It’s been a long year for the men and women laid off a year ago
Sunday, when Indian Motorcycle
– an iconic brand nationwide – called it quits.
It’s been a long year for the men and women laid off a year ago Sunday, when Indian Motorcycle – an iconic brand nationwide – called it quits.
Everyone who walked in the front door of Indian’s Gilroy factory saw receptionist Kim Barbosa. Since being laid off last year, however the 46-year-old Gilroy resident says she has found nothing but temp jobs.
“It’s really tough finding a job,” she said. She’s trying to upgrade her skills by taking night classes at Gavilan College in computer applications. Her medical billing class starts next month.
Charles Frechette, 45, of Morgan Hill, used to be a quality-control inspector for new Indian motorcycles. Now, he’s getting by with intermittent landscaping work. He’s also stocked starters and alternators in an auto parts warehouse.
“I haven’t found a steady job,” he said. “Things are rough out there. … I don’t know what I’m going to do right now.”
It was around lunchtime on Friday, Sept. 19, 2003, when Indian executives called the company’s 380 or so employees together in the yard outside the plant and told them Indian was closing immediately.
A five-year run at resurrecting America’s first motorcycle company was over.
That day and the next, security guards escorted workers back into the building, one small group at a time, to retrieve their belongings and pick up their final checks. There was no severance pay, as per an employee handbook that had just been rewritten.
Many were shocked. Indian’s sales had been rising steadily and quality control had improved, but company officials said costs vastly outstripped profits and required more capital than the company could convince anyone to invest. Mounting part recalls and warrantee claims contributed to the debt load.
Some employees, however, already had cause to worry. That June, news that Indian was looking to move to Alabama leaked through the Birmingham (Ala.) Business Journal. The story, picked up by Motorcycle News Wire, had been widely distributed among Indian workers.
“We could see it written on the wall,” Frechette said. “Me and the crew could kind of see what was going on over there. … Basically, they were going to shut the place down.”
For the next six months, workers were eligible for unemployment insurance checks. Frechette said he was too emotionally drained to even look for another job until January.
“I was just down and out about what they did to us, especially with no severance pay,” he said.
Indian put its assets up for auction as a package deal, but despite seven reported bidders, the process dragged. By January, Indian and liquidation broker Credit Managers Association of California had decided to sell the factory inventory, the factory itself and the brand separately.
In January, Bill Melvin – a Michigan retail liquidator and motorcycle collector who previously bid on the company as a whole – bought the inventory for an undisclosed amount and sold it off piece by piece. Hollister developer Ken Gimelli bought the real estate and is still looking for a tenant.
Negotiations to sell the Indian brand – that is, its collection of trademarks and logos – continued to drag until May, when CMA put it back on the auction block. Stellican Ltd., a British firm that specializes in refurbishing distressed, classic brands, bought the brand in July for an undisclosed amount.
Now Stellican’s owners are looking around the country for its Indian headquarters. They have named Gilroy, Florida, Alabama and Indian’s original home town of Springfield, Mass. as candidates.
Meanwhile, former Indian executives Rey Sotelo, of Gilroy, and George Nobile, of Santa Clara, are trying to start up their own brand of custom motorcycles.
Both Barbosa and Frechette say they would gladly do motorcycle work again, either for Indian or for Sotelo and Nobile.
“It looks promising, but I don’t want to get my hopes up,” Barbosa said of Indian’s latest developments.
Albert Morales worked on the Indian factory floor and says he would gladly do it again, when he recovers from a recent open-chest surgery. He hopes to be working again by the start of the new year.
“I like building bikes, so it doesn’t matter who I work for,” Morales said. “I want to go back to working on motorcycles.”
