Granstar Motors and Industrial Corp.
When a small motorcycle company remains independent ten years into its operation, there is a reason to celebrate. When that same company sailed through tumultuous times and came through strongerand more customer focused by producing some of the most affordable bikes in the market today, they deserve to have their time in the spotlight.
For Granstar Motors and Industrial Corporation or GMIC, their time is now. GMIC started as a dealer engaged in the retail sales and in-house financing for motorcycles and grew into a corporation that has expanded into the importation, assembly, distribution, as well as the retailing of motorcycle products from China.
HISTORY
GMIC was officially incorporated with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 11, 1997 and business operation started in the first quarter of 1998. The first store, which offered Japanese motorcycles like Yamaha, was opened in Imus, Cavite and it featured complete services for motorcycle buyers with an in-house consumer financing and full service shop.
In 1999, GMIC entered the “affordable” Chinese motorcycle segment and offered the Geely, which was their first completely built-up (CBU) import. At the time, the quality of Chinese bikes were not yet up to par with the Japanese motorbikes but GMIC persisted and serviced their customers' bikes without fail.
During the same year and after negotiating and meeting with various Chinese motorcycle manufacturers, GMIC started marketing their own brand of motorcycles assembled from parts that were imported mainly from China. The products carried the Granstar and Loncin brands, with the Loncin motorcycles marketed as the “Pinoy Budget Bike” because of its very affordable price and the Granstar motorcycles marketed with the tag line “Your Dreams, Our Passion”, which implies that these “dream” bikes can actually be affordable. To further improve the quality and performance of the bikes, GMIC assembled most of the bikes and replaced critical parts with Japanese-made ones. They also operated in Manila where the critical Japanese bike parts were in ample supply.
Currently, Granstar supplies motorcycles to hundreds of dealers around the country and they also supply some dealers with their own dealer-branded motorcycles. GMIC foresees a bigger share of the Philippine motorcycle in the coming years and to prepare for a global market, arrangements were made to enter export markets that are experiencing increasing demand conditions similar to the local market.
GMIC is moving towards this direction, extending their expertise to retail branch operations and leasing. They are also moving at full speed to extend business to new markets and related automotive products. By sticking to their vision of providing efficient solutions to the transport needs of our markets, Granstar Motors and Industrial Corporation aspires to be one of the future market leaders.
Don't get me wrong, China made products have improved a lot over the past few years and they deserve serious consideration too when shopping around. Perhaps China is just in a stage where they're still establishing their rank among the major contenders in the world market. All things considered, China already proved themselves capable of producing high quality and cost-effective electronic products like televisions, computers, mobile phones, DVD, VCD, MP3 players among other popular consumer products, albeit with funny brand names. It's probably safe to say that Chinese products has now come of age and are beginning to establish their home-grown brand names in the world market, one such brand is Wuling.
