Play
Show Navigation
Show Transcript
00:00
Play
Seek 10 seconds backwards
Seek 10 seconds forward
00:00 / 14:47
Mute
Disable Captions
Settings
Picture in picture
Fullscreen
Search in video
You can search the video captions for specific words or phrases.
Popout transcript
Hide Transcript
Skip transcript
(upbeat instrumental music)
Harley Davidson is an American icon.
It's CEO, Jochen Zeitz, is taking it down a new road.
We have a new brand that's called LiveWire
that is all electric.
We want to lead the electrification of the sport.
What is your goal?
When you get on a Harley,
you live the Harley Davidson lifestyle.
And that's something we want to cherish
and take into the future.
Do you bring your adventuresome spirit
to your role as the CEO of Harley Davidson?
I think being a CEO is always an adventurous experience.
I'm Monica Langley, and this is "The Inflection Point."
(upbeat instrumental music)
Thank you for joining us on "The Inflection Point."
When was that moment in your life
when you got on a path that changed your world?
Well, I guess one has a lot of inflection points in life,
but as a young businessman, it was when I was 29,
I was working for Puma
that had just been promoted to vice president
of marketing and sales.
And the company was taken over and it just, you know,
was very unsuccessful.
It had gone public in the eighties,
had been losing money ever since.
And the new shareholders tapped me to develop a plan
and asked me to present it to them.
They gave me three weeks time and I presented the plan.
And after a grilling of two hours of Q and A,
they said, "This sounds like a great plan,
why don't you go and execute it?"
And I was 29.
So it was quite a surprise at the time.
Go execute it as CEO?
The CEO. Exactly.
Okay, so that's a big step up for a 29 year old.
It was, we actually waited
a couple of months before we announced it.
So that I would turn 30 to make it look
a little less challenging, I guess.
That must have been daunting.
Or were you just too young to realize,
"I've got a big responsibility"?
There were a lot of people that said,
"Oh, he's going to crumble under the pressure.
The leading papers, newspapers,
magazines were never going to happen."
You know, "We had a Harvard CEO before
and many others that tried,
so why would a 29 or 30 year old make this a success story?"
And it really didn't bother me.
I was just excited to be given the opportunity.
You know, I often quoted
because I was asked whether I could do the job,
not having the experience.
And I was sort of quoting Tucholsky who said,
"You can do things wrong for 20 years
and with all your experience, you still can't be successful.
So from that point of view,
I just felt that screw experience.
I think I know what I need to know
and I know what needs to happen.
Assemble a great team around me and off we went.
How did it work out, Jochen?
Thankfully it worked out really well.
I mean, it was a company that was in turmoil.
It was bankrupt on paper.
So, we had to first really turn around
the company to make profit.
And then after we made record years of profit,
we decided to reposition the brand
as a sport, lifestyle, and fashion brand,
and that became a huge, huge success.
I mean, we grew from a little over a hundred million
to 4 billion in sales,
and yeah, it was a great journey, really.
And to top it off, the top luxury conglomerate
in the world bought Puma, Kering,
which has Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent.
I mean, that's damn good.
Yeah.
How long were you the CEO of Puma?
18 years and then two years in the holding company,
so almost 20.
Wow, so you literally could have ridden off
in the sunset, but you took the job
as CEO of Harley Davidson,
an iconic American brand, why?
Well, you just said it, it's an iconic American brand,
and the company hadn't been doing well
for several years, we had to let go of our CEO.
And then the board turned to me
and asked if I would step in for-
Because you were a director of-
I was on the board of Harley Davidson for a while.
And the board asked me if I was willing
to step in for certain period of time
as an interim CEO,
it was just before we had to shut down our factory to COVID.
So it was a very critical situation.
And we had to raise a few billion dollars
right away to keep going,
because we didn't know how long our factories would be shot.
I took the job and I just saw a huge opportunity.
So for me, a crisis,
the bigger it gets, the bigger the opportunity.
And that's why I'm doing what I love now
to run Harley Davidson.
So you don't just like a challenge, you like a crisis.
I sure do.
So, I've heard quite often in my life,
"This is never going to work,"
and it sometime tooks many years
for it to work, but it just never scared me.
So I'm probably in that sense, a little fearless.
And I've realized that the things
that, you know, are not the most obvious things
can become your biggest success.
You just have to believe in it, work at it,
have a great team, and then eventually work out.
So I'm pretty confident.
So now that you are the CEO at Harley,
what is your goal?
Well, this is an incredibly iconic brand.
It's one of the most powerful brands in the world.
We have a history of a 119 years.
We celebrate our 120th anniversary.
And that is a great legacy to build your future on.
And that's what we're going to do.
I mean, we had to change a lot of things.
I think, you know, this is sort of a
a gorilla that was punching below its weight
for way too long, and we want to build on that legacy,
but, you know, bringing into bright future.
And we are also recognizing
that while the US is a huge,
in the most important market where we still have
a lot of potential in the coming years,
we also want to expand globally as a true global icon.
We're here today with this new innovative bike.
Give me the big reveal.
Well, the big reveal is
that we have a new brand that's called LiveWire
that is all electric.
We want to lead the electrification of the sport.
This is the second bike of LiveWire, it's called Del Mar.
Part of the speed series,
built on a versatile speed platform
or arrow platform that can be utilized
as a platform for new bikes that we will develop
in the future.
It's a very exciting motorcycle.
It's the best electric motorcycle out there.
It's a fantastic experience.
And it's a different experience
to a normal Harley Davidson motorcycle.
So how is it different?
Tell me about that.
Well, it's all electric, first of all,
it's a different brand-
So you don't have the same-
No clutch,
Loud noise?
No clutch, no gears.
It's nonstop once once you turn the throttle.
So it's very fast, very agile.
It's just a fantastic bike to ride.
I mean, I love riding all my Harleys every day,
but I also love switching to LiveWire
because it's just a very different experience
that is worthwhile.
And, you know, it's the different consumer
that we are attracting.
It's the innovator that wants
to get into electric for the first time
because there's just not much out there, really,
that I think can compete with this motorcycle,
but it's a very exciting experience.
And so, I want everybody to ride a LiveWire
and also have a Harley Davidsons in their garage.
So we need both?
A hundred percent.
Jochen, what is the risk of not innovating
because clearly you're innovating here.
Well, I always think what's next, right?
What do we have to do to succeed and to win?
And the future, you know,
will require a way where we engage
with our planet without destroying it
and electrification is a given.
At the same time, is there a risk of innovating,
that you have such longtime lovers
of Harley Davidson that don't like a new direction?
So you can never stand still,
otherwise become a dinosaur.
No brand, no company can stand still
and just rely on one customer group.
You have to bring in new riders
and that's what we are doing.
And that's what innovation's all about.
But that doesn't mean that you can't.
You look after the riders that made you
what you are today, I think that's very important.
Do you think that the future
of Harley Davidson could one day become all electric?
We're seeing so many legacy brands
wanting to go all EV.
Well, electrification of motorcycles will happen.
The question is when and how.
Motorcycles from a technological perspective
are a little bit harder to convert
to electric than cars are
because we don't have the space.
There's all only limited space.
Battery can only have a certain size.
You need to get to a certain range.
The parameters are very much tighter than in a car,
so the electrification will take longer,
but we want to lead that path with LiveWire
and give the opportunity through the innovation of LiveWire
to then also electrify Harley Davidson.
I asked you in particular,
because you have been on the forefront
of the issue of sustainability
almost your entire professional life.
And when you were at Puma,
you talked about sustainability, before any CEO,
anywhere was talking about it.
Well, I love nature.
I love our planet.
I sort of grew up spending weekends
in the black forest.
And I just realized that, you know,
we cannot consume the way we have in the past.
We have to find ways to, you know,
for prosperity for humans,
but at the same time, preserving our planet.
And I think it's not just a responsibility that we have,
it's also an opportunity to really innovate as a business.
And that's what I've been trying to do.
I had been on the Harley Davidson board
for over 10 years, and I came to the board
because I felt that if you could influence
an iconic brand to, you know,
care more about people in the planet, you know,
then you could actually change that whole industry.
I introduced the idea to go, you know,
to innovate in the electric space
over 10 years ago when nobody was thinking about it.
But I said, "Look, one day
maybe the world will go electric,
so let's think about that."
And I, at some point, I even had to say,
I don't think you're taking this comment seriously,
so maybe I need to leave the board.
And the company did take it seriously.
And thanks to that, you know,
we're here today and can talk about LiveWire,
an electric brand that is going public.
And now I'm being given
that opportunity to actually really make it happen, yes.
So you've been pushing on this for many years
For over a decade, yes.
At Harley?
Mm-hmm.
But as a board member, there's only so much you can do.
So you carried your sustainability drive
and philosophy much farther.
That's right.
So that's one of the other reasons why I said,
"Well, this is a great opportunity.
All the things that I would've done
and couldn't do because I was just a board member,
I can now actually implement."
What does sustainability mean to Harley Davidson?
Well, there are really three aspects to sustainability.
It's people, it's planet, and profit.
As a company, you know,
we talked about inclusive stakeholder management.
Of course, we are a public company,
we want to be successful for our shareholders.
That's the profit side.
But, at the same time, you can't make profit
at the expense of people and the planet.
And that's where sustainability
in terms of people and planet comes into play.
One of the first decisions I took
was to make everybody a shareholder in the company,
whether you are-
At Harley?
At Harley.
So we issued a grant to employees and hourly workers.
Everyone in the factory is now a shareholder
in the company because I believe
that everybody that is contributing
should be winning when we win as a business.
Wow.
And using riding culture to bring people together.
Riding is a fantastic opportunity to get out.
You get into nature, you experience nature,
but you always want a buddy to come along with you.
It's a big community, the riding community.
And it's a very diverse community as well.
So we're welcoming all.
And I think, especially in a divisive world,
that's a great opportunity for all of us
to come together around one cause of riding
and getting to know each other
and experience different points of view.
And that's what makes the Harley community so special
that once you're a rider, no matter who you are,
where you come from, what you do, doesn't really matter
as long as you're a rider for Harley.
You've been riding Harley's for a long time, I presume.
'cause that sounds like you're like
a real adventuresome guy.
Well, I would say I probably ended up
in the wrong century,
I would've probably become a shake out
and then died in the (chuckles) Antarctica.
But yeah, I'm sort of an adventure at heart for sure.
I mean, to me, you still look that way.
You know, you're still like
you're not looking the corporate type to me.
Well, I've never worn a tie in my business,
but the first years as CEO, I did because I was so young
and I wanted to look a little older,
but then I gave up the tie very early.
So, you know, still corporate ties are not my thing.
Do you bring your adventuresome spirit
to your role as the CEO of Harley Davidson?
I think being a CEO is always an adventurous experience.
It never gets boring.
And Harley Davidson is about adventure and freedom.
So I live a dream in a way, being able
to think about adventure and freedom every day in what I do.
What is at stake for this iconic brand
for Harley Davidson today, as we sit here?
At stake?
I don't think anything is at stake
other than us wanting to be really taking the brand
and taking the company to new heights.
We are not just a product.
We are lifestyle, which is extraordinary.
There's very few brands out there,
and I can't even think of one
that epitomizes the lifestyle of motorcycling
more than Harley Davidson, that's a huge asset.
So when you get on a Harley,
you live the Harley Davidson lifestyle,
and that's something we want to cherish
and take into the future.
You still see motorcycles
from the early 1900s riding around the world.
And I think a hundred years from now,
it will be the same.
But we have to, obviously, as a company,
like everybody in a fast-transforming world,
we have to innovate.
We want to lead.
We are the leader and we want to have continue
to be the leader.
And that's why we're changing a lot of things
at the company.
What's at stake for you, Jochen?
I don't look at it that way, I just-
You don't even think like that?
No, I don't look at this as a job.
I just love what I do.
Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it.
You know, I have incredible passion for Harley Davidson,
for my colleagues, for the team,
the employees, for factory workers.
And I just want to see it succeed
and I want to be part of it.
So I do what I love and I have a passion for one.
I think that's the best recipe for success in a way.
You've convinced me with your adventuresome spirit
in your love of freedom that I want to join you.
So can I wear a Harley Davidson t-shirt
and will I feel that way?
I think that's the start.
If you wear a Harley t-shirt,
and then we'll sign you up for a riding academy
and three days later, you can ride a motorcycle.
Why not? Absolutely.
Maybe I'll just get on the back of your motorcycle.
That's option or into a sidecar.
(chuckles) Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Resume AutoScroll
Questions about Salesforce+? We have answers.
What is Salesforce+?
Salesforce+ is the free streaming service for business. It’s a place to watch live events and original series that help you grow your career and company, on your own time. Salesforce+ is produced by Salesforce, so you’ll find our company’s big events like Dreamforce here — as well as new original shows and virtual learning made for your role and industry. Everything is free and unlimited.
What can I watch on Salesforce+?
You can watch all kinds of helpful, entertaining, and inspiring videos on Salesforce+. One thing our members love is our events. Whether you catch them live or on demand, Salesforce+ gives you a free front-row seat to our biggest global events, like Dreamforce, TrailblazerDX, and Connections. Our members are also big fans of our original series. These entertaining business shows star people in roles and industries just like yours, giving you fresh ideas for how to grow your company and do better work. The best part is, it’s all free.
Do I have to pay for Salesforce+?
Salesforce+ is free. Watch any Salesforce+ events or series at no cost. To enjoy unlimited free access to our entire library of videos, become a member by signing up for Salesforce+ with a Trailblazer account. You don’t need a Trailblazer account to watch original series. To join us for virtual events like Dreamforce or Connections, you need to create your own Trailblazer account (it’s free!).
What is a Trailblazer account?
Your Trailblazer account gives you access to a unified profile across the Salesforce ecosystem and allows you to manage your settings and access across multiple Salesforce sites.
How do I sign up to register for live and on-demand events, like Dreamforce?
Sign up or log in to your Trailblazer account and complete a few additional details to watch Salesforce+ events live and on demand. We recommend preregistering for all events on Salesforce+ to get your own personalized journey, reminders, recommendations, and more.
Do I need to be a Salesforce customer to watch Salesforce+?
You don’t need to be a Salesforce customer to watch Salesforce+. Our virtual learning is open to everyone.
