Originally Posted by Rapax

Typical wearing parts you will get anywhere after a short waiting time. But if you need something outside this range problems will start.

I think it´s a myth that manufactures cover the world with spare stocks. It is too difficult und expensive to forecast und to build up spare stocks in all markets. "Just in time" or "Just in sequence" is only done for manufacturing but not for spare parts. Manufacturers centralize spare stocks in general and outsource to spare parts logicstics to balance and reduce costs of parts, of availibilty and working capital.

BWM is perfect an example for this. A friend of mine crashed his GS 1250 in India in late 2019. This happened 10 months after bringing that modell to the indian market. BWM has 18 Service Centers in India. Not a single part was available there or in BMW Service Centers in asian countries nearby. All parts had to be shipped from Germany und to be imported to India including the import fee which nearly tripples the price. Took "only" 2 months of time because we bought and fetched the parts directly from BMW Germany. Than we faked the invoices a little bit to reduce the cost of import fees and send the packet via DHL. Packet was hanging around in 3 indian post offices for 4 weeks before he could pick it up with the help of some tea-money.

You can rate reliability of bike by the number of service points in the world but you never know in front where your needed part will be stocked. Equal of the brand it is definitely a matter of expense I would keep in mind if I will go for a longer trip.