Roadsmith Explained
10/24/2006
The Trike Shop has always experienced an identity problem with our somewhat generic name. Back in 1972, The Trike Shop was a unique name. But with the boom in the trike industry there are all kinds of “Trike Shops” now. And for those dealers that are named "Trike Shop of..," they are getting tired of people asking:
“What kind of trikes do you carry?”
“Trike Shop”
“Ya, I know that’s the name of your shop,
but what brand of trikes do you carry?”
When we ran magazine ads or did shows, our name implied we were a retailer not a manufacturer. We'd been struggling with that for years but we didn’t want to change the name of our company. After a lot of discussion we realized that all we were missing was a brand name of our trike conversions.
General Motors has Cadillac that has Escalade.
Toyota has Lexus that has the LX470
The Trike Shop has the HT1800… something was missing.
So we added a “brand” of trikes available by The Trike Shop’s dealers.
They are named “Roadsmith” trike conversions.
Again, we are not changing the name of our company but rather naming our line of trike conversions.
· Roadsmith HT1800 = HT for Honda Touring, 1800 for Gold Wing 1800
· Roadsmith HT1500 = HT for Honda Touring, 1500 for Gold Wing 1500
· Roadsmith HSC1500= HSC or Honda Sport Cruiser, 1500 for Valkyrie
· Roadsmith HSC1300 = HSC or Honda Sport Cruiser, 1300 for VTX1300, or VTX 1800
· Roadsmith HDT = HD for Harley Davidson, T for Touring
· Roadsmith HDTR= HD for Harley Davidson, T for Touring, R for "R" body style
· Roadsmith HDST = HD for Harley Davidson, ST for Softails
· Roadsmith HDST-V= HD for Harley Davidson, ST for Softails, V for "V" Body Style
· Roadsmith HDSS= HD for Harley Davidson Sportsters
A good example of this is Lexus. They advertise Lexus as the name you remember but the RX330 or LX470 is a smaller part of the message. When somebody says what kind of car you drive you say Lexus (Roadsmith). Another similar example is Yamaha naming their Cruiser motorcycle line Star Motorcycles. Notice the continuity of Royal Stars, Road Stars, Road Liners.
We will advertise that this is a Roadsmith or a Roadsmith trike conversion; the model name is a very small part of the description. More like a part number of a Roadsmith to identify the exact application. We think this is a better long term naming strategy for our company than randomly naming a model after a butterfly or a snake.