BMW Puts Mini Spin on Line of Accessories

BMW’s Mini unit expects to find customers even among those who don’t buy its cars.

When the first 50 Mini showrooms open this week, they each will have a special section devoted to Mini fashions--a line of clothing and gear featuring the brand’s winged logo and designed to “augment the Mini driving experience,” said Rinat Aruh, the company’s lifestyle development manager.

Dealers also will offer a line of automotive fashions--spoilers, fancier wheels and the like--that customers can order with their cars.

Jack Pitney, Mini’s general manager, said the company borrowed the concept of lifestyle products marketing from several successful practitioners: Harley-Davidson, Ferrari and, of course, Mini parent Bayerische Motoren Werke, which has had a lifestyle products program for years.

Milwaukee motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson is the king, reportedly earning more money each year from Harley-branded clothing, cigarettes, jewelry and accessories than it does from selling its famous heavyweight bikes.

BMW’s sales of clothing, accessories and toys branded with the company logo is quite profitable as well, said Martha McKinley, a spokeswoman for BMW Group Americas in New Jersey.

Because the $17,000-to-$24,000 Mini Cooper and its supercharged sibling, the Mini Cooper S, will be relatively low-profit cars for dealers used to bigger margins on BMW vehicles, earnings from lifestyle products will be an important part of each franchise.

Aruh, a former New York-based marketing manager for Italian fashion house MaxMara, suggests that a Mini dealership that aggressively markets the lifestyle products could make as much from them each month as from the sale of half a dozen Minis.

Items in the 30-page Mini motoring gear catalog range from a $1.50 enamel lapel pin to a $175 cotton-bodied motoring jacket with zip-off sleeves made of synthetic chamois.

(The jacket’s arms zip off to turn the jacket into a vest, and in a pinch, Aruh said, “you could use them to clean water spots off the car and then toss them into the washing machine.”)

The other line of Mini accessories--dealer-installed dress-up and performance parts for the vehicles--also promises significantly bigger profit margins than do the cars, said Pitney, the general manager.

Among the offerings are license plate frames; gearshift knobs; American, British and checkered-flag graphics for the Mini’s large rectangular roof; a luggage rack system with interchangeable bicycle, ski and snowboard holders; a body-styling kit that also comes as individual pieces; and a plethora of custom wheels.

BMW says U.S. Mini sales are limited by worldwide production capacity to about 20,000 a year. Because the car is so different from its mainline products, the German auto maker has chosen to treat Mini as a separate line.

Although Mini dealers also sell BMWs, they had to agree to spend as much as $350,000 to build separate showrooms for the Mini. Customers will know there is a relationship when they go to a BMW-Mini franchise, but the only place the BMW name will appear on a Mini is on the manufacturer’s identification plate.

Pitney and Aruh intend, however, to make sure the Mini logo is everywhere.