OVERSEAS BUSINESS Making a buck off Harvard

Ohioan finds success selling the Ivy League school's gear abroad.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Cost of attending Harvard University for four years: $159,552. Cost of a necktie that makes it look as if you're a Harvard graduate: $50.
For more than 15 years, Cleveland's Michael Chesler has helped people to play the part if they don't have the pocketbook or pedigree to get an Ivy League education. A tie isn't your thing? Maybe you'd prefer a Harvard blazer, belt, briefcase, rugby shirt or eyeglass frames.
This isn't your run-of-the-mill collegiate memorabilia like sweat shirts and mugs. This is Harvard, the brand, & agrave; la Polo, Levi's or Ann Taylor. Just don't bother looking for it here. You'll have to book a flight to Tokyo, where Chesler launched Harvard's international licensing program and where consumers are drawn to the traditional, American prep-school look.
Next up on Chesler's list is India, where he says a rapidly expanding middle class identifies strongly with Harvard's cachet.
"This is an evergreen brand, nothing trendy," Chesler said. "It's khaki pants, button-down shirts, the types of things that sold yesterday, sold today and will sell tomorrow."
Two businesses in one
Chesler, 46, has a sharply bifurcated business. On one hand, Chesler Group Inc. handles trademark licensing for Harvard in Japan, collecting commissions when he signs manufacturers to produce Harvard-branded goods.
But the much larger part of his business is real estate development. Chesler's specialty is restoring old buildings. He has worked on more than a dozen in Cleveland over the past several years. Among his reclamation projects: the Van Rooy Building on Detroit Avenue, the 137-year-old McBride mansion on Prospect Avenue and the McGuffey School on West 29th Street. Chesler's office is housed in another of his projects, Prospect Avenue's Kies-Murfey mansion.
Chesler branched out into residential construction this year with the Dexter Condominiums in Ohio City, which when completed will have 10 to 14 units.
The focus of Chesler Group used to be flip-flopped, with real estate as a sideline to the trademark business.
Chesler, a Shaker Heights native, spent years in and out of Japan working in marketing and sales, first for Time magazine, then for Cleveland sports marketing firm IMG. While at IMG in the 1980s, he helped Harvard clean up a trademark morass in this country, snuffing out illegal uses of the university's name and signing legitimate licensees.
Harvard as a brand
When he started his company in 1989, Harvard's trademark office stuck with him. They decided to tackle Japan. From the start, Chesler said, he wanted to promote Harvard as a brand, not just a name on typical collegiate goods.
The Harvard name on the Japanese-made products is discreet, usually a small tag or label. Chesler said it's more about the look.
"This is stuff for the kids to wear to Sunday sushi with Grandma and Grandpa," he said.
The strategy paid off. Japanese sales of Harvard-branded products now total $20 million to $30 million a year (Chesler doesn't disclose his annual sales). The products are a fixture in Right-On, a Gap-style Japanese clothing chain.
David Aaker, vice chairman of the branding and marketing firm Prophet Inc. in San Francisco, said the Japanese lump Harvard together with other "prestige" American brands, including Coke and Microsoft.
A worldwide enterprise
Harvard nets about $1 million a year from licensing fees worldwide, 40 percent of which helps pay for undergraduate financial aid.
The Harvard program isn't unique -- Yale and Princeton universities also have dabbled in international brand-building -- but it's the oldest and most successful.
The university, with the help of a different company, has expanded into other Asian markets, including China and Korea. But the products have remained similar.
"There are some things we just simply don't do," said Rick Calixto, director of Harvard's trademark program. "Anything with high liability, stuff like ashtrays, guns, barbecues, computers."
After severely cutting back his trademark business in the wake of the Asian currency crisis in 1997 and 1998 -- and shifting into real estate development -- Chesler is getting back into the trademark game for Harvard. He said the situation in India is eerily similar to when he cracked the Japanese market.
Fly-by-night Indian companies are knocking off Harvard-branded products, he said, and he will probably spend the next year trying to convince them to stop.
It's a big challenge, said Michael Sobel, a partner in the intellectual-property law practice of Squire, Sanders & amp; Dempsey's Palo Alto, Calif., office.
"It's hard enough protecting your name at home," Sobel said. "Then all of a sudden you're 10,000 miles away, dealing with different people, standards and regulations, and it only gets harder."
Sobel likened trademark protection to killing weeds in your lawn. Chesler said that he will be Harvard's "sprayer and puller" at first but that he thinks he will have success signing up legitimate manufacturers and building the brand.
"There's an enormous and growing middle class in India, and we know they're looking to America," he said.
Chesler already is thinking beyond India. Harvard also has given him the rights to South America and Europe. But that could be an even bigger challenge. The university tried breaking into Europe in the early '90s with something that smelled like Harvard.
Harvard cologne didn't make it.