Sexist sales techniques brings major interest in bike parts

Nick Nudy has seen interest soar in his motorbike parts business - after deciding to revamp his marketing using pictures of women in bikinis. He has described this decision as a Eureka moment. His site, Babes Not Included, now also features women in their underwear posing with motorcycle parts, and is one of the most popular virtual stores on eBay. Nudy also runs a shop staffed by women and is planning to launch a website.

He told the Metro the idea came to him when he started selling old bike parts online, and was concerned that the photographs were a bit dull. His obvious solutions was to include photographs of women in skimpy outfits and provocative poses.

The name of the business, he said, was because when he set up his business in 2010 he used the phrase 'everything in the photos is included'. When he introduced the models, buyers started to ask how the model would be delivered, so he included the phrase 'Babe not included'.

Huge success?
Unsurprisingly the story has also featured in The Sun, which added that some parts are now bought by people who don't even own a bike. The store now sells skimpy T-Shirts for women - and clearly they're not just bought by optimistic men, because Instagram is full of women wearing them.

It's living proof of the old adage that sex sells.

Alarming?
It's also a text-book case of the objectification of women. The full title of the site is 'Babe not included, just her parts." And the photographs feature isolated body parts - rather than bothering customers with the unimportant bits - like her head.

The photographs don't pull any punches, and are available across social media. They are shared widely on motorcycle forums, sometimes with the single comment 'enjoy'. Discussions about the photographs are not the kinds of things to be repeated, and cover the kinds of issues that the word 'disrespect' seems insufficient to describe. There was even a 'Battle of the Babes', featuring women wearing the T-shirts, who could be voted on by men.

But what do you think? Is this sort of thing clever marketing? Is it part of the long tradition of nude photographs in garages, and the Pirelli nudes calendar, that in a male-dominated environment is only to be expected?

Or is this the kind of damaging objectification of women that has no place in the 21st century?