PRESIDENT OF WESTERN POWER SPORTS (WPS) CRAIG SHOEMAKER
P90
Interview
deal you're feeling pretty good. If you don't have
much of that and you're heavy into a certain type
of bikes, you're feeling a little harder hit. Wherev-
er we go, I see people on one side of the street
struggling and people on the other side of the
street doing really well. It doesn't matter whether
you're in this business or you're selling clothing
or cars or whatever. I'm not kidding that it's tough
out there. We want our industry to be as healthy
as it can be and go forward. We've been really
blessed during this whole time to keep moving
forward. If you look at the numbers, obviously
we're getting some market share from some-
place else. We just roll up our sleeves every day,
work hard and go to work and see how it lands.
Any other thoughts about things in the fu-
ture or things coming that you think set WPS
up for ongoing success?
I think we do this all the time, but I would say
first of all it's the people we've been able to hire.
I'm just looking at our rep force because this
week is our sales meeting. I was just walking
through the room and just spent about an hour
looking around and looking at people and going,
"Man, we have really, really acquired a great
sales team." We've been lucky.
Everybody has some really good reps work-
ing for them. Everybody has some weaker reps
working for them, and then there's just a lot
of good in the middle. We all have that, but it
seems like we kind of woke up over the last five
years. We're probably getting a little bit better
share up on the top half, you might say. Which
has also taken some of the bottom third away be-
cause we're just normal turnover and everything,
but I feel like our overall rep force has really
become a great group of guys and gals that you
could put up against anybody. I think it's good for
our dealers. When you have those guys, it allows
you to go forward with more programs and more
service and more stuff.
We're not here to say, "We just put it in the
warehouse. You buy it." We're here to service,
sell it, and put it in our warehouse so you can
