Justin Tysdal wanted to build custom-made motorcycles. Now he’s selling T-shirts and posters instead, after a highly successful trip to Sturgis, SD.
Tysdal brought a few hundred T-shirts and posters to the huge Harley Davidson rally in Sturgis this summer to gauge interest in his fledgling custom-bike business, Chopper Farm.
The premiums proved so popular that Tysdal is readying a Web site to sell the posters and T-shirts, and is shopping for a farm to open his chopper shop.
Tysdal— insurance exec at Specialty Risk International by day— SRI’s longtime ad agency, Indianapolis-based Bradley and Montgomery, to create the Chopper Farm brand and develop premiums that would show potential customers his sensibility and style. (It’s cheaper to make T-shirts than prototype bikes, after all.)
Tysdal brought around 300 T-shirts (with two designs) and about 100 posters.
“We wanted to get people asking the question, ‘Where did you get your T-shirt?'” said Carrie Voorhis, director of research at Bradley and Montgomery. “He loves the idea of people wearing T-shirts for a brand that doesn’t exist.”
The giveaways were such a hit with Sturgis’ hardened crowd that Tysdal’s thinking, “Now I have to go find a place to build these bikes,” Voorhis laughs. Tysdal’s looking at rural real estate in northern Indiana, but has no launch date yet for Chopper Farm.
Meanwhile, his Web site will launch in first-quarter 2006; pricing for premiums hasn’t been set.
The effort is consistent with Bradley and Montgomery’s project work for clients including J.P. Morgan Chase, Simon Properties Group, Delphi Automotive and auto-repair chain Church Brothers.
“Our clients come to us when they have a problem that [can’t be] solved by putting up a billboard somewhere. It’s usually something way stranger,” Voorhis said.
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