Harley-Davidson Japan raided over excessive sales limits

The Japanese unit of motorcycle company Harley-Davidson Inc. was raided Tuesday by Japan’s antitrust watchdog on charges of imposing excessive sales quotas on dealers in violation of antitrust law, sources familiar with the matter said.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission suspects that Harley-Davidson Japan KK in Tokyo suggested that exclusive sales agreements with dealers would not be renewed if they failed to meet set targets. According to sources, as a result, some of them bought motorcycles for themselves.

It is also suspected that the unit put pressure on stores, forcing them to purchase unpopular models that they did not want.

Archive photo of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. (Kyodo)

The watchdog believes the company has regularly committed such acts against a number of dealers since 2020 at the latest, the sources said.

Harley-Davidson Japan said it will fully cooperate with the investigation.

The company does not operate its own stores in the country and only allows retailers who have signed exclusive agreements to sell. There are about 90 authorized retailers in Japan.

According to the Japan Automobile Importers Association, in 2023 Harley-Davidson had the largest share of the country’s motorcycle imports at 37 percent.

In 2019, the Japanese unit of German company BMW AG was found to have imposed excessively high sales quotas on dealers and forced them to purchase vehicles if they failed to meet them.

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