Re: Rebirth of the HunterDOG Club? Phoenix, or Progeny?

[TopDOG]

For any of the other people who have read this 10443 times, shame on you for not replying or posting anything to this post as I know Vince and I try to give this club our all even though I'm unable to ride or afford to have a ducati in my garage to just hear its motor running like I would love to again we need you to become more enthusiastic about riding your amazing pieces of italian artwork and engineering with us, I'm even happy to meet you guys and follow you safely to the destination just to take some photos and be involved in my past experiences again and I know the new frasers managers keen to help us out but we need something worth helping and its a club not just a bloke, sheela or two and a goat showing up to these things we need a good group to let others hear our rumble coming down the road to inspire some ladies or younger men to want the same passsion some of us still have!!!

[VinceS]

Well isn't that fascinating, and apt. The demise of whatever this still is has been announced by a co-founder at nearly 2am, after who knows what happened just before that.


My views have not changed from the basic sentiment somewhat untidily expressed here: https://www.hunterdog.org.au/DiscussionBoard/index.php/topic,861.msg2756.html#msg2756 - in effect this website 'skeleton' is being maintained pending some rebirth of interest from a sufficient core group - it doesn't take much.


It is true that I have encouraged Scott to find other outlets for his passion, rather than attempting to engage here as a 'social media thing' in a one-way kind of way with zero response. That is not why any of us are living on the planet - riding Ducatis is a great way to occupy some of that time, but if you can't do that, well, move on to what you do enjoy and complete the grieving process, now only doing damage from reliving the past.


An sms I sent Scottie last week included: "In all honesty, I should not keep paying to keep the website there, but I do because hundreds of fellow Duc owners read the technical stuff every month so I do it for them. Not even Frasers has managed to get a local interest group going, which just baffles me. They are all out riding solo or via Facebook groups, it seems. This is the world we live in, no point hanging on to stuff that isn't real any more, sad 'though it be..."


The reality is it is pretty cheap to keep this website as an adjunct to other stuff so, as long as data consumption / viewing rate doesn't suddenly rise, it is simple enough to manage. Web-bots have been a problem causing high cpu usage (and therefore risk of penalty costs), but pretty well sorted that out now, hopefully permanently.


Every other Newcastle Ducati club that has had a go has folded. After a red hot go of a typically high quality effort they have disappeared, for many reasons. This one in reality is no different. Whilst you don't ever know what is going to happen in life, I am not going to choose to simply hit the delete button. For me, closure would be, at least, transferring whatever of the technical articles looked to be of interest to www.ducati.ms, which ensures longevity of the info for those that follow.


So, should I do this closing down process any time soon? Or let it stay here in the hope some new group finds it a handy spring-board to effectively support a new chapter of Novocastrian Ducati life?


I am interested to hear opinions on the topic. Guest posting is pretty easy. You have read this lot now, kindly do add your thoughts to the mix. Thank you.

[TopDOG]

I'm truly sorry to be the 1 to tell you all this and that is due to the lack of interest and involvement in the club by it's members of which there are many of you by Vince that he will be closing down our club website and riding with other active online riding groups and I put myself to blame for this so from me personally to you all "I am permanently sorry for being the cause of this" and I hope that any of you who still read this will stay in touch with me and drop in to see me sometime and my contact numbers still listed in about us or in white pages I'm listed in Barnsley or via my google website under Scott Priestley photographer and thanks for your friendship and former company riding with me as I loved and miss it so much and hopefully this won't be my final goodbye and something else lost from my former amazing Ducati life 😩
Yours in Ducatisti friendship and riding "the rider formally known as Topdog ❤️"

[TopDOG]

I might be able to roast some ribs and as we all know doggies do love their bones and ribs are full of them!!!

[TopDOG]

So did anyone get keen to make our club run great again apart from me, vince and the baby jesus himself? I have a large deck space, a new BBQ, a table with seating for 6 and lots of handrail leaning area and time off work until i die!!!

[TopDOG]

Great to meet you too mate, we will  stay in touch over the course of the coming months around some DOC activity.

Stephen Couri 
General Manager

[TopDOG]

I also dropped into Frasers today while I was in town getting an injection and chatted with Stephen Couri and i offered my help and support while im not working anymore and hopefully turn us into a proper Ducati registered club!!! But as he said its going to need a group of willing active members which unfortunately most of the dogs are me not included in the clubs rides but im looking / hoping here daily that people will be involved

[TopDOG]

I know of this former great active Ducati owners group that would benefit from his help and yes this is that club as its already got its own website and forum with keen former committee members like me who cant really afford to ride anymore (but wants to desperately) but still wants this group to be the club it should and can be again!!!

[VinceS]

Here's a news flash. WE'RE BACK!!!!!


Well, we can see the chickens inside the eggs anyway, yet to hatch. But serious chance they will. So, what's happened, you ask....?


In short, Steve Couri is recently back running the Newcastle Fraser Dealership, and he really wants to see an active, interested, genuine Ducati Owners Club happening in the area, and is prepared to support it. Steve is a pretty active dynamic kinda guy who ran the Newcastle outlet a couple of years ago or so, before moving to Perth to do the same thing. He fostered starting up a Perth WA DOC, from scratch, and loves what happened there, and how well it works. Now he's back, he wants to see if it can happen here too "Why not, Newcastle sells more Ducatis" is a pretty interesting indicator...


Have you been into Broadmeadow lately? I was there yesterday, and half the front was full of Ducatis, about triple what I've seen before. And nowhere near the volume of rising sun annoying trip-hazards I saw last time I dropped in. Didn't get to ask Steve if there was a new stocking policy / whatever, but he did say that pretty often they sell 25 Ducatis a month. It would have been 4 or 5 last time I knew. Interesting. And good!!!


To flesh out the details, about a month ago Steve rang me and we had a great chat about getting a club going again. He promised to ring back 'with more details' later. So, given the silence, I dropped in to follow it up. What we decided is Steve is going to prepare an invite to look for expressions of interest to get a genuine club going; he'll pass this to me and maybe we'll edit it a bit. Then Steve will issue it to the "2,000 new owners of Ducatis in the last 5 years" and I'll do the same for the 200+ forum mailing list here, so some will get it twice.


If we get a decent response with people saying how they would love to be involved, then we'll 'do something'. Like an inaugural bbq at Frasers, or whatever (suggestions welcome) to kick it off. What we need is to get the initial committee going, and they will take it from there. And about 30 financial members to get over the entry bar to have an 'official Desmo Owners Club'.


One aspect is that Ducati Italy have started charging for 'official status' now, which gets the club a plaque and a bunch of goodies for all the formally listed financial members. I still have the plaques from 2007 and 2008 hanging on the wall from when we did this before. No cost back then; apparently its $2,000 or so now, so that means annual membership fees are around $80. Which the Perth experience was nobody had a problem with as it is an elite club they were happy to be a part of.


Once a few of the chickens have hatched we'll know what's going on. When? Dunno. Last q I had for Steve was "So, Steve, when can I expect to see the first draft of that exciting invitation?" "Not any time this month!" was the answer, with "too busy - got a big sales budget to meet and a lot of stuff to do to get that done". He told me a number, he sure has a job to do...! I said I'd be back mid Jan if didn't hear from him sooner; he's good with that.


So, what can you do? Apart from 'getting excited', maybe stick your head around the corner of Steve's office "just to say how keen I am to get involved in the new Desmo club Vince tells me you want to kick off". He'll hear you, and the more that happens the better. Mentioning me lets him know it is 'the real Ducati owners' that care. Of course, just a subset of the whopping big number who still don't know, so there is that...


If this thing gets up, a decision for the new committee is exactly what happens to this piece of history.... At least at strategy level. I personally have gone riding with Ulysses and various FaceBook riding groups and others a fair bit over the last few years. Met lots of terrific people, but not found anything like the fun and engagement one gets hanging around on the road and pubs / coffee shops with a bunch of Ducatisti. We sure could use a bit more of that back around here!!! Are you in? Call in on Steve!
 

[VinceS]

Just had a good chat to Steve Couri, Frasers Newcastle Sales Manager, and he tells me a lot of things have changed very much for the better at the local Newcastle store. I pretty well gave him the "heard it all before" line, but he assures me that this time it really is different - and it appears he is right!

There is an absolute determination within Frasers to get the Newcastle store really cracking along, and it seems they have made a lot of progress in that area - at least as far as sales are concerned as a lot of new Ducatis have been walking out the door. He asks that anyone that has perhaps had a bad experience in the past give them another go - and expect to be impressed! He also said that Warren Fraser regards Newcastle as "his baby", he visits the store all the time, really likes it up here and won't let anyone lay a finger on Newcastle - except in a good way of course!

Whilst it is all very well for Warren to feel emotionally attached to the store, he also sees where they have gone wrong in the past and was determined to fix it. With their new team and fresh approach to the store he sees they have now almost got there, and they have certainly come a long way.

One thing that particularly comes out of this is that Frasers would like to reestablish a proper, albeit informal, relationship with the local Ducati club. So Steve is suggesting they will put a bit of a club BBQ on at the shop and supply meat & drinks for the club to encourage Ducati owners to rock on down for a look. Probably a Saturday arvo would work well. Any input to the idea is welcome, or we can just schedule one and see what happens!

The following article appeared in the current Cycle Torque and fills in a bit more info about what has been going on locally: