- Richard Arnold is stepping into Norton Motorcycle's president role
- For 16 years, Arnold ran the football club Manchester United, snagging a host of the club's most profitable partnerships
- Plans for this latest iteration of Norton include new bikes and expansion into new markets
Norton has had a rough go of it lately, mostly thanks to former owner Stuart Garner, who was involved in a massive pension scandal that saw him imprisoned for eight months, and hundreds duped out of their life savings. But the iconic British marque has also gone through two bankruptcies, and countless other black marks on its record in the last forty years.
Yet, the icon lives on. We all still talk about Norton motorcycles. We all still love and admire the craftsmanship it once had. And we all still want them back in the scene, competing with the likes of Triumph and Ducati. Norton seems to want that, too, as the company is bringing in a Premier League heavy-hitter.
Specifically, the company is bringing in Manchester United's former CEO, Richard Arnold.
Oh shite.
Arnold recently left Old Trafford after billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe purchased a minority stake in the club for $1.65 billion. He had resigned from the position last year, but stayed on the board until February of this year when he left that too. Now the executive is headed to Norton, where he hopes he can revive the brand and shake off the years of financial mismanagement and losses.
He's done it before, leading Manchester United to deals with both GM and Adidas in the $2 billion range.
"Norton’s heritage is undeniably huge and what we’ve got coming up is incredibly exciting,” said Arnold to British outlet City AM, adding "We’re going to go from selling a relatively small number of models in one country to selling a large number of models all over the world. The scale of the plans is tremendous, as is the amount of resources we’re going to be pouring into them.”
Those plans include six new motorcycles, and expanding Norton's reach to the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and India. And with the backing of Indian company TVS, Norton has a $200 million account to achieve those goals, as well as TVS' manufacturing prowess—it's the third largest motorcycle manufacturer in India.
“The scale of our ambitions for the brand is backed up by a large investment, with millions earmarked for ramping up our marketing efforts, not just in the UK, but in those key foreign markets," the executive added. But more than that, Arnold sees Norton's motorcycles as not just ways to get from "A to B—they're an investment." To me, that speaks to a plan for low-volume, higher-priced motorcycles, which would be more in line with Norton's past.
But unlike other executives who make drastic career switches, Arnold actually rides and owns a Norton V4SV One of One. He stores it in his living room, but that's more because he likes looking at it and keeping it out of the elements.
What I will say is that Arnold certainly has the pedigree to turn somewhere like Norton around, and TVS' investment into the brand reminds me a lot of what Geely has done for both Lotus and Volvo, both of which are doing all right. But we'll have to wait and see what Arnold does with Norton and whether his talk is just that or if he's got the good to back it up.
