Stuart Garner: 'We Want To Build And Supply Nortons In India By End - 2018

The CEO and owner of Norton Motorcycles, the 119-year-old legendary British brand, which has just announced a joint venture with India's Kinetic Group, reveals the product and manufacturing strategy, his struggle in bringing Norton back to life, arriving at the most suitable ownership structure, and the slow but steady expansion game-plan. Stuart Garner spoke to Amit Panday on the sidelines of EICMA 2017 in Milan.

- Amit Panday

Congratulations on Norton Motorcycles’ alliance with India’s Kinetic Group. What are the highlights of the partnership?

In the last few years, Norton Motorcycles’ engine platform has grown from a 961 (parallel-twin, 961cc) to the V4 (liquid-cooled, V4, 1200cc) and we have a 650 (twin-cylinder, 650cc) coming through now. We will have three engines but with the investments in those engines, it is not enough to just sell Norton in Europe and North America.

A couple of years ago, we knew that we needed to extend our market into South East Asia and may be Southern America as well. We started to think about who would make a good partner. But, more importantly, we began thinking about what structure would be best suited to us. Would it be through licensing or should we go on our own? Would it be a joint venture, an equity-backed joint venture or an investment in Norton? Thus, we have been working on the correct structure on how to be successful with the venture with the best structure to keep some brand control but also leave something for our partner so that it is attractive to our partner and is an even deal. Some of the deals in the market nowadays are largely in one party’s favour; everybody is excited on day one, but later everybody falls out because it was unequal.

It was all about getting the best structure, one in the UK, a 50:50 JV so that it is equal and just like a marriage where both have total commitment with an equal equity stake. We spoke to a few people and realised that people want control. We said the brand needs to keep the same control (for the future). Then we spoke to Kinetic and they had a very similar view. Kinetic said we want the inputs from our partner to be equal because if we are going to make Norton motorcycles in India, we need the company to come and help us there in terms of engineering, branding and marketing so that we understand all about these components.