Murray Smith, president and CEO of Indian Motorcycle Company doesn’t flinch when he says he expects the tiny Toronto-based motorcycle firm to be a billion-dollar business in five years.

And why not? It’s only been four months since a U.S. court awarded the company control of the nearly defunct legendary motorcycle brand. In that time, the company has rolled out the first Indian motorcycle in more than 40 years, opened a splashy $2-million Toronto café and will soon be opening its first stand-alone retail clothing store.

In the next five years, Smith expects Indian to expand into more than 12 countries, operating 25 retail clothing outlets, 12 cafés and selling up to 40,000 motorcycles through a network of 250 authorized dealers.

And he wants to do it without traditional mass-market advertising.

‘We would like to be considered the company that doesn’t advertise,’ he says. ‘The brand clutter is so dense you could spend a billion dollars to communicate your message and still fail.’

Indian motorcycles have a hard highway to travel. The company is entering the three most competitive industries: fashion, automotive and restaurant – industries strewn with the wreckage of well-financed, high profile themed restaurants like Planet Hollywood.

To gain the attention of bike enthusiasts and the weekend ‘Rolex riders’ who can afford the hefty $30,000 price tag, Indian is promoting itself through a series of sponsorships and appearances at motorsport events.

To attract consumers to Indian-branded clothing, the company is relying on public relations and grassroots efforts to bring people into the cafés and stores, or ‘brand shrines,’ as Smith describes them.

The café includes an 800-square-foot boutique selling Indian clothing and memorabilia. The café itself is decorated with vintage bikes and photos and decked out with stylish custom-made furniture. The entire restaurant, in fact is a very subtle showroom for Indian-brand products – all part of the company’s sly strategy to seduce consumers into remembering the Indian brand.

‘We didn’t open the café because we wanted to be in the food services business,’ Smith says. ‘We opened the café because we wanted the consumer to experience 150 years of Indian motorcycle and know we are for real.’

Indian is currently searching for a licensing partner to run the café division and open restaurants in Vancouver, Chicago, New York, Atlanta and Las Vegas.

Focusing on the bricks-and-mortar café and retail outlets was vital to overcoming the credibility problems associated with rejuvenating a brand that had been nearly dormant for more than four decades, says Smith.

Confidence in the power of the Indian brand may not be misplaced. The company has attracted millions of dollars in personal investments from the likes of retired basketball legend Michael Jordan and the CEO of Coca-Cola, while the announcement of the relaunch of the Indian motorcycle created a buzz most companies spend a lifetime trying to match.

The heavy media exposure garnered during the launch has contributed to the ongoing spectacle of well-dressed, and often middle-aged, patrons braving Toronto’s frigid weather to line up outside the café.

Hardcore Indian riders have kept more than 50,000 of the vintage bikes on the road after the company collapsed in 1953. Those enthusiasts still buy about $6 million a year worth of Indian clothing and merchandise, which is currently distributed through 380 stores across Canada.

Indian also has three store-in-store boutiques in Eaton’s locations in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal and expects to open its first 3,000- to 5,000-square-foot stand-alone retail clothing store by summer. New stores are planned for Vancouver and Montreal.

Indian is planning to underwrite part of the cost of the store with revenues from its other operations as a means of building brand awareness and creating interest in the upscale bike, Smith says.

‘You have to sell a hell of a lot of clothes to equal the $30,000 in revenue you get from the sale of one bike,’ he says.

But if you can’t afford the bike, that’s no problem. Indian’s lifecycle marketing strategy hopes to introduce consumers to the brand early with the clothing and the café and stay with them until they can afford the bike, Smith says.

‘Most people access a brand for a certain time in their life and then move on to another brand,’ he says. ‘We want to move with the customer through their entire lifecycle. But to do that, we have to produce unique products that are of interest and value to them through their whole life.’

In doing so, the company must remain focused on the core values of the brand and never stray far from the motorcycle at its heart.

‘Everything Indian does stems from the bike,’ says John Lee, president of Toronto-based Holmes and Lee, which is working with Indian on a project basis. ‘If you stray far from the bike, you are in danger of becoming a faux brand that loses its meaning.’

Indian has already taken orders for nearly all of its 1,100 1999 model bikes, as well as 2,000 of its 11,000 year 2000 models. By 2001, Indian’s 100th anniversary, the company expects to sell about 25,000 bikes, compared to the 150,000 bikes sold annually by Harley-Davidson, a competitor from which Smith does not see Indian stealing much market share.

The North American heavy cruiser motorcycle market is growing by about 17% annually, with most Indian customers expected to come from new riders and those who currently own Japanese or European bikes, Smith says.

‘History will repeat itself again,’ he says. ‘Harley and Indian will be number one and two – and I don’t see us as number one.’

If Indian’s strategy is a success, a small group of Canadians will have rescued one of the most storied American brand names in history.