His partnership Edward A. Nelson (another cyclist) formed the Hendee & Nelson Mfg. Co., it was short lived.
The company folded because their retail price of the Silver King and Queen was too expensive. Department stores had undercut their product with cheaper bikes. It is interesting that Hendee allowed the company to go bankrupt, then immediately purchased the entire inventory? He started up the business again; the "American Indian" with some success. He later dropped the word American for just 'Indian' for export appeal.
I have read countless articles that clearly paint a profile of George Mallory Hendee as a savvy businessman, very competitive, a formable man that wouldn't accept "no" as an answer. He saw the future and he knew he wanted to be a stake holder in the transportation arena!
I'm going out on a limb here...and speculating that George didn't see himself as a bike "builder", the man in the background building bikes? Being behind the scene wasn't his fortay. I believe he enjoyed being the man in the front...the leader! Hendee was a class act, a salesman, a showman!
Look at all his businesses...every one of them bared his name!
From documented evidence, Hendee was aware of the "new" automotive industry circling the transportation wagon. Bicycles were quickly losing their cache, the automotive was the emerging market. However the problem was its price; it was cost prohibitive for most people, only the wealthy could afford a motorized automobile.
Hendee knew if he could only merge his cycling passion with a motor, he could make the motorized transportation accessible for the masses and make history!
George owned a velodrome? It was here he had a ringside seat of his dream becoming a reality; often witnessing the time trials of the cyclists racing.
Cyclist would paced behind a pseudo motorbike, called a "PACEMAKER." These were tandem bikes with motors! One man steered while the other man controlled the engine. The problem was these tandem motorbikes were unreliable, they'd failed, and would often break down with the cyclist crashing in the tandem's wake.
However there was one very reliable tandem gaining much acceptance: the Hedstrom tandem (pic above) built by an engineer, clock-smith and also an ex-bicycle racer, Oscar Hedstrom.
It was after one of these trials that George introduced himself and told Oscar about his dream...to build a motocycle.
George must have been an incredible salesman? Because Oscar stopped what he was doing and went off and built a small prototype engine, attached it to a bike in a matter of months! (that's from scratch).
George is quickly own his way!