If Bloor wanted to separate his new motorcycle from the meridian past, he should have simply created a new motorcycle, perhaps a Bloor.
He kept the names and symbols
It is also much, much cheaper for any new company than paying an international trademark lawyer to file in every country worldwide the company
might sell in any time in the future. John Bloor bought the international rights to "Triumph" and all the model names the old company used for a fraction of the cost of trademarking "Bloor" and any new model names he might think up. In terms of the money Bloor spent starting up a completely new company to produce completely new motorcycles until it was a viable standalone business, trademarking a new company name and new model names would have been a small amount; however, by buying all the existing Triumph rights in 1984 at the Meriden assets auction, he avoided that cost.
What John Bloor did in 1984 has been repeated several times since - e.g. do you really think Mahindra bought the BSA rights, Chinese company SAIC bought the MG rights, etc. because they were interested in the marques' history? Respectively their motorcycle and cars bear absolutely no mechanical resemblance whatsoever to the respective marques' historical products, as Hinckley's motorcycles have never borne any mechanical resemblance to any of the old Triumph company's products. Trademarking "Mahindra" and "SAIC" and any new model names in every first world country would have been considerably more expensive than buying the BSA or MG rights so they could put "BSA" on an Indian made motorcycle's tank, "MG" badges on the front and back of Chinese made cars. That they can market "history" to the bobblies in those first world countries is just a bonus; as I say, John Bloor did not understand this until Hinckley had been going for several years.
Otoh, look only at Norton if you want to know what happens when a company does not get its international trademarking ducks in a row - yet again, one bit of "Norton" is paying high price lawyers to duke it out with other high price lawyers for another bit of "Norton" just for the "right" to put "Norton" on certain products ...
Bloor
still marketing on the image and history of Triumph.
Far from it; when Hinckley launched, I had been into Triumphs for fifteen years already, lived in London, had good talking relationships with a number of local dealers.
when he had the opportunity to buy Triumph he recognized the value of heritage and a past.
No. John Bloor has only ever made a very few direct public comments about his purchase of Triumph; two of those comments were: he was interested in
engineering and, as I have posted already, he was
not interested in the history. Marketing on history came years after the initial 1990's launch; if the 2001 Bonneville that sparked this discussion was the first, also the 2002 centenary celebration was a heaven sent marketing opportunity to stick two fingers up at HD, who started banging on about their 2003 centenary celebration soon after the millenium.
However, the marketing of the first Hinckleys was shambolic. If John Bloor "broke up the old system, scrapped what wasn’t working", why did he hire several Meriden managers, kept them working at Hinckley until just before the launch? Meriden's marketing was never poor, it was its financial planning that sucked.
Given his involvement in every other aspect of setting up Hinckley, I find it difficult to believe he did not know franchises were being promised to long time Triumph dealerships who had continued to support the marque after Meriden's closure, to the point where some dealers had taken out bank loans to improve showrooms and servicing facilities. Nevertheless, it was close to the last minute before launch that the ex-Meriden staffers were sacked, replaced by the then head of marketing at Honda UK. In my area of London, instead of the Hinckley franchise going to the long time Triumph dealer who had prepared for it, it was given to a small dealership set up by another ex-Honda UK staffer; that dealership struggled for years, changed hands a number of times, was eventually bought by a big local dealer, with the Triumph franchise, after Hinckley had refused to award the franchise directly to that big local dealer ...
The original ex-Meriden staffers marketing plan was what Hinckley came round to years later. Aiui from occasional reading of forums for Hinckleys, many of their franchise awards certainly in the US still suck?
