Cast your mind back, if you can, to 1971. If you were still only aspiring to powered transport, your dream wheels were probably different sizes front and rear and were loosely attached to a Raleigh Chopper. If you were already into motorbikes then you were probably drooling over the latest and fastest streetbikes then available – the evil smelling (and evil handling) Kawasaki H2 750, Honda’s CB750 four and the Norton Commando. For the techies among you, Intel launched the first Microprocessor and for those who love to mock our colonial friends, London Bridge was moved to the desert in Arizona, allegedly because the buyer though he was getting Tower Bridge instead.

And a chap called Allan Hemmings started selling motorcycles from his house.

By the next year his fledgling business had outgrown his shed and he moved into a shop in Farnborough, Hants. And so Motorcycle City was born.

Over the next few years, Motorcycle City grew and grew. A management buyout followed in 1997, and a while later it was taken over by Dixon Motors. There was increasing pressure to sell more and more units, which was good news for the buying public who benefited from the resulting “stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” approach, but not so good for existing customers who found that aftersales support was suffering badly. As the business expanded further, things got worse as shops ended up being staffed by disinterested and poorly motivated people who came and went almost as quickly as the bike stock. The tie up with Carnells, far from improving things, accelerated the decline and saw branches of the chain consistently occupying the bottom slots in customer satisfaction surveys across the land. Relaunching as Riossi didn’t seem to help much either as their reputation continued to freefall and, earlier in 2003, Riossi ceased trading.

In the meantime, most of the original management team of Motorcycle City had gone their separate ways. One of them, Rob Puttick, (on the right in this picture) started a bike clothing company called Infinity, which was proving extremely successful, and when Riossi collapsed an opportunity seemed to present itself. With Allan Hemmings’ help and in partnership with many of the old team, Infinity acquired a few of the old Riossi stores and went into the motorbike business.

So here we are, a few weeks down the line, at the official launch of Infinity Motorcycles at their Purley (Croydon) branch. The change is incredible. Every member of staff I spoke with was highly motivated and had great hopes for the new company. And they didn’t know I was a journalist either. The atmosphere is one of enthusiasm and of commitment from the trainee in the workshop right up to the MD. So what has changed?

I spoke with Dean Hemmings, son of Allan and current Sales Director, about his plans. The first thing he stressed was that people are there because they want to be. He believes that work should be a pleasure, not a chore, and although the company is obviously out to make money, they see no reason why people shouldn’t have a good time a long the way. As a result, you won’t see the disinterested, demotivated unit salesmen, who might as well be selling you a fridge or VCR as a motorbike, that you might once have expected. Instead you’ll find people who all ride and who all have a passionate interest in bikes. Yes, you could actually go in to an Infinity branch and just have a chat, which is a pleasant surprise. Dean puts a lot of this down to their approach to the business side of things, believing that while accountants are important they shouldn’t be dictating what the business actually does. The man is pretty typical of the management team. He’s been riding since he was able to do so, races a KTM 620 Supermoto for the laugh and works 12 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week. His enthusiasm is infectious and the fact that he has done just about every job in the company at some point means that he can relate to everyone. He’s incredibly competitive and has a thing about buying used bikes. In fact, for a while, that was his sole occupation. This passion carries through to the used side of the business. Unlike before, now every bike that is bought in goes through the Farnborough workshops before going up for sale. On the rare occasions that they manage to buy a nail then it either gets fixed or it goes to auction. There won’t be any old dogs being retailed from Infinity as has happened elsewhere in the past.

Something else that has changed is that the people who work at Infinity actually seem to care if a customer (or even a potential customer) is happy or not. They actually do care that a job is done properly and they have gone to great lengths, like booking an extra hour every day in the workshops to cater for the occasional cock-up, to make sure that the accusations of poor service and disinterest can never be levelled at them again.

Having been around bikes and bike dealers for around 25 years I’ve seen a few things. I even worked for Motorcycle City once, a very, very long time ago, and saw things you would not believe. But I can honestly say that I have seen very few, if any, dealerships with the level of commitment and enthusiasm that I saw today. If they can keep it up, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t, then Infinity Motorcycles fully deserve to make a great success of it.

STOP PRESS - Clapham branch launches 20th September 2003 with special offers, celebrity guests and more...