(Business 2.0) – KEN OSTERMANN Manager of electronic commerce, Harley-Davidson

In addition to all those motorcycles, Harley-Davidson sells $500 million worth of parts and accessories to its fanatic followers. Ken Ostermann, Harley's manager of electronic commerce and communications, figured that the company could sell even more if it opened an online store.

The problem was that selling Harley jackets and saddlebags directly to consumers would have unleashed the fury of Harley's 650 dealers, who'd grown attached to the high-margin accessory business. Ostermann saw what had to be done.

"We wanted to encourage any customers shopping for Harley-Davidson accessories on the Web to visit our dealers. At the same time, we wanted our dealers to be able to handle the online channel without running out and getting a Ph.D. in Internet technology and website design. E-commerce isn't easy, and we knew it wouldn't help either of us just to dump the job on the dealers and then walk away.

So now, customers who want to buy accessories online go to Harley-Davidson. com. But before they can buy anything, they are prompted to select a participating Harley-Davidson dealer. When the customer places the order, it's transmitted to the selected dealer for fulfillment. This way the dealers remain the focal point of the customer's buying experience, and we make sure the Harley message is maintained in a consistent way.

Our technology, however, couldn't guarantee that our customers continued to have a good experience once they'd placed their orders. So we asked dealers to agree to a number of standards--things like checking orders at least twice a day and shipping orders promptly. We used Blue Martini's e-commerce suite for our platform, and with some custom tools we designed, we monitor things like the time taken to process orders, so we can flag a problem before it gets out of hand.

Obviously, the whole project would have gone nowhere without buy-in from the dealers. So from the outset we consulted with our national dealer advisory council--a group of a dozen veteran dealers--and they helped us design the program. They suggested a number of things, like adding dealer-specific T-shirts and other items to the site, which have been a really popular feature. Now we get more than 1 million visitors a month, and our customer satisfaction scores, which started in the extremely satisfied range, have moved to the exceptional level." --INTERVIEW BY BOB TEDESCHI