Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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INTERVIEW DUCATI CEO CLAUDIO DOMENICALI P60 We currently have our plant in Thailand that can serve all the ASEAN [As- sociation of Southeast Asian Nations] countries, plus China and India, because you have a good free trade agree- ment between all these countries that is not the same for Europe. So at present we do not want to add too many produc- tion sites, therefore our Thai plant will be our hub for the Asian region. But coming back to your previous question, because we want the company to expand by developing high-end desirable products for a certain type of customer, we won't ever enter high-volume low-cost market segments. So Ducati won't do as BMW is doing with TVS in India in producing a 300 to 500cc motorcycle? I think that this would be too much for us to consider. So at the moment Ducati's entry-level vehicle is the 800cc air-cooled Scrambler. Do you see yourselves going below that capacity with future models? The Scrambler 800 is a perfect solution for entering the Ducati family, so right now we don't see the need to develop any other model at this price level. It's a premium product be- cause it's very well finished, with good paint, brushed aluminum parts, and so on. We know that there is space in the market for many other bikes at lower cost, but we would like to keep Ducati as an aspirational brand with which you may not start your motor- cycle life. But as soon as you're ready you can join our family by purchasing a Ducati Scrambler. It will be more of an arrival point than an establish- ment point. Why did you make the Scrambler a stand-alone brand? That came about after a great deal of reflection, a long thinking process and it was not for sure a very easy decision because Ducati is a very strong brand in itself, so that would have been a very good reason to just say that the Scrambler was a Ducati with a very particular design, and its own special heritage. But once you start getting into more detail about what a Ducati really is, and what actually a Ducati is today—which is far differ- ent to what Ducati was 20 years ago—you then start to understand there is this space for a sepa- rate brand alongside the Ducati brand. This will be supported by Ducati. So you will never find the Scrambler brand on its own, you "…WE WOULD LIKE TO KEEP DUCATI AS AN ASPIRATIONAL BRAND WITH WHICH YOU MAY NOT START YOUR MOTORCYCLE LIFE. BUT AS SOON AS YOU'RE READY YOU CAN JOIN OUR FAMILY BY PURCHASING A DUCATI SCRAMBLER. IT WILL BE MORE OF AN ARRIVAL POINT THAN AN ESTABLISHMENT POINT." Domenicali (left) and Gianluigi Mengoli (right) and the Supermono single that debuted in 1993.