Royal Enfield to rev up sales in Ireland with new partnership

Legendary motorcycle manufacturer Royal Enfield has opened its first dealership in Ireland through a partnership with Co Limerick-based RetroVentures.

The world’s oldest continuously manufactured brand of motorcycles, Royal Enfield sells 50,000 motorbikes a month globally with its recent limited edition ‘Despatch’ model selling out in just 26 minutes.

Royal Enfield built its first motorcycle in England in 1901. Its bikes are now made at a factory in Chennai, formally Madras.

The company is currently setting up a third manufacturing plant to increase production capacity to 900,000 motorcycles per year by 2018 following a 50 per cent rise in sales last year.

"We have been hiring out Royal Enfield motorcycles to visitors to Ireland for the last two years and have been overwhelmed not just by the level of demand and the amount of positive feedback, but also by the number of customers who come to us to see if they can buy a motorcycle from us. Because of this, and the extensive market research we carried out over the last year, we knew that the next natural step was to open a Royal Enfield showroom," said Chris Davidson, managing director, RetroVentures.