St. Peters firm takes love for Harley-Davidson global   John Terry St. Louis Business Journal    In Depth: St. Charles Sept 5-11, 2003    Rebecca Herwick, president and chief executive of Global Products Inc., has had a life-long love affair with motorcycles, particularly Harley-Davidson motorcycles. She has turned that romance into a multinational business headquartered in St. Peters with annual sales of $13 million. "I've always ridden motorcycles," Herwick, 44, said. "All through high school, and then I was the only Harley-Davidson rider at McKendree College in the '70s. I majored in chemistry and went to work for Mallinckrodt and was the only research chemist riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle to work." After a couple of years at Mallinckrodt, in 1983 Herwick connected with her then-partner, who had similar interests, and they went into the motorcycle accessories business, providing Harley-Davidson branded merchandise to dealers. "It was a motorcycle-novelty distribution firm," she said. "There were licensees that made emblems, and others that made decals and still others that made jewelry -- different licensees for all these different product categories. We were a distribution center, basically, for a variety of licensed products." The products, then and now, number in the hundreds -- shirts, pants, ball caps, can coolers, decals, emblems, headbands, bandanas, belts, license-plate frames, shot glasses, luggage tags, umbrellas, visors, suspenders, magnets, mouse pads, stadium seats, bumper stickers and dozens more -- all bearing the Harley-Davidson logo. In 1992, the company acquired embroidery equipment and began stitching the logo on clothing and ball caps. In 1995, the partners incorporated their business and acquired their own license, under which they pay Harley-Davidson a royalty for use of its trademarked logo, and became the sole source of distribution for the assorted novelty and custom items. After a reorganization in 1999, Herwick became the sole shareholder, president and chief executive. Now, as an official licensee of Harley-Davidson, Global Products manufactures and distributes Harley-Davidson multimedia apparel (clothing that has undergone more than one "embellishment" process, such as screen printing and embroidery), custom products, giftware and novelties around the world. The company is one of five official licensees for apparel in the United States and the only licensee for decals and emblems. Global Products' merchandise goes to some 750 domestic Harley-Davidson dealer locations and to about 450 international dealers, who then sell to the public. About 75 percent of the company's business is domestic, with 10 percent each in Europe and Asia, and 5 percent in Canada. In 2000, Global Products opened distribution centers in Germany and Canada and is contemplating a third location in Malaysia. "I have a large volume of Asian customers who deserve the same quality of service as my other customers, but I'm very uncomfortable with the current terrorism threats," she said. In addition to doing embroidery and screen printing, Global Products manufactures bumper stickers and decals at its St. Peters facility. Global Products also has a kiln used to produce items such as embellished ceramics or blank ceramic glassware custom designed for a dealer's geographic region -- for example, palm trees and alligators for a Florida dealer, the Arch for a St. Louis-area dealer or the Hollywood sign for one in California. Herwick said that after many years of growth, the business has been flat for the past three years due to a reshuffling of licensing agreements in which Global Products lost some of its product lines. However, Herwick said the company is projecting a 15 percent growth in revenue next year. Herwick owns five Harley-Davidson motorcycles and rode her new Anniversary RoadGlide to the huge Harley-Davidson 100th anniversary celebration in Milwaukee Aug. 28-31, an event attended by tens of thousands of Harley aficionados.

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