Here's a news flash. WE'RE BACK!!!!!
Well, we can see the chickens inside the eggs anyway, yet to hatch. But serious chance they will. So, what's happened, you ask....?
In short, Steve Couri is recently back running the Newcastle Fraser Dealership, and he really wants to see an active, interested, genuine Ducati Owners Club happening in the area, and is prepared to support it. Steve is a pretty active dynamic kinda guy who ran the Newcastle outlet a couple of years ago or so, before moving to Perth to do the same thing. He fostered starting up a Perth WA DOC, from scratch, and loves what happened there, and how well it works. Now he's back, he wants to see if it can happen here too "Why not, Newcastle sells more Ducatis" is a pretty interesting indicator...
Have you been into Broadmeadow lately? I was there yesterday, and half the front was full of Ducatis, about triple what I've seen before. And nowhere near the volume of rising sun annoying trip-hazards I saw last time I dropped in. Didn't get to ask Steve if there was a new stocking policy / whatever, but he did say that pretty often they sell 25 Ducatis a month. It would have been 4 or 5 last time I knew. Interesting. And good!!!
To flesh out the details, about a month ago Steve rang me and we had a great chat about getting a club going again. He promised to ring back 'with more details' later. So, given the silence, I dropped in to follow it up. What we decided is Steve is going to prepare an invite to look for expressions of interest to get a genuine club going; he'll pass this to me and maybe we'll edit it a bit. Then Steve will issue it to the "2,000 new owners of Ducatis in the last 5 years" and I'll do the same for the 200+ forum mailing list here, so some will get it twice.
If we get a decent response with people saying how they would love to be involved, then we'll 'do something'. Like an inaugural bbq at Frasers, or whatever (suggestions welcome) to kick it off. What we need is to get the initial committee going, and they will take it from there. And about 30 financial members to get over the entry bar to have an 'official Desmo Owners Club'.
One aspect is that Ducati Italy have started charging for 'official status' now, which gets the club a plaque and a bunch of goodies for all the formally listed financial members. I still have the plaques from 2007 and 2008 hanging on the wall from when we did this before. No cost back then; apparently its $2,000 or so now, so that means annual membership fees are around $80. Which the Perth experience was nobody had a problem with as it is an elite club they were happy to be a part of.
Once a few of the chickens have hatched we'll know what's going on. When? Dunno. Last q I had for Steve was "So, Steve, when can I expect to see the first draft of that exciting invitation?" "Not any time this month!" was the answer, with "too busy - got a big sales budget to meet and a lot of stuff to do to get that done". He told me a number, he sure has a job to do...! I said I'd be back mid Jan if didn't hear from him sooner; he's good with that.
So, what can you do? Apart from 'getting excited', maybe stick your head around the corner of Steve's office "just to say how keen I am to get involved in the new Desmo club Vince tells me you want to kick off". He'll hear you, and the more that happens the better. Mentioning me lets him know it is 'the real Ducati owners' that care. Of course, just a subset of the whopping big number who still don't know, so there is that...
If this thing gets up, a decision for the new committee is exactly what happens to this piece of history.... At least at strategy level. I personally have gone riding with Ulysses and various FaceBook riding groups and others a fair bit over the last few years. Met lots of terrific people, but not found anything like the fun and engagement one gets hanging around on the road and pubs / coffee shops with a bunch of Ducatisti. We sure could use a bit more of that back around here!!! Are you in? Call in on Steve!
