BMW Motorrad’s man on a mission

What’s the best background for a senior manager at a bike firm? Accountancy? Marketing? HR?

If you ask most motorbike fans, they’d probably say no – they want an engineer in charge. That’s no doubt down to the almost-visceral connection most riders have to the mechanical side of bikes. You want the boss man to know what a gudgeon pin does, how to fettle a compression damping adjuster, to be able to swap out a failed fuel pump or repair a puncture at the side of the road. To know, in short, what bikes are all about.

The most famous example is of course, Soichiro Honda: the neargodlike founder of Honda, who started out making piston rings in the ruins of post-war Japan and went on to build the biggest bike firm in the world. But today, we’re speaking to a slightly less famous engineer-turned-bike-boss, Paulo Alves, head of BMW Motorrad UK and Ireland. Alves has worked at BMW in the British Isles for more than 25 years in various roles. But how did this friendly Portuguese chap end up moving from the sunny Iberian Peninsula to the cold, drizzly UK?

“Dempsey and Makepeace!” is the startling reply (for younger readers, that was an ITV cop series from the mid-1980s). “I blame engineering job. “I joined when Rover was part of BMW, and I went to the Swindon plant. They had a centre of competency for pressing technology, and we provided pressed body panels for Oxford, Solihull, and Longbridge. I worked on the Rover 200 and

Paulo Alves, head of BMW Motorrad UK and Ireland

Dempsey and Makepeace. I used to watch it in Portugal, and I loved that the police cars were Rover SD-1s. I was doing mechanical engineering at university in Porto, and I had heard about the Erasmus scheme, where you can pick a nation and do the final year of your degree there. So I graduated with a Masters in Engineering at Leeds University.”

And that love of Rover cars followed him into his first

400 facelifts and a project called R30, which was meant to be the new Rover engineered by BMW, but that came to an abrupt end when the company was sold. After that, my team and I worked on the R52 MINI convertible and the second generation R56 MINI.”

A proper hands-on engineering job then, starting out in the car world, and Alves would work as a project manager at BMW fourwheeled manufacturing for the next 14 years. In many firms, that would be it – he’d work as an engineer or a manager of engineers until he left or retired. However, Alves reckons BMW is different, allowing him to move sideways and up. “BMW is a great company because it believes in you, and not just as an asset. If I left my engineering career and went to any company in the UK looking for a marketing job, they would say, ‘why are you doing this?’ But BMW will let you do stuff that no other brand in the world would do, so as an engineer, I found myself working in marketing communications.”

Alves moved into marketing and communications at BMW HQ in Bracknell, with the 2012 London Olympics as the biggest project at that time. A couple of years later, he was off to Dublin as MD of BMW Ireland, and over his six years there, he went through a lot of change. “In Dublin, I just love the culture there, and the people, and dealing with our dealers, that were sometimes second or third generation. And talking about the value of relationships, it’s so true in Ireland. If you don’t get that concept there, then you’re doomed. So I loved it and went there as a single man, came back married with two kids and two dogs, so a big life change, in both professional and personal perspectives.”

An extensive and complete BMW apprenticeship then, and now Alves is head of BMW Motorrad in the UK and Ireland. How did the new role start, with the shadow of Covid hanging over the world? “1 February 2020, I started, and then on 23 March, we went into lockdown. Luckily, I enjoy chaos… Also, I was lucky I came from Ireland to the UK in time for Christmas, and then I had a month gap. I used that time to go and see every retailer in the country, which was invaluable because when you start a job, you quickly get sucked into the machine. So I did that straight away, and I really enjoyed it because you get proper feedback from the most relevant people in the network, you get to go to workshops, and speak to every technician in the country and every salesperson. The advantage is you go in without preformed views, and you can say I’m new here; I’m only here to say hello, and that allows people to talk more openly.”

Fast forwarding, what is his biggest problem now, in early 2023? “Things are great. I don’t really have a big problem, but I would say I’ve got ambition. Two years ago, I launched a project called Mission 10k. We’ve never broken through the 10,000-unit barrier for new motorcycles sold in the UK and Ireland combined. The best we’ve done was 9629 bikes in 2019. So we’ve launched that as a come back after Covid, and now we have Mission 10k 2023. We are one month in, and the ambition is to achieve it. Product is just one element, there are many others; one of the key targets was reinforcing the dealer network, so last year we opened a few more retail centres. There’s a bit more work to do, but sometimes it’s about getting those little gains where you can, looking at performance on finance, generating more leads and conversions, and exploring other sales channels. Even getting bikes to retail staff – they love bikes but maybe can’t afford a BMW, so we leave no stone unturned to be able to gain that incremental growth. The idea is when you break a barrier, you then think, ‘we deserve this’.”

What changes have been taking place in the BMW dealer network recently? “We added the New Forest, and we added Warwick and Shrewsbury. We’ve also added Exeter, and we are in talks about potentially adding Taunton. We opened in Chester with Halliwell Jones replacing a partner that decided to have a change of direction. So at every step, we are making the network slightly stronger. There is more opportunity out there so we are always open to talking to investors.”

Alves is keen to de-mystify the process of becoming a BMW Motorrad dealer. “I am cautious that we can be a complex brand to deal with because we have high standards. We want to be seen as the most valuable franchise. I’m encouraged by the recent NMDA survey results, but there’s always more we can do. I want to see the profitability of the network increase because the more profitable the dealer network is, the more appetite there is for strong partners to come in, and they can help us and the network.”

Does having a retailer who sells BMW cars and bikes together work well? “Sometimes, yes, but I’m conscious that I don’t want to go too far here because then I end up saying that unless you’re one of our car players, you can’t be with us, and I think that’s wrong. If there’s an opportunity and my local car partner is interested, I tend to run with it because they understand the brand straight away. We don’t have to educate them from scratch; they get the processes and often bring a degree of scale to run different departments properly. It’s not unheard of to have motorcycle businesses where the receptionist does the marketing whenever they’ve got a bit of time, but that’s not how we operate anymore. They may have a robust call centre: if you go into Vines in Guildford, there is a call centre, and they have customer conversations, and sometimes a bike opportunity arises from nothing, just a conversation, and they handle that really well. At the same time, an element of passion for motorcycles is needed. I want to have the right partners to drive the motorcycle business.” 

What would be the ideal number of dealers for Motorrad UK?

“Currently, we have 44, including two in the Republic of Ireland and one in Northern Ireland. I’d like a few more, to reach 50 maybe.

I mentioned earlier the need for profitability: if you have too many retailers, they are eating into each other – I call it blue on blue – and you need a retailer to do a minimum of 150 to 200 bikes to make it worth their while. We should be looking to drive Motorrad and compete against other brands, not competing against ourselves. It’s for them to decide, clearly, but avoiding white spots for coverage is fine because we want to provide customers with choice and convenience. We don’t want them to have to ride more than an hour to get a bike serviced. I probably don’t need more than 50 retail partners because I want to create lots of opportunities for the dealers I have. I have loyalty to them.”

BMW had a global sales record in 2022, but the UK didn’t match its 2019 heights. Why was that? “During the year, we had a few production challenges, and we lost a disproportionate amount of bikes during the peak season, but we had a record globally. We had many records in many markets.”

Alves had a sales ‘win’ in 2021 though, thanks to preBrexit worries. “In 2021, which feels like ancient history now, with the degree of uncertainty over Brexit, we didn’t know what would happen. So I discussed the option of stocking up strongly for the start of the 2021 season. And then, if prices go up, we can decide what to do; either we put on profitability or run campaigns to customers promoting that they can still buy bikes at pre-Brexit prices. Storage was no problem because there was a decline in car production, so we started the year in a really good position for stock. We were relatively insulated in the UK when production challenges began to arise.

“It turned out that the strategy was flawed because, in the end, there were no tariffs to worry about with Brexit, but we increased stocks and achieved our original objectives.” and we will use the franchise board to bounce ideas off or find a challenge. But we don’t rely on that as a communications tool because we speak to the whole network.”

What does Motorrad UK have planned heading into 2023 – the firm’s 100th anniversary year?

“100 years is big for us, so we have a few events with retailers. We’ve got the initiative, ‘100 bikes for 100 years’, and we’re taking 100 customers on a ride to Berlin and back for BMW Motorrad Days. There will be celebrations there and then later in the year we will open a new museum in Berlin, the BMW Motorrad Experience.

“There are not many brands that can celebrate 100 years, so we will make it as special as we can, and then the rest is the basics.

I will keep reinforcing the retail network, focusing on profitability to ensure we are a highly valued franchise to work with and deliver on customer experience. There is still a lot of work to do. I don’t care what other brands are doing. Whenever a customer reaches a BMW Motorrad touch point, I want to ensure we excel.”

Alves has some fun planned for his dealers too. “It’s a great year for the product. Britain is quite a sporty market, as you know, so we have the M1000 RR and the S1000 RR. We are planning to take the retailers to Almeria, using the bikes on the track, so that will be pretty special.

“It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the network for us. I know the NMDA survey was great, but there’s more we can do. In the last few years, we have focused a lot on transparency of communication openness. We speak to the whole network at least once a month, we have a franchise board that works well,

Rounding off the chat, we’ve heard a lot about Alves’ professional background – but what is his two-wheeled story? “I had wanted to ride a motorcycle since I was a child, but my parents said no. Eventually I somehow persuaded them to let me get a license in December 1999. And then for my 30th birthday, I bought my first bike, which was a BMW R1200 C. I still have two R1200 Cs, and an R1200 CL – the one with the fairing and four headlights. It’s an ugly thing. Dynamically it’s a pig, but I love it because I like to ride unique stuff. They’re the best ones to keep now because they are becoming rare. I also have a couple of K100s, which I’ve been waiting to chop into café racers for some time. One is an RS which I may not have the heart to chop. I may restore it because it’s too nice, but the other is an RT which has been badly restored, so I’m going to take all the plastic off, and make it into a café racer!”

What is he riding day-to-day at the moment? “The CE04 electric scooter is very cool, but I do a lot of miles, and as of now I’m going to be bike only. So I’m going to hand back my company car and then its going to be R1250 GS Adventure all the way.”

And the final words from this engineer turned marketeer and senior manager are encouraging for any BMW fan. “As a company, BMW encourages you to do other stuff, but they’ll have to pry me off this job with a crowbar because I love it.”