Harley-Davidson failed in ‘Business 101’ class because ‘elitist assholes’ rule board, former Levi’s exec says

‘Elite bastards and hypocrites’ Harley-DavidsonAn entrepreneur on the front lines of the corporate culture wars told Fox News Digital that corporate America has been crippled by “wokeness” in recent years, and other brands like Bud Light are to blame.

“This is business 101. You can’t disrespect your core consumers, and you certainly don’t alienate or abandon them in order to grow and expand elsewhere,” said Jennifer Sey, a former senior marketing executive at Levi’s.

Jochen Zeitz, Harley-Davidson’s German-born chief executive and chairman, has been sharply criticized by longtime loyal customers for his attempts to reshape motorcycles’ rugged American image, with critics accusing him of adopting a progressive agenda that conflicts with the values ​​of his most loyal customers.

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“We are trying to challenge traditional capitalism and we are trying to redefine it,” Zeitz told global leaders at a conference in Switzerland in 2020, the same year he took the helm of Halle.

Zeitz said in the same speech, Comparing themselves to the Taliban Expressing his passion for sustainability.

After corporate watchdog Robby Starbuck exposed Zeitz’s internal agenda on Channel X, pent-up discontent among Harley-Davidson’s loyal customers exploded into a public revolt against the brand.

“They killed Harley. It breaks my heart,” said Vinny Terranova, owner of Pappy’s Vintage Cycles. Sturgis, South Dakotaa former Harley-Davidson dealership owner, told Fox News Digital.

“This is ‘Business 101.’ You can’t disrespect your core consumer.”

Former Levi’s executive Saye saw the culture battle firsthand in the boardroom. In 2020, she has become a celebrity executive charged with managing, refining and growing the iconic Levi’s brand. Founded in San Francisco in 1853 by German immigrant Levis Strauss, Levi’s jeans are known around the world as a symbol of American culture and opportunity.

But when this “lifelong Democrat” opposed the city’s Californiaand her employer’s heavy-handed response to the coronavirus.

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“I’m a leader in the community, and I’m being vilified for opposing school closures,” Sey said. “I’m being demonized because I care about keeping schools open. I mean, this has become an unlivable place for me.”

Sey was forced to leave Levi’s in 2022 after 23 years.

“San Francisco is the most radically conformist place you can imagine,” she said. “It’s not inclusive, it’s not logical, it’s not progressive.”

She claimed she was “disqualified” from corporate America and was unable to obtain executive positions that matched her strong credentials.

Sey moved to Colorado in March and founded the sports apparel company XX-XY Athletics.

She is a warrior now Against Wokeism. The name of her company itself is a rebellion against the idea that there are many types of women.

“The elites take all these crazy far-left positions to assuage their guilt about having tons of money and privilege.”

“The message is that there is empirical truth. Biology is truth,” Say said. “It’s pretty simple. There is XX and there is XY. We can twist the facts any way we want with language. But at the end of the day, the fact is that sex is binary.”

She believes a combination of factors — the erosion of long-held truths and the embrace of radical ideology — led her to leave Levi’s and has swayed customers away from Harley-Davidson, Bud Light and other venerable American brands.

“The elites take all these crazy far-left positions to assuage their guilt about having tons of money and privilege,” she said.

For example, business executives pay lip service to public education, “but they all send their kids to $60,000-a-year private schools.”

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She added: “The other thing is that these companies are now made up of Gen Z employees who came from a woke education system and woke universities, who grew up in safe spaces and expect you to know their pronouns.”

Executives fear running afoul of the mob around them, stoking their fury on social media, and jeopardizing the wealth, privilege, and benefits they pretend to reject.

In corporate America, Say said, “the mentally ill are running the mental hospitals.”

Say’s career in the “woke bubble” of high-pressure corporate culture and her current struggle against it give her unique insight into Harley-Davidson’s recent problems.

Harley CEO Zeitz rose to fame by turning discounted Puma sneakers into a global fashion brand, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, forming a sailing racing team, opening an art museum in South Africa in his name and bringing the likes of Richard Branson into his social circle.

Critics charge that he has little in common with Harley-Davidson customers and apparently doesn’t understand the key to the motorcycle brand’s global appeal: Americanness.

Levi’s also enjoys the same global reputation.

“People see the value of these brands as representing the best of American values,” Mr. Say said. “They represent freedom, individualism, progress and democracy.”

She believes Harley-Davidson represents “rugged masculinity and individualism, living life on your own terms.”

In 1986, Say experienced the power of the American brand firsthand when she competed on the gymnastics world stage at the Moscow Friendship Games.

She bought 20 pairs of jeans at Macy’s and brought them to trade with Soviet and other foreign athletes. In the 1980s, Levi’s classic 501 jeans sold for as much as $1,000 a pair on the Moscow black market, she said.

“Levi’s jeans represent freedom and progress,” she said.

Today’s “progressive” politics, she says, are progressive in name only.

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“Their so-called progress is extremely regressive,” she said. “It’s being pushed by elitist hypocrites. I can’t stand being around them anymore.”