Ian Connely is an amateur Vespa mechanic living in San Francisco.

These articles appeared in Green Magazine and at www.GreenMagazine.com in January, 2000. Of the many articles I've seen, Ian's series was the only to consider the impact of Piaggio's return on the shops and enthusiasts that supported the American scooter scene through the eighties and nineties.

In Part 2, Vespa loyalists, many of whom have kept the company's brand name in the public consciousness through grass roots efforts such as clubs and repair shops, sound off on whether the rebirth of their passion will lead to easy riding or road rash.

Ian's story is reprinted here courtesy of Green Magazine. Green was started as a 'zine by Ken Kurson, a former Chicagoan (and scooterist, and former member of the band Green) who went to New York in the early nineties to start up a magazine for GenXers leery of investing. Ken is now a well-respected financial expert and the stock market is booming. Coincidence?

Part two of a two-part series

With new owners, new capital and a fresh business plan, it seems there's little that can stop Piaggio from succeeding in its U.S. re-launch. But...

With a freshly stocked bankbook courtesy of private equity groups Morgan Grenfell and Texas Pacific Group, and a carefully tailored business plan, Piaggio is about to launch its second storming of U.S. shores. Giancarlo Frantappie and Peter Laitmon — Piaggio's head honcho and marketing guru, respectively — have been traveling coast-to-coast trying to select dealers in seven key markets who can sell the new Vespa scooters that Piaggio promises Americans will see by late summer.

Of paramount concern is presenting the scooters — the least expensive of which will be priced at about $2,750, while top-end models will approach $4,000 — in what Piaggio is calling a "boutique." "The Vespa deserves to be displayed in a unique environment," says Laitmon, where "preferred partners who appreciate the fashion, the lifestyle, and the product quality" will put up boutiques "designed by competent and well-known architects and designers." These well-regimented environments will attempt to evoke Vespa's history as an enduring populist icon of a fashionable European lifestyle, and scooters will be sold alongside a variety of Piaggio-branded accessories, including sunglasses and clothing.

Laitmon and Frantappie make repeated mention of the "lifestyle" the Vespa scooter embodies — and allude repeatedly to the success of Harley-Davidson as a touchstone for Piaggio's U.S. plans. Harley, which has undergone its own financial travails during its 90-year history, bears some fundamental similarities to which Piaggio aspires. Harleys are sold at Harley-branded dealerships, not alongside other makes, and Harley has been incredibly successful in merchandising the brand to non-cyclists who want a piece of the mystique silk-screened on a T-shirt. That's in addition to creating a thriving and loyal Harley owner's group, tagged with the appropriately self-deprecating acronym H.O.G.

It's Harley's revival that Frantappie is thinking of when he boldly claims that "there is no comparison or competition between Vespa and other makes… the same way you don't see Harley with other cycles." But Piaggio can likely learn a lesson from scooter manufacturer Italjet's current U.S. woes — according to one source, Italjet's dealers are so poorly supported with parts that "you couldn't even get a spare tire if you needed one."

Laitmon's suitably subdued on Piaggio's goals: "If we only sell one scooter, it'll be to a happy customer."

Piaggio USA has retained at least one marketing agency to help develop branding, positioning, product, and target audience. But Laitmon is mum on the subject of marketing budgets and specific sales targets, preferring to draw upon the fondness and sentiment Vespa enthusiasts maintain to a feverish degree. "Everyone has a Vespa story!" he proclaims excitedly.

While Laitmon and Frantappie claim their audience spans the gamut from gawky teenagers to vibrant octogenarians, Piaggio's pricing and dealership selection may ultimately be more revealing of their target audience: affluent, middle-aged consumers who can appreciate the Vespa's continental history and still afford a $3,000 bauble. After all, it was no accident that a few new Vespas were displayed in the window of a Neiman-Marcus store in Chicago this summer.

Ironically, the existing network of U.S. shops that have sold and serviced used Vespas since the Italian company pulled out of the U.S. are likely to get passed over in Piaggio's new push. Because these shops are typically small operations, they aren't likely to have the capital to help realize Piaggio's expensive vision of the Vespa boutique. According to multiple sources, dealers will require about $300,000 in cold hard cash to be eligible to sell new Vespas — a figure out of reach for almost all shops. While Laitmon says that all the dealerships haven't been confirmed yet, rumors in San Francisco — a hotbed of Vespa owners — point toward upscale Cars Dawydiak, which sells mostly vintage European makes like Porsche and Rolls Royce, as the likely recipient of the coveted Piaggio sales dealership in that city.

San Francisco's First Kick Scooters has sold and serviced Vespas for just over ten years. Owner Eric Halladay sees a connection between the boutique strategy and its target audience. "They might be looking at some of the demographics of the motorcycle buyers: 35 to 50 years old, pulling in yards of dough," he says. "Like the people who are buying Harleys." Almost every shop owner will swallow their chagrin and quickly cave to the logic of Piaggio's upscale targeting. "The fact is that I, the owner of a scooter shop, don't make enough money to buy a new ET4," says Adam Baker of Sportique Scooters in Denver, referring to Vespa's sporty recent model that retains much of the charm of classic Vespas past.

"Am I the person they should be marketing to? No!" But does Sportique covet a dealership spot? "We'll sell our souls to get it," says Baker. Rumors of co-op advertising, and a larger national ad campaign abound, and longtime aficionados are eager to see their passion get some airtime. One East Coast dealer excitedly told me that a customer of his was working on Vespa's ad campaign, and that he might be able to see how it was shaping up. And every shop owner is confident that prices for vintage Vespas — currently about $1,500 to $4,000 — will only go higher with new Vespas hitting U.S. shores.

Even if the shops that stood by Piaggio through its lean times don't end up with new Vespas on the showroom floor, they've still got a chance at being a Piaggio-licensed "Service" or "Restoration" shop, with access to OEM Piaggio parts and training to work on the new scooters. Until now, shops have had to find their own connections to parts from dealers outside the U.S., since Piaggio didn't service them directly. "Even if I just get access to the parts, I'll be happy," says Gene Merideth, head of New Jersey-based Scooters Originali.

One American dealer, who supplies multiple U.S. shops and runs a thriving mail-order business in aftermarket Vespa parts, is Phil McCaleb, whose shop Scooterworks is based in Chicago. In a bizarre twist to the Vespa story, McCaleb and Piaggio USA are locked in a trademark dispute over who owns the right to the Vespa name in the U.S.

August 1999 court documents show that in the 1990s Scooterworks filed applications twice with the U.S. Patent Office to register the Vespa mark — but both times these overtures were rejected in favor of Piaggio's historic ownership. In 1996, Piaggio and Scooterworks signed a licensing agreement giving Scooterworks the exclusive right to produce and market die-cast, scale models of Vespa scooters in the U.S. for two years. At the same time, McCaleb attempted to cement a broader agreement with Piaggio allowing Scooterworks exclusive rights to distribute Vespa scooters and related parts; nothing was signed, and negotiations broke down in 1997.

Now, Piaggio alleges that Scooterworks "repeatedly misuse VESPA Trademarks by using VESPA as a generic name of a product rather than as a brand name for scooters" on the Scooterworks Web site and catalog. At the same time, McCaleb alleges that Piaggio abandoned its U.S. copyrights after withdrawing entirely from the U.S. (Piaggio adamantly claims that they have "never left" the U.S., to the vocal, if off-the-record, amusement of U.S. shop owners and enthusiasts, who haven't seen a new Vespa sold stateside in years.) The case hasn't been decided definitively in court yet, with a few of each side's motions being approved and a few denied.

Most shop owners won't speak on the record about the lawsuit, but Originali's Merideth is no fan of McCaleb's aggressive tactics. Merideth says that McCaleb was trying to "run a monopoly" on allowing dealers access to parts. So last year he found his own sources in Europe and Asia, rather than buy from Scooterworks. "He'd compete directly with you in your own market in mail-order, and offer the same discount to both the shop and the customer." Merideth is the only shop owner to publicly diss McCaleb: "It was a long time coming, and he probably deserves everything that's coming to him." Piaggio USA won't comment on the record about the trademark dispute, and McCaleb says the case is "more to do with legal posturing than it is substantive news for loyal or anxious scooterists."

Scooter enthusiasts have heard rumors of at least two other pushes to get Vespas back into the U.S. in the last decade, but everyone agrees that the most recent push is the most believable. Barry Synoground, who has published the 10,000 circulation Scoot! Quarterly magazine with partner Cassandra Earls for almost three years, is optimistic about a resolution to the lawsuit and about Piaggio's future in the U.S. His eyes fairly glow as he contemplates driving a new Vespa: "Wouldn't you rather see more people on two wheels than four?"

Click here to see the original version of this story on Green Magazine's website