Sled sales are and have been down for years. As a powersports dealer I see a lot of the things that the manufacturers put out, sales numbers, etc--and sled numbers ARE down. Way down, across the board. We think that the state of the economy has a lot to do with it, along with the fact that the sleds don't sell at all once you get south of about Nebraska. As the planet slowly warms there is less use for them. Sales were UP in 14-15, have been down in the last few years. Cost has some bearing as well. Everything has gone up and hasn't come down; in fact stuff went up again starting today 1 jan 2025. Lots more reasons as well and it's not just arctic cat.
Arctic cat's SxS market is slow (almost dead) in this area, and unless they decide to make changes to "fix" that, they're not going to go anywhere. I actually had an interview with another dealer the other day who sells arctic crap SxS's. Offer was good but there is that "stability" question mark. Arctic cat sent out a letter a while back to the dealers that suggested some incertainties. That dealer's bread and butter is AC Side by sides and ATV's, and suzuki. Suzuki isn't really doing anything either. So I think I'm gonna stay where I'm at for the time being and watch that dealer go slowly downhill, and who knows, we may end up with their stuff too....my boss is a go-getter for sure and he likes to grow. We (dealer I work at) desire to become the biggest, best, ORV dealership in the state. It may take a while but that's the goal and that's why I came on board-to help the service guys learn how things need to be done.
Yamaha rep told us a few years ago that they were going to get rid of snow equipment. So we knew that was coming. It was explained to me that the resources that went to snow were going to be redirected to the ORV and to an extent the marine markets. I'd like to see that happen. Yamaha builds great equipment across the board, although sometimes they fall short of some of the rest of the competition in some ways, but if they can redirect those snow resources to ORV's, I think they can do something with that. I just wish Kubota would do a better job with their gas SxS offerings. The 520 is a joke which does not even begin to compare to the Mule SX (which is it's direct competitor) and the 850 sidekick has so many issues plaguing it from many different angles that it's just not competitive with anything.
Similarly to the snow market, the motorcycle market. In this region motorcycle sales are down ~96% over the last 10 years. That's significant if you couldn't already tell. When I started in the business in 1992 the dealer I worked for typically sold 125-150 motorcycles a year and out of those, probably 85% were street bikes and 15% off-road. In 2020, the last year I did motorcycles, they sold 2 from Jan through October. Both street bikes. Dealer agreement is that if you want to carry ORV's (SxS's) you also have to carry motorcycles. The dealer I used to work for is getting out of the Yamaha business and we (where I am now) are working to acquire their yamaha dealer. The biggest challenge so far is that they (yamaha) want us to carry motorcycles and we are NOT set up for it. I've got experience with them (obviously) but motorcycle customers are COMPLETELY different than SxS customers are so that in itself is gonna be a big challenge for the guys and gals I work with.
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