• by Karl Greenberg , June 6, 2011

Sometimes getting a job promotion is worse than getting fired. Especially if you left Wisconsin for Los Angeles, fell in love with the effulgent SoCal lifestyle and got into a successful, lucrative job ... then found out the promotion in question would involve a move to an office complex somewhere among the beltway thickets of New Jersey.

Chris McIntyre, co-founder and president of EagleRider, the world's largest motorcycle rental and touring company, can thank his boss at NCR back in the early 1990's for giving him that too-good-to-accept offer. ATT, which had acquired NCR, had seen his potential as executive brass and wanted to move him into C-suite mode, complete with the stint in Harvard's MBA program.

"[NCR] was a beautiful education but my passion was Harley and motorcycles -- being a Wisconsin boy. I told my boss I needed to think about it, then planned a trip with [NCR compatriot] Jeff Brown [who wound up co-founding EagleRider], renting motorcycles in Europe and riding through Alps."

A light bulb went off when, upon returning, people began wondering out loud to the two where one could rent bikes to tour around the U.S. The answer at that time was "nowhere." When they researched the global motorcycle market, something else became clear: motorcycling is huge globally. "There are more motorcyclists in emerging markets like China, in Europe than there are skiers. We realized this was in fact a bit like the ski industry 60 years ago when it was already big in Europe and essentially non-existent in the U.S.," he says.

He and Brown started the business in 1992 with a handful of motorcycles bought with their American Express cards and built it into a global two-wheeled empire comprising a fleet of 4,000 motorcycles. The company is now the lifestyle touring brand of Harley-Davidson, Honda, BMW, Triumph and Vespa with online and franchise channels. EagleRider also runs executive retreats for companies like Microsoft. McIntyre was featured in a national AmEx ad and may be in another one soon.

The business also allows him to meet people who typically founder under fluorescent strip lighting. "Right now, I'm looking at my showroom floor: there's a group of Italians, a group of five Australians, Americans, L.A. guys who look like they just off of their surfboards, Germans in head-to-toe gear that looks like body armor. A tattooed tough-dude. The best part of starting this business is, there is nothing more rewarding than meeting people. It's a gift. There are some really crazy, funny, bizarre, beautiful people out there.

McIntyre says 90% of the business is rental, 10% tours -- both completely supported VIP type programs and self-guided -- with the majority of the overall business from international tourists in the U.S. He said that the first rental to four Austrian riders changed their original perspective of the business as a kind of motorcycle version of Hertz. "These guys got back, took us to dinner and were overcome with emotion about the touring experience. That's how we arrived at our tag-line, 'We Rent Dreams,'" he says.

Rather than drive volume with advertising, the company has deals with third-party aggregators and has a retail-based fleet distribution channel. The online program involves placement on travel sites like Expedia, and Orbitz; regional travel web sites in places like Germany and Japan; and through travel companies like Virgin Holidays (for whom EagleRider runs such programs as a "Wild West Guided Motorcycle Tour"), as well as American Express Vacations. Because of the company's deal with Harley-Davidson, if one searches "motorcycle rental" on a site like Expedia the consequent results directing consumers to EagleRider have "Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Rental Details" headlines.

The company's other marketing silo is a franchised dealership-based rental program that puts branded EagleRider rental outlets (think Starbucks) in Harley-Davidson dealerships.

There are no competitors near EagleRider's size. "It's still mostly a cottage business -- people renting on their own. The problem is they can't run fleets like we can. The insurance alone is huge." EagleRider is the largest insurer of motorcycles in the world, he says.

If anything keeps McIntyre up nights, it is his worry that, as the company expands franchise operations both in the U.S. and abroad, any deals with private equity firms to fuel that expansion will be Faustian. "The challenge is, as you scale how do you keep the soul and passion. It's passion, purpose and profits -- those are the three things you have to balance." In North America, the company has targeted 50 to 100 markets for expansion and, globally, traditional tourist markets in Europe and Australia, and New Zealand.

When reflecting on the motorcycle market, McIntyre is also somewhat irked by the industry's predilection to focus too much on gearheads and chopper fans and not enough on talking about the lifestyle, which that might be more effective at bringing the motorcycling experience to a broader audience.

"The skateboard industry does more press in People<.i> magazine than we do. My challenge is to get our story out to publications like US News and The Wall Street Journal. And this is a problem the motorcycle industry has. Even though we have great brand names, it's still a weirdly old- fashioned industry [when it comes to marketing]. The ski industry talks about the experience -- knee-deep powder -- not about bindings that improve your speed by two miles per hour. Yet, the motorcycle industry focuses on the 1% of 1% who want Jesse James' latest bike."

A final note. One of the company's tours -- its new Route 66 tour from L.A. to Chicago -- headed into Joplin, Mo., an hour before last week's tornado hit. McIntyre says the tour leader saw the weather and said he wasn't comfortable, so they decamped to a barn. "There were Italians, British, Germans, Americans on the tour. From all walks of life. The farmer runs out to them and yells at them to roll the bikes into the barn, a tornado was coming. They watched from the barn as a tornado destroyed Joplin."