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What is killing Harley Davidson?

A brand so dominant every suburban dentist wore the t-shirt — now selling tricycles because customers are too old to hold up bikes.
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By The Numbers

50+
average buyer age today
200x
more dangerous than cars
#1
growing category: tricycles

What They Nailed Early

Built the ultimate lifestyle brand for baby boomers chasing counterculture cool. The brand became so powerful that dentists and accountants paid premium prices to feel like rebels. Apparel and merch became a business unto itself.

What Changed

Their core demographic aged out. Average buyer is now over 50, and the fastest-growing product category is tricycles for customers who can't hold up bikes. Attempts to reach younger buyers with new models and electric bikes failed due to poor execution. Meanwhile, they listened too closely to aging aficionados who demanded more features, more complexity, more expense — classic innovator's dilemma.

Where it Landed

Empty stores in Vegas on a Saturday night. Gen X won't risk it with kids. Millennials want social experiences, not lone-wolf rides. Gen Z sees suburban dentists in leather chaps as the opposite of authenticity. The brand went from everywhere to nowhere.

The Principles

1. 
Listening only to your core customer can kill you. Aficionados demand complexity and features that make your product expensive, bloated, and ripe for disruption.
2. 
Demographic time bombs move slowly, then all at once. Harley saw it coming for years but couldn't execute the pivot before their customer base aged out.
3. 
Brand pivots require staying the course through pain. Management churn and inconsistent strategy alienated loyalists without winning new customers — the worst of both worlds.

Builder's Takeaway

If your customer base is aging out, remember:
• 
Don't alienate your core while chasing new demos — you'll end up with neither
• 
Complexity creep is a tax on future growth and appeal
• 
Demographic shifts take years to hit but require years of consistent execution to solve
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