You may know Colleen Swartz as a freelance motorcycle photographer who regularly contributes to Cycle Source, The Horse, American Iron and many other motorcycle publications. Now Colleen has started a new business called “Master Link International” for the purposes of exporting custom motorcycle parts overseas.
It wasn’t hard to come up with the idea behind Master Link International. It happened the same way many ideas come about, over a beer at the end of a long hot day. Colleen talked with a group of small business owners who made some pretty cool custom parts. Colleen found that the builder she was most familiar with was getting many orders from overseas and she also knew how difficult it was to export a part to another country. In talking to these other small builders, she realized a lot of them were passing up on some real important income opportunities because they were not willing to ship overseas, and who could blame them? Shipping is expensive and difficult, taxes, tariffs, regulations, insurance, customs; the language barrier was sometimes the first and biggest problem.
This discussion just last October was the germ of an idea that has now become Master Link International.
On March 17th the first shipment of parts left the US bound for the Joints Chopper Show in Nagoya Japan on April 20th, 2008.
Eiji Kumagai is Colleen’s partner in Japan. Colleen and Eiji met in the US when Eiji worked as a mechanic for a Harley-Davidson Dealership. Eiji has returned to Japan to work as a mechanic in one of Japan’s largest and most successful chopper shops, Satsuma Cycle Works. Satsuma is our exclusive dealer of US made chopper parts to Japan and they are giving us our space at the Joints show to display the many parts that have already been collected for export.
In the future Master Link hopes to solidify relationships with dealers in Europe, New Zealand and Australia along with any other opportunities that come our way. Eiji is also collecting custom parts made by small builders in Japan to ship to the US Market. It is an exciting time and Master Link would like to invite other builders to be a part of it.
As of now, Master Link is shipping parts from Leroy Thompson, Fabricator Kevin’s, Guilty Customs, Kundratic Kustoms, Matt Daniel’s Union Cycle, Nash, Walter Siegl, Led Sled Customs, Cook Customs and Rich Phillips. If you would like more information on how to become part of Master Link International, please contact Colleen@digitalmagicbigshots.com. Or by phone at 414-380-9005.
