Dealership insights
Fay Myers Motorcycle World Case Study: Dusting Off the Ashes and Modernizing (2019 MPN Interview)
How Fay Myers Motorcycle World rebuilt after a 2002 fire and a 2003 roof collapse, then replaced its website and chose CXMAi in 2019, with a dealer checklist.
Quick answer
Fay Myers Motorcycle World, a Denver-area dealer founded in 1948, rebuilt after a 2002 fire and a 2003 roof collapse. In a 2019 Motorcycle & Powersports News interview, its general manager said it replaced a dated website and chose PSX's CXMAi platform to track calls, appointments, shows and closed web inquiries.
In July 2019, Motorcycle & Powersports News (MPN) profiled Fay Myers Motorcycle World, one of Colorado's oldest motorcycle dealerships. General Manager Jason White told the story of a store that lost everything in a fire, lost half its showroom to a snow load a year later, changed owners, and then rebuilt its technology. He credited PSX's CXMAi platform for part of that last step.
This is that story as dated history, with what another dealer can take from it. It does not imply that Fay Myers is a PSX customer today.
Fay Myers Motorcycle World at a glance
| Year | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1948 | Fay Myers opened the dealership in Denver, trading his own 1912 Harley-Davidson for the shop's sign | MPN, 2019 |
| 1960 | Named the 99th Honda dealership | MPN, 2019 |
| 2000 | Named the No. 1 Honda dealership in North America for motorcycle sales | MPN, 2019 |
| January 2002 | Fire at the Alameda Avenue store burned the showroom and 450 new motorcycles | Powersports Business, 2003 |
| March 2003 | A blizzard left three feet of snow on the roof of the new Greenwood Village store; the roof collapsed, taking half the showroom and 150 new motorcycles | Powersports Business, 2003 |
| 2005 | Gary Myers, who had run the business since 1975, sold it to Schomp Automotive Group; White and other staff stayed | MPN, 2019 |
| 2019 | White described the move to PSX's platform and a new website | MPN, 2019 |
The problem: two disasters, then a dated website
The first test was physical. "In January 2002, we lost everything in a catastrophic fire," White said in 2019. "The 1912 Harley-Davidson sat in the corner window and was fried. We spent about seven years restoring that bike. It's on display in our showroom now."
The store moved to a former building-materials store in Greenwood Village, about 10 miles away, according to a 2003 Powersports Business profile. Then the roof came down.
"After the fire, we moved, relocated, got up and running and everything was going great, then the roof collapsed. We set up a circus tent outside in the parking lot to sell vehicles since the building was condemned," White explained. "After the fire, we were severely under insured, so surviving it was a tough one. We were lucky that we had a cash reserve set up, as we were preparing to expand at the time. But when our roof collapsed, we were over insured. We bought every inch possible."
The second test was slower. White said shoppers no longer visited several dealerships before buying; they researched on their phones, so the first impression was online.
"The website we had was old and dated like a can of tuna; everyone has it, everyone looks at it though," White said. "Google was introducing new searching mechanisms for measurement and we knew we needed to make the transition. We are interested in being on the cutting edge of the customer experience, we're not interested in being a dying dinosaur."
What the dealership changed, step by step
White's account in 2019 describes six moves, roughly in this order.
- Fixed the insurance gap. After being under insured for the fire, the store was fully covered when the roof failed. "We learned a lot of lessons about the things you don't normally pay attention to over the years, now you have to pay attention."
- Kept the people through the sale. When Schomp Automotive Group bought the store in 2005, White and other employees stayed to continue the family's legacy.
- Reset the values. "Motorcycling is a family-passion business," White said. "We want to be really good at what we do and give the best experience possible."
- Invested in training. "From sales to management, we train every single brand we have," he said. "In our service department, we started sending four to six employees three to four times a year to factory training. At one point, we had the most Ducati factory-trained master technicians in the country. We had two or three Red Level technicians for Honda."
- Modernized the technology. "Bike businesses typically are five, 10, 15 years behind the car business; how things transact, how information comes down the pipe," White said. The store replaced its website and moved to PSX. "Investing in technology is a must. My staff has pushed constantly to embrace change. We chose PSX because the functionality was light-years ahead of anything in the bike business."
- Pushed the vendor. White took problems straight to PSX's founder, Larry Bruce. "Part of being an early adopter is understanding that it is not perfect, but we gain knowledge while doing it and push it to make it better."
Before and after, as the dealer reported it in 2019
These are White's descriptions, dealer-reported in 2019. The interview gave no sales or traffic figures. For another 2019 PSX dealer story, one that did talk about website traffic and leads, see Edge Performance Sports' 2019 traffic and lead report, which also shows how to measure your own.
| Area | Before | After (dealer-reported, 2019) |
|---|---|---|
| Insurance | "Severely under insured" for the 2002 fire | "Over insured" when the roof collapsed: "We bought every inch possible" |
| Training | Not described | Four to six service staff sent to factory training three to four times a year |
| Website | "Old and dated like a can of tuna" | Replaced as part of the move to PSX |
| Sales data | Not described | "At the click of a button, I can look at a lot of different data that is very helpful" |
| Vendor relationship | Not described | Direct feedback to the founder, as an "early adopter" |
The measures Jason White named, and how to use them
Most coverage tells the fire story and skips the most useful line for another dealer: the numbers White said he watched.
"PSX can track appointment-to-call ratios, inbound phone leads, show ratio, if you have a good process to get those people into the store, what follow-up calls look like, how many inbound inquiries do we have on our website and then how many of those closed and what that experience was like," White said.
That list is a complete funnel, from first call to sale. The definitions below are ours, not White's, so you can rebuild the scorecard in any CRM.
| Measure White named | Our working definition | What it tells a sales manager |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound phone leads | Sales calls from new or returning shoppers, per week | Whether marketing is making the phone ring |
| Appointment-to-call ratio | Appointments set ÷ inbound sales calls | Whether the person answering turns calls into visits |
| Show ratio | Appointments that arrived ÷ appointments set | Whether confirmations and reminders are working |
| Follow-up calls | Outbound calls logged on open leads, per salesperson | Whether leads are being worked after the first touch |
| Website inquiries | Form, chat and text leads from the website, per week | Whether the site is producing conversations |
| Website inquiries closed | Sold units ÷ website inquiries in the same period | Whether online leads become deals |
Two habits keep these numbers honest: every call and lead lands in the CRM with a disposition, and each ratio compares the same period. Our guide to call tracking for powersports dealerships covers capturing the phone side, and powersports dealership KPIs covers the wider scorecard.
A checklist another dealer can use
Use this to test your own store against the lessons in White's story.
- Ask a licensed agent to review your property cover against what a total loss of building and inventory would cost today. The SBA's guide suggests assessing your risks, including seasonal events, finding a reputable licensed agent, and shopping around.
- Count how many staff went to factory training in the last 12 months, by department.
- Look at your website on a phone as a first-time shopper would. Would you call it "dated"? Our list of signs a dealership website needs a redesign helps.
- Pull the six measures in the table above for last month. If you cannot get one in a few minutes, that is the first gap to close.
- Write down the three things your main software vendor does not do well, and put them to the vendor in a meeting.
- Plan any software rollout with your team first, using a CRM training plan for dealership staff.
This is general information, not legal advice. Take coverage decisions to a licensed professional. Insurance pays for the loss; a one-page business continuity plan covers how the store keeps selling and servicing in the first week after a storm, an outage or a system failure.
What has changed since 2019
The company the 2019 interview called PSXDigital is now PSX Ascend, and so is the platform: the current product pages describe the CRM, websites, inventory and marketing tools as working inside it. MPN, in the original headline, is the magazine, not a product.
The tools White described in 2019 map to today's products this way:
- CRM and sales measures: the AI-powered powersports CRM connects customer data, sales workflows, lead follow-up and performance in one view. It includes ALMA, the Automated Lead Management Assistant, which handles repetitive re-engagement so salespeople can spend their time with customers. ALMA makes no AI voice calls.
- Website: connected powersports dealership websites link real inventory, lead capture and CRM follow-up.
Fay Myers Motorcycle World still trades in Greenwood Village. Its website today says it has served the Denver area since 1948 and lists new vehicles from brands including Ducati, Honda, Polaris, KTM, Kawasaki, BRP, Can-Am and Suzuki. We make no claim about which software it uses now.
You can also see the same AI-powered powersports CRM on our sister site, PSXDigital's AI-powered powersports CRM page.
Sources
- Motorcycle & Powersports News, "Fay Myers Motorcycle World: Dusting Off the Ashes to Shine Bright Again", 11 July 2019 (Internet Archive copy)
- Powersports Business, "Fay Myers Motorcycle World, Greenwood Village, CO", 29 September 2003
- U.S. Small Business Administration, "Get business insurance"
- Fay Myers Motorcycle World, official website