Polaris is trailblazing again, this time overseas

It’s not Scott Wine’s assistant who greets you. It’s Scott Wine himself. Striding through the sunny lobby of his company’s Medina headquarters and dressed business-casual, the chairman and CEO of Polaris Industries shouts an attaboy to a company comrade just outside the Victory Roadhouse, a company dining area named for the motorcycle line that Polaris launched in 1998. He walks up and proffers a crisp handshake. Upstairs, his office provides a view of Polaris’ rural-suburban surroundings. On the half-hour, a ship’s bell on his credenza chimes, a memento of his seven years of service in the U.S. Navy after graduating from Annapolis in 1989.

It’s a good time to be the captain of his company, and you can’t blame Wine for being revved up. From the depths of the downturn in 2009, Polaris’ revenue, net income, and stock price have all been climbing with the same nimble maneuverability of one of his company’s all-terrain vehicles. For that, Wine credits the “speed and competitiveness that our employees possess” and “a corporate structure that is small and agile that allows us to move very, very quickly.”

Polaris is still on the move. With more and more off-road vehicles (ORVs)—roughly 70 percent of its $3.2 billion business—used for non-recreational purposes, Polaris is expanding its ORVs for transporting equipment for farming and landscaping, among other commercial applications. It’s exploring new technologies beyond the gasoline-powered engine, and has entered the small-electric vehicle markets. Its sexiest move is this year’s reintroduction of the Indian motorcycle (see "No Easy Ride" at the end of this story), which will be competing with Harley-Davidson, the heavyweight of the U.S.-made heavyweight cruiser market. Wine and Polaris also have lofty goals for expansion beyond the company’s longtime North American base. Wine would like see overseas revenue comprise a third of the business eventually.

The Polaris name may conjure backwoods adventure, but the company itself has a bigger vision, what Wine calls an “ABC strategy—‘anything but cars.’ ” Having used the recession for more than retrenchment, Polaris is becoming something more than a manufacturer of powersports vehicles (a category that includes ORVs, snowmobiles, and motorcycles). The company is driving its growth in several new directions.