks I’ve seen two Spring days with high temps near 50°F. Being my scheduled dual sport trip to Arkansas has been postponed, I went out on the K1200 to explore secondary paved roads within 50 mile radius I had not ridden in many years. Many of these rural roads turned to gravel with deadly frost boils not quite suitable for the Flying Brick, but very suitable for my DRZ next decent day! #ridethere!
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