BMW Spare Parts and Accessories for Motorcycles
MOTOBINS Who are they? How did they get started?
I had been working as a radar communications engineer for the previous ten years before I met Beatrice on a blind date in 1982. We were two lonely hearts: I waited for her in the front bar and she waited in the back. After an hour we decided to leave and met as we were both on the way out ...a close thing.
We went everywhere together on my old BMW R75/5, winter, spring and summer, as I did not own a car. We rode to France to visit my father, Italy to visit my sister Michelle and Switzerland for the beautiful scenery.
Unknown to Beatrice I had been waiting for my South African Visa to live there permanently as I had a job offer from Racal as a radar engineer. Three months later I received my Visa and off I went to South Africa, promising Beatrice we would keep in touch, which we did. Unfortunately this position only lasted two years, and at the end I had to pack my bags and prepare to return to England.
However, my friends Bob and Dave who worked with me on the project in South Africa had an idea of an overland trip by car back to England. We went to a few car dealers in South Africa and one said we could have a brand new Mazda 323 for the publicity. We modified the car to suit our needs and set off on our journey, hoping to get back to England by Christmas.
Eleven thousand teeth rattling, bolt loosening miles and sea voyage leaving Johannesburg this Mazda 323 arrived back in England, battered but still running.
I got back in touch with Beatrice, who came to the UK from Sri Lanka in 1974, and bought back the old BMW 75/5, which I had sold to a friend before I left for South Africa. It needed a lot of attention after 150 thousand miles on the clock and we could not find any cheap BMW spares. My rotor had packed up so we looked through the MCN and found a man called Bob advertising BMW spares. We managed to contact him and get hold of some spare parts. He was Bob Porecha, who many of you will know because he has been in this business for many years.
When we came back home Beatrice came up with a brilliant idea -why dont you buy a second hand bike and break it up and use the parts you need for your bike and sell the rest. WHAT A GOOD IDEA!
I still had the old Mazda, which took us about three weeks to clean the dust off from the trip. At the weekend we looked through the MCN and found a used bike for sale. Off we went to pick up this bike and paid the owner cash. We asked him if we could dismantle the bike on his front garden, much to his dismay, however, out came the toolkit and we started to dismantle the bike, placing the faring on the back seat with the frame and the rest of the parts in the boot. We came home and put a small advert in the MCN offering BMW spares (I still have the same advert today after 25 years). By this time I had decided to call ourselves MOTO-BINS.
People used to come to the house, which at that time was in Reading, to buy spares. In those days of course there was no internet, Ebay or Paypal. I took all the orders over the telephone and Beatrice did the packing on the kitchen table and took the parcels to the Post Office about three times a day on a shopping trolley.
Everything was going well and we decided to start researching new BMW spares, finding out who made what and where. I spent five whole months doing this so I decided to give up my full time job as an engineer to enable me to do the research on BMW parts further. As a BMW club member I got to know a few BMW owners. Our next step was to advertise the parts, so we went to a printer in Reading to print a few leaflets of the spares we had to sell and he suggested we put this together as a catalogue. With his help we came up with the first MOTO-BINS catalogue in 1986 which had 8 pages. Luckily we had a customer who was a bank manager and he put in a good word for us about four months after we started trading, and helped to set us up for credit card trading - before this we were sending everything C.O.D. We were now able to sell to a wider public.
The b usiness took off very quickly and I received some hassle from our local Council asking me to acquire proper premises. It really took off after we were able to take credit cards and our property became unsuitable as things had started piling up in the bedroom. We started looking for a trailer in Exchange and Mart and came across a five bedroom house with shop in Gosberton, near Spalding. We had never heard of it before but took a look and this price was right we moved into our new home in 1987, and we married in 1988.
Selling new parts was very much different from selling second hand parts as I had to find out who made what and being able to supply the right part at the right price as quickly as possible. Speed is of the essence -it is very important to people. By this time Beatrice was expecting a baby and unable to help in the business as much as much as she used to therefore we placed an advert for an assistant. Terry applied for this position and we employed him. Our son David was born in 1989 and will be twenty years old this year and Terry is still with us twenty years on. He is hoping to retire this year at the age of 65 but he will be irreplaceable.
In 1993 we bought the premises we are in today in Surfleet near Spalding but on November 6th 1997 disaster struck and a fire nearly destroyed our premises, and £250,000 worth of stock. Im proud that we managed to carry on business as usual and did not let our customers down we carried on with Damien came along to assist us with the cleaning up process and assist us in every which way possible - today he is our assistant manager.
We have a large customer base, including a few workshops in the UK and abroad. 50% of our parts are sold to foreign customers thanks to our Web Site which is ever growing. Special knowledge is needed for this business as we send out over 200,000 part per year, getting parts as quickly as possible, helping our customers with problems with their bikes and dealing with all day-to-day enquiries. Mondays are always pretty manic, all the telephones are ringing constantly, computers are bursting with emails, creating new customers, growing to the rate of around 25 a day, mainly thanks to the web site. The work on tele-sales requires a certain kind of person to keep a cool head. My staff who face the public on the telephones every day are Beatrice, Damien, Ross and Rob. (Beatrice knows her old bikes (1972-1989) inside and out so she is always willing to assist).
I have twelve employees now. Barry is our storeman who picks all the right parts for packing, Ian and Skiddy actually do all the packing, Terry deals with all incoming goods and customers to the shop, Hayley helps me with all the purchasing and Jo looks after accounts and general book keeping. My son David helps with email orders before going onto University in September.
I will be going to see my best customer in France next week, riding with David on my R1100RS and onto my final destination which is just on the Swiss Italian border where the Swiss Intervalve factory is. Motorcycling is in my blood - among my collection of BMWs , I still have an R75/5 (not the original one), an R60/5, an R80GS and an R100 CS. My latest addition is the new F800GS which I bought last year.
Many people have asked if we would repair bikes but we do not have the space to do this, but we point them towards our ex-assistant manager Steve Scrimenger, who set up repairing bikes under the name of SED.
OUR MOTTO IS MOTO-BINS ARE LARGE ENOUGH TO COPE AND SMALL ENOUGH TO CARE
Paul
Beatrice
Damien
Ross
Robert
Skiddy
Barrie
Hayley
Terry
Ian
UK Sole Agents
