He was born 33 years ago in the Toledo town of Mora and set up his company, Motorcycle-Occasionwith only 20. After thirteen years, the company has become the ‘amazon’ of motorcycles, as he says, and has a turnover of 25 million euros, with 5,000 vehicles sold per year. «From a very young age, I had very clear ideas and I saw that no one had exploited the world of second-hand motorcycles and their online sales, so I focused all my energy and my knowledge on that, at a time when these “Vehicles were only sold physically,” explains this entrepreneur.
He started as a motorcycle mechanic in a workshop in Toledo; without money and very cold – «I put the bike in neutral on the descent of Las Nieves so as not to waste gasoline» -, but with an illusion that burned in his heart. “No one had yet ‘put into the cart’ a second-hand motorcycle to have it sent to their home without seeing it first,” he explains. He was a visionary: “every year we double our sales.” If a typical dealer sells 80 motorcycles a year, the dark-haired businessman does it in just 4 days.
How does the buyer trust the product they buy online? Dario, who employs 41 people, 16 of them mechanicsresponds quickly: «with the reputation of my company because we have the best after-sales service from Spain. We show the consumer the product with photographs of the highest quality,” and after an exhaustive tuning process, the motorcycle looks new. “We are at an average of 25 motorcycles sold per day.” They are high displacement and multi-brand and prices range between 3,000 and 60,000 euros. The businessman highlights the ease of purchase, the speed of delivery and the after-sales service as the three elements that combine in the reliability of his products. «If a person lives in Barcelona we send it there completely free of charge. If it breaks down, contact us, we will pick it up, we will repair it for free and we will take it back to you.”
Lumbreras says that the motorcycle “is a lifestyle in which you can find yourself and with which you feel free; It is an escape from your daily life. The motorcycle as therapy? “Yes, many use it in difficult moments in life such as a separation or other family or work problem.” So, he believes, a business like this contributes to raising the standards of happiness and well-being in a society. «We are the tool for any psychologist“, Add.
And if the client has financial problems, the company solves it: «you don’t have to worry about money, we got it from our financing department,” explains the businessman, for whom the most important thing is that “people feel good about what I do, seeing how he leaves my store with his motorcycle and how he hugs his father, or his son; how he feels when he gets on the motorcycle and smiles, or the photos he uploads when the motorcycle arrives. People remember all their lives when they went with his father to buy his first motorcycle; “That memory is not forgotten, and they have the photo framed.”
The secret of the success that Darío Lumbreras has experienced is in his perseverance and tenacity: «financially, no one has helped me, not even the banks, I have done everything by being very ant, very conservative, very hard-working and thrifty. “I used the money to buy motorcycles and the pliers to repair.”
But here is not the thing. Now advised by a consulting team led by Fernando Lallana, Moto-Ocasión wants to become a training center in the 4,000 square meter facilities it has in Mora. «I want to do motorcycle university within my business, teach how to repair them, and there will be qualified teachers exclusively to teach the students so that they can go out into the world of work in areas such as competition mechanics or workshops, or stay working in the company. I want to convey to you that Even without resources, everyone can go wherever they want.and teach them a profession that is being lost, such as motorcycle mechanics.
In alliance with the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), we want implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) in business. “We are going to be pioneers in introducing AI in the buying and selling of motorcycles, and our customers will be able to take a trip through our store from the sofa at home.”
As an anecdote, Darío – who as a child was a scoundrel, as those who know him say – says that when he was 16 years old and already working in mechanical workshops “he had so much ambition” that he would wait for the workshop to close, he would hide on the outskirts of the business, among the trees, to make a kind of ‘industrial espionage’. «I would go into the containers and take out the garbage bags to take everything that my bosses had thrown away to rebuild it in my house, see where I had to buy the materials, what I had to buy for the repairs and learn more, I studied the orders workshop and new catalogues. Those have been my books, reconstructing the invoices and delivery notes from my bosses. “My school has been other people’s garbage, what others have not valued.”
The young businessman says that in his town they are very satisfied with his success and career. «They are very happy because I create many jobs and many people come to see the motorcycles: By the way, they eat here, sleep in the hotel and spend a very important amount in this town in Castilla-La Mancha that is Mora. Even, at the institute they want me to show the kids How can you get to where I have gotten from a profession as a motorcycle mechanic? In these 13 years my parents have given me everything, they have helped me a lot in the difficult times I have gone through since I started. My dream is that Moto-Ocasión is the world reference for motorcycles and that when people think of my company they think of peace of mind.
