In 1959, an American teenager tired of thumbing his way through Europe bought a motorcycle for $100, took it for a spin in the Alps, and became instantly infatuated. Forty-five years later, Bill Dutcher is the founder and sole owner of 22-year-old Americade, the world's largest multibrand motorcycle touring rally, which brought 50,000 bikers to Lake George, NY, for a week last June.
It was a long and winding road from then until now, during which Dutcher managed to hold down just about every bike-related job you can think of, from professional racing (which he did for a spell after graduating from Harvard), to sales and marketing, to heading up public relations for the big Kahuna: Harley-Davidson. That was back in the late 1970s, "when Harleys weren't considered cool," Dutcher recalls. "The idea of doing a motorcycle show in a hotel ballroom didn't receive the hysterical welcome that it does now."
HOG HEAVEN
Harley eventually got sold, and Dutcher, who didn't want to relocate his family from the Lake George area, turned down a job with the new owners. Out of work, "I looked around me," he says, "and realized that this area offers a lovely confluence of the three Rs: roads, rooms, and recreation." After some numbers-crunching revealed that 20 percent of all motorcycles registered in the United States are located within five hours' drive of Lake George, Dutcher approached the organizers of a motorcycle rally in New Mexico with the idea of doing a spinoff of their show.
In 1983, Aspencade East was launched. It drew 2,500 attendees "and just about broke even," says Dutcher. The next year, the show earned him almost as much as he was making at the full-time job he'd been forced to take at a valve company, so by the time the valve company laid him off and the show's organizers stopped returning his calls, he was ready to go solo. Voila—in 1986 Americade was born, its new handle courtesy of his wife Gini's Fourth of July-inspired brainstorm. "We had 10,000 attendees that year," says Dutcher, "and it's been up ever since."
FULL THROTTLE
Today, Dutcher's main challenge is that Americade is "like a teenager hanging out of his clothes—we're too big for this community." Its 50,000 attendees fight over the 20,000 beds available, and despite a brand-new, 50,000-square-foot convention center, the trade show—known as TourExpo—still spills over into tents in the parking lot.
Not that that's deterring the Dutchers. Bill recently hired his son, Christian, as vice president of strategic development (his wife and daughter-in-law already handle registration), and put him in charge of the Northeast Power Sports Rally, a new Lake George-based event for all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles. "The ATV market reminds me of the motorcycle market thirty years ago," explains Dutcher. "We feel we can provide a useful service."