Welcome to The Vic Shop
The most trusted source of Victory Motorcycle information in the world! Accurate Information, Professional Answers, Directly from an Expert.
Hello, my name is Rylan Vos and I’m your Victory Motorcycle expert.
Welcome to my home, The Vic Shop, where I oversee my physical shop in Iowa and my online Victory Motorcycle resource here at TheVicShop.com. I got a name for myself in the Victory world by working on Victory motorcycles since 2002, and having fallen in love with them, I found myself openly sharing the technical information I’ve found along the way. This information has helped countless Victory enthusiasts over the years better enjoy their Victory motorcycles.
The endorsement of all those enthusiasts, in combination with my reputation for running a respectable and successful brick-and-mortar Victory shop since 2009, gives me the credit to proclaim my Victory expert status today.
I hope you come to the same conclusion and let me help you better enjoy your Victory motorcycle!
History
My story starts out with growing up on a farm in Iowa, which gave me a taste for mechanical things from an early age. I tinkered throughout childhood and after school, I started working at a Polaris dealership in central Iowa. In 2002 that dealership took on the Victory franchise. I’d never heard of Victory before, but it sounded better than working on muddy 4-wheelers, and I volunteered to get Polaris certified in Victory. Quickly, I fell in love with the brand and the bike. It was such a new and forward-looking product that had no peers. I had no interest in “traditional” bikes that the old guys rode, and no interest in the “sport” bikes the younger guys rode. Victory filled that gap for me, and evidently thousands and thousands of other enthusiasts too!
2009 —
My technician job at the first dealership in Iowa later turned into a service manager position at another Victory dealership in Nebraska. Although I enjoyed working on the bikes, working for someone else was harder for me. I wanted to do it my own way. So I left the dealerships, moved back to Iowa, and started The Vic Shop in my garage in 2009
2012 —
I had a solid customer base and a good reputation by that point, so business blossomed quickly. By 2012 The Vic Shop needed a larger space than my garage, so I rented my first commercial space in a neighboring town. That went well enough to expand into the rental space next to it, and then the ability to take on my first employee.
2017 —
After a few years of renting I decided it was better to own my own building to house the ever-growing Vic Shop. So in 2016 I found an empty commercial lot in another neighboring town on which to build a new shop. By January of 2017 construction was nearly complete and I was in talks with Polaris about becoming an authorized Victory dealership. The future was looking bright! That is until January 9th 2017 when Scott Wine, CEO of Polaris made the surprising announcement that he’d decided to shut down Victory production forever.
2019 —
After a several months period of mourning, I decided to re-evaluate my business plans. For a while I supplemented our Victory work by working on Indian motorcycles with good success, but I didn’t enjoy the Indians as much as I did Victory. My heart wasn’t with that brand and I slowly let the Indians fall to the wayside. Victory work continued to be strong, and even more so after they went out of production. Nonetheless, the helpless experience of having your throat cut by insatiable corporate greed, combined with the stresses of keeping a commercial storefront location with three employees going, left me feeling burned out. So in 2019 I decided to build myself yet another shop, this time at my house in rural Minburn, Iowa and sell the commercial location I’d built just a few years prior. My employees and I parted amicably, and now I run everything from my home, all by myself. This arrangement proved better for my mental health, and allows me more free time to enjoy living life and raising my children.
2022 and beyond
Despite my downsizing of The Vic Shop, Victory business has been exceedingly busy since Polaris cut the cord in 2017. Many shops stopped working on Victory in the following year, leaving few people left in the country willing to work on the bikes. Which means that my phone rings off the hook and my calendar stays packed at all time. Not only is it impossible for me to work on all the bikes that need worked on in person, there are double that amount of people online from far away that also need help. For many years I offered my help and suggestions freely online. After 2017 that need became more sought after and I spent many hours a day helping people over the phone and internet free of charge. From these experiences the idea for The Vic Shop Forums came into being. With The Vic Shop forums I have an online place where I can condense all my Victory knowledge for you to access. I have a place where I can reach more people and provide them with accurate information about their bikes. Accurate information gathered through decades of personal experience working solely on Victory motorcycles. Accurate information right from the source, laid out in an easy-to-understand conversational tone, with the ability for you to help yourself, or to ask for personalized guidance along the way. That’s The Vic Shop and The Vic Shop Forums.
Welcome to the Family!
— Rylan
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