- [Monica] Harley-Davidson is an American icon.
It's CEO Jochen Zeitz is taking it down a new road.
- [Jochen] We have a new brand that's called live wire,
that is all electric.
We wanna lead the electrification of the sport.
- [Monica] What Is your goal?
- [Jochen] 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.
- [Monica] Do you bring your adventuresome spirit,
to your role as the CEO of Harley-Davidson?
- [Jochen] I think being a CEO
is always an adventurous experience(laughing).
- [Monica] I'm Monica Langley,
and this is the Inflection Point.
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?
- [Jochen] 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 I had just been promoted to vice president
of marketing and sales and the company was taken over,
and it just was very unsuccessful.
It had gone public in the eighties,
it had been losing money ever since,
and the new shareholders kept 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&A,
they said, "this sounds like a great plan,
why don't you go on and execute it?"
And I was 29, so it was quite quite a surprise at the time.
- [Monica] Go execute it as...
- [Jochen] The CEO. - [Monica] The CEO?
- [Jochen] Exactly (laughing).
- [Monica] Okay, so that's a big step up, for a 29 year old.
- [Jochen] 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.
- [Monica] That must have been daunting,
or were you just too young to realize,
"I've got a big responsibility?"
- [Jochen] And 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."
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.
I often quoted because I was asked whether,
I could do the job not having the experience
and I was quoting Tuholsky 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 the experience.
I think I know what I need to know,
and I know what needs to happen,
assembled a great team around me, and off we went.
- How did it work out Jochen?
- [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 100 million
to $4 billion in sales
and yeah, it was a great journey really.
- [Monica] 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.
- [Jochen] Yeah.
- [Monica] How long were you the CEO of Puma?
- [Jochen] 18 years and then two years
in the holding company.
So almost 20. - [Monica] 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?
- [Jochen] 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 step in for...
- [Monica] Because you were a director at Parlor?
- [Jochen] I was on the board - [Monica] Okay.
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 due 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 shut.
- [Monica] Right.
- [Jochen] 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.
- [Monica] So you don't just like a challenge,
you like a crisis. - [Jochen] I sure do.
So I've heard quite often in my life,
"This is never going to work."
And it sometimes takes 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... - [Monica] You're fearless?
- [Jochen] That the things
that 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 it will work out.
So I'm pretty confident.
- [Monica] So now that you are the CEO at Harley,
what is your goal?
- [Jochen] 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 celebrated our a 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 this is a gorilla that was punching below its weight
for way too long, and we wanna build on that legacy,
but bring it into a bright future.
And we are all also recognizing that, while the US is a huge
and the most important market
where we still have a lot of potential in the coming years,
we also wanna expand globally as a true global icon.
- [Monica] We're here today with this new innovative bike.
Give me the big reveal.
- [Jochen] Well, the big reveal is that we have a new brand
that's called, LiveWire, that is all electric.
We wanna 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.
- [Monica] So how is it different?
Tell me about that.
- [Jochen] Well, it's all electric first of all.
It's a different brand.
- [Monica] So you don't have the same loud noise?
- [Jochen] No clutch, no gears,
it's nonstop 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 Harley's every day
but I also love switching to LiveWire,
because it's just a very different experience
that is worth while.
And it's a 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.
So I want everybody to ride a LiveWire
and also have a Harley-Davidson in their garage.
- [Monica] Okay, so we need both.
- [Jochen] 100 percent.
- [Monica] Jochen, what is the risk of not innovating?
Because clearly you're innovating here.
- [Jochen] Well, I always think what's next, right?
What do we have to do to succeed and to win?
And the future will require a way where we engage
with our planet without destroying it.
And electrification is a given.
- [Monica] At the same time, is there a risk of innovating?
That you have such long time lovers of Harley-Davidson,
that don't like a new direction?
- [Jochen] You can never stand still,
otherwise you 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 are doing,
and that's what innovations all about.
But that doesn't mean that you can't look after the riders
that made you what you are today.
I think that's very important.
- [Monica] 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.
- [Jochen] 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 only limited space,
the 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 wanna lead that path with LiveWire
and give the opportunity through the innovation of LiveWire,
to then also electrify Harley-Davidson.
- [Monica] 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.
- [Jochen] Well, I love nature, I love our planet.
I grew up spending weekends in the black forest
and I just realized that we cannot consume
the way we have in the past.
And we have to find ways for the 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 care more about people and the planet,
then you could actually change a whole industry.
Yeah, I introduced the idea to go 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 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, we are here today,
and can talk about LiveWire,
an electric brand that is going public
and now I'm being given that opportunity
to actually... - [Monica] Oh, my goodness!
- [Jochen] Really make it happen.
- [Monica] So you've been pushing on this for many years?
- [Jochen] For over a decade, yes.
- [Monica] At Harley? - [Jochen] Mmh.
But as a board member, there's only so much you can do.
- [Monica] So you carried your sustainability drive
and philosophy much farther?
- [Jochen] 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.
- [Monica] What does sustainability mean to Harley-Davidson?
- [Jochen] Well, there really three aspects
to sustainability, it's people, it's planet and profit.
As a company,
we talk 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 a... - [Monica] At Harley?
- [Jochen] 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.
- [Monica] Wow!
- [Jochen] 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 are welcoming all.
And I think, especially in a divisive world,
that's a great opportunity for all of us to come together
around one course, 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 are a rider, no matter who you are
where you come from, what you do, doesn't really matter.
As long as you're rider for Harley.
- [Monica] You've been riding Harley's for a long time,
I presume.
So that sounds like you're a real adventuresome guy.
- [Jochen] Well, I would say,
I probably ended up in the wrong century.
I would've probably become a shark out there
and then died in the sea (both laughing) in the Antarctica.
So, but yeah, I'm an adventure at heart, for sure.
- [Monica] I mean, to me you still look that way.
You're still like,
you're not looking the corporate type to me.
- [Jochen] Well, I've never worn a tie in my business,
but the first year as a 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, still corporate ties is not my thing.
- [Monica] Do you bring your adventuresome spirit,
to your role as the CEO of Harley-Davidson?
- [Jochen] I think being a CEO
is always an adventurous experience (both laughing).
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.
- [Monica] What is at stake for this iconic brand
for Harley-Davidson, today as we sit here?
- [Jochen] 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 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 100 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 wanna lead.
We are the leader and we wanna continue to be the leader,
and that's why we're changing a lot of things
at the company.
- [Jochen] What's at stake for you Jochen?
- [Jochen] I don't look at it that way, I just....
- [Monica] You don't even think like that?
- [Jochen] No, I don't look at this as a job.
I just love what I do, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.
I have an incredible passion for Harley-Davidson,
for my colleagues, for the team, the employees,
for factory workers, and I just wanna see it succeed,
and I wanna be part of it.
So I do what I love and I have a passion for,
and I think that's the best recipe for success in a way.
- [Monica] You've convinced me
with your adventuresome spirit
and your love of freedom that I wanna join you.
So can I wear a Harley-Davidson T-shirt
and will I feel that way?
- [Jochen] 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.
- [Monica] Maybe I'll just get on the back
of your motorcycle.
- [Jochen] That's an option or into a side car.
- [Monica] (laughs) Thank you so much for joining me.
- [Jochen] Thank you.