40 foot container full of Geely scooters.
That's how it all started for us, in 2002 my dad went all in on a few 40 foot containers directly from Geely, full of mopeds and parts. He imported them directly to cut out the middle man. We put them directly on the show room floor and never did any wholesaling. We were in the bike business. I was stoked.
It's crazy to see how far Geely has come in 20 years. They own Volvo, they have 50/50 ownership of Smart Car, 51 percent ownership of Lotus, and have small stakes in Renault and Aston Martin. More relevant here is that they still produce motorcycles. They own Benelli and QJ Motorcycles. They have even more brands and employ 80,000 people according to wiki. But all this is irrelevant, because this is my origin story. Besides, Geely started in 1986, and our story begins just 20 years ago.
In the year 2003 my dad opened a scooter shop that I would run and operate for the next 10 years of my life. My dad has always been an entrepreneur and I have always loved motorcycles. So naturally we opened a scooter shop. To start he imported a 40 foot container full of Geely mopeds. Soon after we imported electric scooters, pocket bikes and pit bikes. The whole pit bike craze probably helped push the envelope for Chinese bikes in it's own way, but that's another story. Geely seemed to be the best, but they were still what I would consider terrible at that time.
The shop had more success as a repair shop fixing all the bikes from all the other shops around town selling similar junk. It really became such a headache being the middleman between the consumer and their Chinese bikes. I'm so happy to see where the bikes are now. Well the ones from the top companies. China still produces low quality bikes because we still buy them. As long as people will import them and sell them, there is a market for disposable bikes. But consumers here and in the Chinese domestic market, expect more for their money.
My best friend and I used to joke: 'But why Phil? But why?' Customers used to aske me this. I couldn't explain to some people no matter how hard I tried that there was just something inherently wrong with the quality of the bikes, as if they were not made to last or something. I swear, it just seems like some of those early bikes, no matter how many times we repaired them, there was always the next issue. But does it wheelie? I learned how to do proper wheelies on Chinese bikes.
We continued to import for a while, but eventually it was easier for me to buy from other importers who could give me some kind of warranty backing. We were not going to China ourselves to oversee quality. We were on our own. The bikes started to get better, but the quality wouldn't come soon enough for me. And towards the end we basically became a motorcycle repair shop and I moved us away from Chinese scooters all together.
We closed the shop in 2015. I went back to school and earned a B.S. in Marine Sciences from Savannah State University. Then I went to work for my friend . . . in the automotive industry, as an automotive locksmith. It's fun and interesting, but I miss working with bikes. At least I can be a moto journalist here, for myself.
Yamaha Vino, Tomos, Sears AllState, Tomberlin MadAss, Honda Metroplitan. I can't rembmer, but I want to say these were all mine. For resale of course :) Sold the Vino to a friend. Traded the Madass for another old Sears Motorcycle at the Barber Vintage Festival. The MadAss was a real attention grabber.
