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Powersports Business • January 2024 • 15

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“ It ’ s a phenomenal area of the Twin Cities on the West Metro , where there ’ s typically higher median household incomes ,” McNeilly shares . “ People are well-established in this area , and we feel that the upside of this location is very good .”

The partner said that before they took over the Maple Plain store , it was not performing its best , so they plan to use their knowledge and skill to turn it around like their other location in Fridley .

“ As for the footprint , it ’ s bigger propertywise than the other store ,” McNeilly adds . “ But it was underperforming quite a bit .”

The Maple Plain location currently has eight full-time employees , and the partners plan to keep most of the staff onboard . “ We ’ re keeping most of the staff ,” says McNeilly . “ Everyone ’ s doing pretty well , but we plan to get them some training , which is what they really need . And we are looking to add to our team here . They do need some help in certain areas . Especially once the word gets out that we are involved and the service is much better than it used to be , we will definitely need some more staff to help out .”

Both locations cater to Polaris as the primary powersports line . Still , both stores also carry some supplemental brands for products such as go-karts , electric scooters , trailers and even outdoor power equipment .

Chopper Powersports ’ Jason Czeskleba , Nate and Justin hand out toys for kids in need .

McNeilly and Ogg are excited about their new location in the

West Metro area of Minneapolis .

“ We are also a service center for Taiga ,” says Ogg . “ We ’ re a service center for their personal watercraft and electric snowmobiles , and the Maple Plain location does have three lawnmower lines . We have Cub Cadet , Scag and Walker mowers .”

BACK TO THE FUTURE Ogg notes that the past two years , ’ 21 and ’ 22 , have been some of the strangest they ’ ve ever experienced in retail sales . “ They ’ ve been excellent for business , and from an inventory standpoint , nobody ’ s had to worry about interest payments or anything like that because they didn ’ t have much inventory . But now we ’ re going back to pre-Covid times . 2019 is the benchmark everyone uses to measure their business now .”

Ogg says that with the additional location , their customers come from all over the Minneapolis-St . Paul area , and even stretched into parts of western Wisconsin . He adds that they ’ re also excited about some of the new side-by-sides , such as the Polaris Expedition . “ It ’ s the latest and greatest , with all the technology , all the cool new features kind of all rolled into one . Most people have been extremely excited about it . And we ’ ve yet to hear any negative feedback on the machine other than they ’ re relatively hard to get .”

Ogg concludes that they will focus on selling more and getting training in the year ahead . “ We had this in the back of our mind for a while . For quite some time , as we knew that the inventory levels were coming back , we knew we had to be prepared to scale back up and get back to work in regard to putting our selling shoes on . Before , the consumer took whatever you had . Well , now , most dealers have anything and everything available to them . So , we must return to selling on value , passion and enthusiasm .”