While perusing the local craigslist today I came across a post (which I dutifully tagged as spam) announcing the new scooter oriented online shop by traditional powersports mail-order powerhouse Dennis Kirk. Their new site is called dkscooters.com and offers accessories and gear for the scooter owner. For many years the Rush City, MN based retailer has had excellent catalogs aimed at several powersports divisions from off-road to metric cruisers. Now in the digital age they’ve made a separate website to group the items that would be more likely purchased by scooterists. They have covers, locks, jackets and even one token brand of 2 stroke oil. But when looking in the top category on their left-hand menu, helmets, I found it lacking. Not that they didn’t have my preferred brand or that they didn’t have a Valentino Rossi replica lid, but that of the 163 options there wasn’t a full-face helmet to be found. Do scooterists not deserve the same protection offered to other power-two-wheel enthusiasts? Do they really think that scooters are so harmless that no one needs the protection available to a cruiser pilot? Or is this completely sensible and the only question is why the website isn’t entirely pink with bunnies around the border?
Write this post off as a narrow minded rant if you’d like. Dennis Kirk will probably have no problem with the free advertisement (normally I’m a big fan and until now shopped their at least once a year). And it could be said that you shouldn’t even buy a helmet online without trying it on first, and you should buy it from the local shop where you tried it on. The behavior of embracing and marginalizing scooters at the same time just seems a bit insulting.
UPDATE: Dealer News reports on the news of the DK online store for scooters. The article gets some interesting comments from a few of the prime movers in the scooter commerce arena. LINK
Happy Bunnies suck ;-)
Putti are much better. :->
Come on dude; they have fanny packs. That’s what scooterists wear. I ride a scooter, where an open-faced lid and rock a fanny pack strapped tightly to my parachute pants. Now they need to stock some neon colored Nike aqua socks and some hyper color shirts.
Definately got there finger on the pulse…
Nice writeup, Brooke.
It’s kind of sad, but hardly a surprise, I’ve always been a fan of Dennis Kirk, too (though their website has always been pretty clunky). But we’ve all seen this coming, surely JC Whitney will have a scooter-centric catalog, too. But on the other hand, you can’t blame ’em for trying, I bought a lot of sparkplugs and oil from them in the past, and I would have been happy to get a smaller catalog with only stuff i’m interested in as opposed to the 600 page monster full of american flag headbands and leather fringe vests and neon kits and Troy Lee stickers. (although, they don’t have a lot of scooter-specific stuff there, so I imagine a good deal of that creeped over to the scooter catalog.)
The helmet thing really is the saddest part, just to assume that scooterists would have no interest in a full-face. Then again, their target market isn’t people like us, it’s people who bought scooters at Pep Boys (they sell helmets and accessories there now to, of course).
Hello everyone. My name is Bob and I am the President/CEO of Dennis Kirk. Just want to let you know that we are paying attention and fully intend to expand and adjust the dkscooters.com website until we hit the mark.
It goes without saying it is a new business and there is still much for us to learn. So we honestly and sincerely appreciate your comments and criticisms as they are just the sort of thing we can learn from.
Therefore, we will soon add a full selection of full faced helmets to our assortment.
If you are offended by our naivete I am sorry. Clearly it is our sincere intent to operate in a manner that treats everyone in a respectful manner. We will work hard to do better in the future.
If you have any additional comments, suggestions or criticisms please let them rip as we would really appreciate the help!
Regards.
Good to hear, Bob.
Another suggestion would be to add dkscooters.com to the main DK page as well as a checkbox for a subscription to scooter stuff like the other areas (lower left hand side of the main DK site). One other disappointment was to not see Continental Zippy 1 or Cheng Shin Hi-Max tires. Some of the best reasons to visit Dennis Kirk were those two tire solutions that you sold at great prices. Both are now gone.
Heya Brooke,
Thanks again for the suggestions. We are in the process of completely rebuilding our main website. As part of that project we do intend to feature our scooter store in an manner to further highlight the scooter segment of our business. Along with that we will be sure to make it easy for people to get on our scooter mailing list.
A few weeks ago we sourced 11 different Zippy 1 tires and expect to have them in stock sometime very soon. Once we receive them we will put the items up on dkscooters.com.
I am having our purchasing staff look into the Cheng Shin Hi-Max tires as we haven’t previously researched them. So at this point it is too early to say if we will or will not stock them.
Once again, thanks for your help! We really appreciate getting the type of info you are giving us.
Regards, Bob