Chris Olson definitely isnt your typical businessman.


Tattoos adorn his arms, hands, and fingers. His raspy voice bears testament to the years he says he spent living hard while playing drums in touring rock-and-roll bands. And although he became a devout Christian some time back, and cut off his long hair, he confesses that he still probably looks like someone you wouldnt want to take home to meet your family.


But a businessman he is. As co-owner, with his wife, Tammy, of Chris Olson Custom Cycles, he has big entrepreneurial ambitions. They go well beyond trying to eke out a profit building expensive custom motorcycles one at a time for a relatively small group of potential buyers here. Those goals include developing a legend series of limited-edition, widely marketed bikes honoring past music and movie stars, and possibly attracting a larger-scale motorcycle manufacturing operation here.


The Olsons currently are seeking to raise $1.5 million in angel investor money, which he says is the minimum amount needed to kick off production of the legend series bikes. He says they expect to hear a decision within the next month or two from an investor who is considering buying the rights to their concept and making the Olsons shareholders in the venture, but they also are continuing to explore other possible sources for those funds as well.


Leading up to those negotiations, he says he and Tammy drew up a business plan and gained valuable feedback from such noted Spokane business executives as Washington Trust Banks Pete Stanton, Tomlinson Black Commercials Dave Black, and Zak Designs Irv Zakheim. They also negotiated preliminary approval to design bikes paying homage to Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, and the rock group KISS.


Representative for those celebrities are all ready to sign, but we need to pay them royalty advances, Olson says. Until they get paid, its all just mumbo jumbo.


Olson envisions someday gaining name-brand recognition for his company rivaling that of Orange County Choppers, and he says, My whole concept is the publicity we get on this will help brand us.


The whole legend series idea, he says, was triggered by a phone call he received about two years ago from KISS member Gene Simmons. Simmons, he says, was interested in having him design a bike that could be marketed to KISSs large international fan base, but Simmons didnt want to provide the startup capital for such a venture.


In support of their business concept, the Olsons note that a few similar ventures are springing up elsewhere around the country, taking advantage of a steadily rising public interest in motorcycling. Aerosmith rock band lead singer Steven Tyler and Bruce Rossmeyer, one of the nations largest Harley-Davidson dealers, recently collaborated to sell 10 Steven Tyler Signature Series limited-edition custom motorcycles in 10 days, at $80,000 each. Rossmeyer also has announced plans to release 30 specially designed Harley-Davidson motorcycles this year to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presleys death in August. Those bikes reportedly are expected to sell for around $58,000 each. Separately, Orange County Choppers has taken a sports theme approach by announcing plans to introduce officially licensed National Hockey League team custom bikes.


Despite Olsons lofty aspirations, he operates his shop for now as a part-time endeavor in a roughly 800-square-foot space at 3715 E. Longfellow, where he and his older brother, Tim, operate a separate 25-employee company, called Belair Composites, which is owned by their mother, Mary Avery.


That business makes custom hose products for mostly automotive and aviation uses, and Olson says its annual revenues have grown from $330,000 when the company moved here from Hesperia, Calif., in 1991, to about $2 million now.


Chris Olson Custom Cycles designs and builds one-off, or unrepeated, bikes ranging upward in price from $75,000. Olson, 43, and his wife ares the businesss only employees, and he says he has built 12 bikes in allfive of them last yearthat sold for $45,000 to $120,000.


He started the business in 2003, and operated it initially in a 4,800-square-foot space at 6821 N. Division, where he also sold merchandise through a collaborative arrangement with a company that publishes Hot Bike and Street Chopper magazines and was looking to establish a retail franchise network. He closed that store at the end of 2005, he says, because he wasnt making enough to cover his overhead costs. He declines to disclose the companys annual revenues, but says it hasnt become profitable yet.


He began designing and building motorcycles a number of years before he started the company. His brother has always been involved in motorcycling, and he says, I never knew I had the gift until he began creating the bikes.


One of his bikes, built with donated labor and parts from others in the industry here, was called Vegas Nights and was created as a fundraiser for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. It eventually sold for $56,000 at an auction in Scottsdale, Ariz. Olsons Web site includes a picture of him standing next to Las Vegas celebrity and foundation spokesman Wayne Newton, who is seated on the bike.


Another of the bikes he built, also with considerable support from others here, featured a patriotic theme and was raffled off at a fundraiser for an animal-support group founded partly by NASCAR driver Greg Biffle, Olson says. He says tickets were $20 or $25 apiece, depending on the number purchased, and 7,500 tickets were sold.


One other of his creations, called 36-24-36, is featured on the cover of this months issue of the nationally circulated Hot Bike magazine. He sold the bike to an Eastern Washington man for $120,000, but borrowed it back long enough to display it at the Inland Northwest Motorcycle Show held two weeks ago at the Spokane Convention Center.


Olson does some of the bike building himself, but says he also turns over some parts of each bike project to others, such as to a fabricator who builds the motorcycle frames to his design specifications. Also, he says, Im not really a motor guy. I think the thing that really gets me going is designing the bike and getting to know the customer.


His style, he says, is to spend some time with his customers and to get to know them before beginning the design process. He says he tends to approach the process from a childs perspective, incorporating exaggerated features into the bikes to make them unique.


Im so passionate about it, sometimes I cry when I deliver the bikes, he says.


Though he considers the design process his forte, Tammy says, Hes a genius marketer. Wherever we go, hes thinking of marketing, which is what led to their current efforts to develop a brand with national name recognition.


The prospective buyer or investor with whom Olson says he currently is working is Larry Lunan, CEO of Kingsport, Tenn.-based Bad Toys Holdings Inc., which through one of its divisions operates American Eagle Manufacturing Co., a maker of custom cruiser-style motorcycles. As part of the negotiations, Olson says hes trying to convince Lunan to move production of American Eagle motorcycles here from Carlsbad, Calif., where the company has a 35,000-square-foot plant.


Born and raised in California, Olson says he spent the first part of his life playing and touring with rock bands Citizen Kane and Psycho Squad, and living a life that was literally sex, drugs, and rock and roll, before realizing that it was an empty existence.


His mother moved Belair Composites to Spokane in 1991, and he and his family moved here the following year. It was shortly thereafter that he became a Christian, and he says he then soon started doing ministry work, including at prisons.


He began channeling his creative juices into areas other than music, and that led to his first automotive-related design projectthe restoration of a 1926 Ford four-door touring sedan into a two-door roadster that he dubbed Purple Haze. Soon after that, he says, he developed his interest in designing and building motorcycles.


Despite the struggles in turning that interest into a profitable and growing enterprise, he says that as a creative outlet for him, Its been really a blessing.


Contact Kim Crompton at (509) 344-1263 or via e-mail at kimc@spokanejournal.com.