Posted by Bruce Clarke on May 23, 2000 at 22:52:34:
In Reply to: It's Here posted by Tom on May 23, 2000 at 14:23:48:
I was flipping through the May 22, 2000 issue of the Vancouver SUN newspaper and noticed a photo of two men aping 'Terminator' poses while wearing leather motorcycle jackets with big Indian logos all over them.
Clothing Makers Roar Into High Gear
Alan Daniels
Sun Business Reporter
Henry Wittenberg and his partner Wing Li project sales of $2.5 million this year out of an unmarked building on Sixth Avenue in Vancouver.
There is a number over the door, but no name, no visible clue to what goes on behind closed doors.
"The last thing we want to do is draw attention to what we are doing," Wittenberg says. "That's why the front of our building is so nondescript."
Wittenberg is president of Ragtrade Clothing Company Ltd. manufacturer of custom-made leather motorcycle jackets and other gear for the Indian Motorcycle Co.
"We are currently making 1,200 [items] a month for them and that includes leather jackets, leather shirts, pants, chaps and vests," Wittenberg says.
"They [Indian] expect next year sales will double. They are talking very rapid growth, and although we are a relatively small company, we are growing with them."
In style, power and panache, Indian motorcycles evoke the era of the early 1900s when Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa owned one and Irwin (Cannonball) Baker set coast-to-coast speed records. Nearly 100 years later, the Indian crest again adorns the hottest hog in North America.
A Canadian-US partnership paid $17 million US for the Indian trademark, winning a lengthy legal battle with Colorado-based Eller Industries Inc.
The Canadian partner is Indian Motorcycle Co. of Toronto, which specializes in high-end leisure clothing similar to GAP or Roots. The US partner - and manufacturer of the motorcycles - is California Motorcycle Co. of Gilroy, Ca. Production this year is projected at 11,000 Indian bikes, increasing to 25,000 in 2001. The bikes are sold through 250 North American dealers. There are six dealers in Canada, including Carter Honda in Vancouver.
"It's a hot item, particularly in the US", says Vancouver's Carter Honda Motorsports general manager Geoff Jessup.
"I was in Indiana a couple of months ago for a dealer's meeting and people were pretty fired up about it. There's so many Harley-Davidsons out there it's not unique any more. People with disposable income looking for identity, something unique, will purchase an Indian because it fits right into that category."
In Toronto, there is the Indian Motorcycle Cafe, created by Fuss Cooper, was the original founder of the Indian Motorcycle clothing company in 1986.
In an interview from Toronto, Cooper confirmed Ragtrade Clothing CO. is the only licenced manufacturer of its brand name leather jackets.
"It's all about quality and Henry does great work," Cooper said, noting when he wanted to expand his line to include motorcycle jackets, he was looking for a certain kind of "distressed leather" and that led him to the Vancouver company for which Wittenberg was then working.
"When he left to go on his own, I went with him," Cooper says. "I liked working with small companies because I was a small company then.
"I taught him the cresting technique I developed, how to make the crests look old on the jackets so there would be that real vintage look."
The original Indian Motorcycle Co. was founded in 1901 in Springfield, Mass., by biker enthusiasts George Hendee and Oscar Hedstrom. By the 1940s it out-sold all others, including Harley Davidson, but in 1953 it went bankrupt.
When Cooper founded his company 1986, he owned the trademark in Canada.
Manufacture of the motorcycles didn't begin until 1998 but the Indian legend survived the decades.
According to SUN motoring writer Ted Laturnus, the Second World War Indian Chief "was the bike to beat, both on the track and on the street."
The new $30,000 Chief is unmistakably Indian, with its deeply valanced fenders, teardrop gas tank, fringed leather saddle, and 16-inch, 64 spoke wire wheels with fat tires front and rear. The SS engine is a massive V-twin, air-cooled monster delivering 75 horsepower to the rear wheel. One critic wrote that its sweptback handlebars "Look like two metres of chromed tubing."
On Vancouver's Sixth Avenue, the Ragtrade owners say they are on for the ride.
The company also makes varsity jackets and other styles of corporate promotional clothing, for which its biggest customer is also south of the border. It has 20 employees and sales last year of $1.2 million, projected to more than double this year.
When Wittenberg and Li decided to go on their own, they did so with the help of a $60,000 business development loan from the Bank of Montreal and a $100,000 operating line of credit secured by GICs of equivalent value. They opened Ragtrade in 1995.
The lice3ncing agreement with Indian Motorcycle Co was signed last January.
"We asked for some kind of an arrangement because we were devoting so much of our production to them," Wittenberg says. "We needed a secure relationship."
Although they make the leather gear, neither partner owns a bike.
"When I was a teenager, I would ride off-road motorcycles," Wittenberg says. "I had a bit of a spill. I didn't hurt myself too badly, but it scared me.
"One day I'm sure I will own a new or vintage Indian motorcycle to run around on sunny Sunday afternoons at low speed."
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