For Gas Gas, and for many companies in this industry as for others all over
Spain, 2010 has been a tough year. The severe crisis of the banking sector,
which then spread to other social and business fields, has kept consumption
dropping to levels unseen for quite a long time.
Nevertheless, Gas Gas closes its year-end's balance with what could be
defined as an inflection point to the negative tendency that it has been dragging
on during the last years.
There has been a lot of hard work in all aspects: new designs, models'
updating, shortening the spare parts shipping term and reducing the
guarantees' response time, which have also decreased significantly.
The Company's short time debt has been restructured with the banking
pool to defer the repayment in a longer term.
The Racing Team has also been reorganized. The signing up of new
lead riders has come together with the reinforcement of the former team's
philosophy and basis, as well as its internal management.
The Company has been internally organized so as to focus on efficiency,
quality and customer service.
Suppliers' payment has also been regularised. In fact, with some of them,
our business relation is now closer than ever.
Apart from all this, the Company has open up and developed the foreign
market.
This whole set of measures brought us a sales increase of 32% between 2009
and 2010, as well as a noticeable improvent in terms of cost-effectiveness.
This is why in the name of the Company I must thank, customers, dealers,
partners, employees, riders and close related people because your support
during this years has let us keep in good condition to race, to offer better
products and to provide our customers with a better service.
Although having dealt with the complicated 2010 with fairly hopeful results, we
need to keep in this direction; maintaining the same effort and showing more
passion and professionalism than ever.
There are still many projects to be carried out in the areas of product
development, customers' service improvement, professionalization of our racing
team and our internal management.
I'm sure that this year we will have to face new problems, new challenges, and
all of them in a basically complicated market context. However, I'm also positive
that if we work with the same intensity, determination and the team commitment
that brought us so far, 2011 will make us even stronger.
You can be completely sure that both the shareholders, Vector Capital and
Ingenia, and myself will work hard to put this brand again where it belongs.
Some day, maybe before than some would imagine, you might be proud of
having taken part in a project like this, and of having worked for a company like
Gas Gas.
I ask you all to work together in this direction. There's no time to rest right now,
we have everything to be done, and everything to be won…
Happy 2011
Ramon Puente
General manager of Gas Gas Motos, SA