First off, I live in a small town in Virginia so if we want something besides groceries, gas, or fast food we have to travel. The nearest city to me is 30 minutes south, and the next closest city is is 45 minutes north.
In January my son’s Polaris had a warranty issue and rather than travel the hour and a half back to the dealership that I bought it from I tried the one that was in the city 45 minutes north of me. The guy told me that he was closing down at the end of January and didn’t want to get caught up in any possible long-running warranty issue. So that was my closest dealer, and now that he’s closed the closest dealership(s) are about an hour and a half south of me in Greensboro, NC.
A guy I work with said that a Polaris dealership was going to open in May in the city 30 minutes south of me that I mentioned, but I asked him the other day if they were still opening and he told me it fell through. One of the would-be partners owns the Toyota dealership in the city, and Polaris wanted him to put his Toyota building up as collateral, and he said he wasn’t doing that. The lone ATV dealership that is there sells everything but Polaris and Arctic Cat; they sell Can Am, Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, and Kawasaki.
There seems like a Polaris dealership would be a prime business in this area since there’s none close by now, but based on the one closing and the other dealers not carrying them makes me wonder what’s going on. Is Polaris’s requirements for dealers harder or something? I know when I used to be into BMX bicycles I had a small bike shop owner tell me he couldn’t sell GT bicycles because they required him to purchase, I think, 500 in a year’s time, and he said he just couldn’t invest in that many.
The other thing I noticed about the Polaris dealerships that did exist around here was that they existed on their own. The one I mentioned that was 45 minutes north of me that closed was solely Polaris. And a few years ago there was a Polaris dealer in the city 30 minutes north of me, but they were mainly a John Deere dealership. The ones in Greensboro, NC are sold with other brand ATVs, however.
