Conventional wisdom tells us that building up a new business is a difficult task. The pitfalls are plenty, struggling is a given, planning is essential and luck is often a factor.

So when the private equity firm Stellican Ltd. bought the Indian Motorcycle brand with plans to resurrect the storied marque, it found itself deep in the entrepreneurial hole before the ink on the deal was even dry. To compound the issue, the company that rebuilt bankrupt Chris Craft boats was taking on a troubled brand just as the motorcycle market was doing a backslide.

The last stewards of Indian managed to take an iconic brand and auger it into the ground, angering not only longtime fans but the motorcycle community in general. In fact, the news of Stellican's plans was met with immediate skepticism that only recently has started to fade as information on the company's progress slowly leaks out.

With this in mind, Stellican and its principals opted to tiptoe into the motorcycle market with a cautious, three-pronged approach to rebuilding Indian. The first step was to develop a highly engineered, proprietary motorcycle, followed by a strategic build-up of a dealer network, all which will reach the public through what they're calling a careful marketing plan.

"Our challenge has been very focused on engineering issues. I've spent a lot of time looking at what went right and what went wrong at other companies," says Stephen Julius, Indian chairman and Stellican founder. "Does that mean we've learned everything? Of course not. But if we can avoid 70 percent of the key pitfalls then we'll be well on our way."

More important than the engineering efforts, says Julius, is the team that's backing the new brand. It includes his longtime business partner Steve Heese as president, Chris Bernauer as general manager and Nick Glaja as VP of engineering.

SET FOR LAUNCH

The company is readying for the launch of its first model, the 2009 Indian Chief, at this year's Sturgis rally. Its 10,000 sq. ft. flagship dealership in Charlotte, N.C., is edging toward completion.

These announcements were the culmination of a guarded campaign to slowly release information to the public, first about Indian's plans, then about its motorcycle and finally about an official launch date. As Julius explains it, if the three-part effort is the backbone of the resurrection process, then the strategy needed to make it a success will involve starting off with a limited production run of a "premium" product (750 units the first year, to be exact) to be sold through a limited number of standalone dealerships in key motorcycle markets.

"We're trying to avoid some of the mistakes by the previous Indian in signing up ... people who had no motorcycle experience and trying to sign up too many dealers," Julius says. "It's very important to us that we sign up good dealers, less of them rather than more, give them bigger territories and make sure that they're profitable.

"I'd rather have 20 profitable dealers than 100 dealers who are losing money or selling volumes that can't keep them in business."

Indian plans to sign 100 dealers over a three-year period with an initial target of 20 to 30 by the end of 2008. These first signed are split into 15 A-level markets, 15 B-level markets and 70 C-level markets.

For the main cities such Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Seattle, Julius says Indian will build new mono-brand dealerships or refurbish existing real estate into a singleline space. The same goes for the second-tier markets, however, with a little less emphasis on new space. For the third, the OEM is open to being part of a multiline dealership.

"To a certain extent we can all start out with a dream but we have to be practical and realistic," he says.