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An old Zen saying holds that when a butterfly flaps its wings in China, it rains in California. While such ancient wisdom or chaos theory may be as good an explanation for the current scooter craze as any, the Zen masters were also correct in the literal sense: China opened the flaps on mass manufacturing of push scooters two years ago, and it’s now raining scooters not only in California, but all over the world.

From a blip on the U.S. radar screen just 12 months ago, scooters have whooshed across the country practically on the heels of their own momentum, unaided by any significant marketing or advertising. After taking off on both coasts and in Chicago, the trendy little transportation devices have made their way into remote outposts like Mansfield, Texas, where a school board member recently rode one down an auditorium isle at a teacher’s orientation meeting. When school started, students jammed the collapsible scooters into their lockers as fast as convenience stores could stock name-brand knockoffs for as little as $79.

According to most estimates, scooter sales should reach anywhere from 2 million to 5 million this year. At $99 a pop for a basic model, that translates into a minimum $200 million business. Officials at Huffy Bicycles, Miamisburg, Ohio, expect sales to reach 4.5 million in the U.S. in 2000. “We think our Micro [scooter] will account for about a third of that total, and we expect to sell 1.5 million,” said Bill Smith, vice president of marketing at Huffy. Last year, the company sold 25,000 of the scooters.

What sets the scooter phenomenon apart from most fads is its ability to reach across demographic barriers, including everyone from back-to-school kids to Wall Street lawyers to dot-coin types in San Francisco. Today’s scooters are far slicker than the child’s toy that lost its luster sometime around the first sidewalk surfboard craze–the precursor to today’s skateboard–in the ’60s. They’re also much sturdier than the homemade scooters of the ’50s, which were constructed from orange crates, old roller skates and leftover bicycle parts. The new versions come with lightweight shiny aluminum folding frames, Rollerblade-style wheels in iMac-like colors, brakes and, in some cases, motors. The names are snappier too: Razor, Zappy, Xootr, Hoverboard, Go-Fed and Know-Fed are the Fords and Chevys of the sidewalk set.

“We watched [the scooter phenomenon] grow,” said Lou Soucie, spokesman for The Sharper Image, which showcases several scooters in its latest catalog and in display windows at urban retail outlets. “We started with them in April, with the Razor priced at $119,” Soucie said. Those sold well, but then the company dropped the price to $99. At that point it just exploded. We had found the price point. It’s now the number-one-selling product in our line,” Soucie said.

On-line toy retailer eToys has had a similar experience with its scooter. “One of our buyers saw one in Hawaii and brought it to us, and we began selling in February,” said eToys marketing manager Jonathan Cutler. “We were pretty shocked when we first put it up, and then we sold out immediately. Now we have got 12 different types from kids’ versions to the versions for adults.”

But affordability only partly explains scooters’ vast inroads into popular culture. Marketers at Zappworld.com, Sabastopol, Calif., began to see a spike in their scooter sales earlier this year when so-square-he’s-hip actor Kevin Spacey rode a Zappy scooter on The David Letterman Show. “The next day we were deluged, and we couldn’t explain it until someone told us about Spacey’s appearance,” said marketing manager Alex Campbell. Spacey was later shown riding a Zappy on 60 Minutes, and he mentioned during an interview on Showtime that he rode the scooter unnoticed through the streets of NewYork. “Each time our phone lines lit up like the fourth of July,” Campbell said.

Celebrity endorsements certainly help, but how and where did the scooter trend begin? Irma Zandl, president of market research firm the Zandl Group in New York, offers an interesting explanation. “Drug dealers on the Lower East Side. That’s where we first saw them last summer. They used them to [expedite] delivery, I suppose,” Zandl said. “Then we saw a few in the Hamptons last year as well.”

Zandl said that groups of teenagers, who are highly influential over other teens’ buying patterns, began using the scooters and begat the trend.

According to the Lreport, which forecasts youth trends worldwide, scooters began booming in popularity in Japan just over a year ago. “In overcrowded Tokyo, commuters used them to get from the subway to work.” said Maria Vrachnos, general manager of the Lreport, Del Mar, Calif. “From Tokyo they migrated to the West Coast among the 19 to 24-year-olds, but then came this year’s rise in gas prices and some older people picked up on it for commuting.”

Vrachnos said that the desire for scooters ties in directly with the desire for an electric car. “Our data shows that the electric car is the invention most kids would like to see, and we view the scooter as sort of a step in that direction,” she said. And there’s another underlying appeal: fashion. Couture versions of the scooter are on display at the Zao gallery in New York, said Vrachnos, adding: “The Troter, a version from France, includes a shoulder strap, elevating the scooters from a novelty item to a stylish fashion accessory.”

And unlike say, the hula-hoop, the scooter trend is not limited to the U.S. In addition to Japan, where enthusiasm is high enough to support magazines devoted to the subject, scooters are a common site on public transport systems throughout Europe. In London, British pop star Robbie Williams has popularized the two-wheeled wonder, while in Holland, according to one U.S. observer, “They’re all over the place. Apparently you have to pay extra if you take your bicycle on the subway so people just take their scooter, fold it up and they save that fare.”

Though scooters have established a wide spectrum of users, some companies had difficulty initially penetrating U.S. markets. At Nova Cruz Products, Lee, N.H., marketers tested the waters for the company’s upmarket $200 plus Xootr (pronounced ZOO-TER) with college students. “We did our initial market research at Stanford University,” said marketing manager Naomi Cromwell. The test didn’t go well, and when the company gave away a scooter as a prize, the winner returned it. But a few months later, thanks to a shortage of Razors in Japan and a Web site that pulled in search engine traffic looking for scooters, the Xootr took off. It has since become the high-end scooter of record–the first scooter with snob appeal.
“Our main demographic is the urban hipster. That’s who we primarily sell to,” said Cromwell.

Thus far, scooter manufacturers have had to do little in the way of marketing to ensure growth. The largest manufacturer, Taiwanese J.D. Corp., began producing scooters about two years ago in a factory in China; by the time its now ubiquitous Razor hit the U.S. market, the company was struggling to keep up with demand. In July J.D. Corp. established a U.S. headquarters to centralize domestic distribution. But marketing? Razor apparently doesn’t need it.

“I’ve hired a PR agency to handle calls from publications, but we don’t really need advertising,” said Carlton Calvin, head of U.S. operations. “This thing advertises itself.”

The company recently received free publicity when Razor was the subject of a question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, including a market research bonus in the form of a poll-the-audience lifeline. “Fifty-four percent said the Razor was a scooter,” Calvin noted. “That’s pretty amazing when you consider we were unknown just a year ago.”

Razor is currently mulling over a variety of licensing offers from fast-food outlets, video game and apparel companies, as well as product placement in movies (look for one in the next Ben Stiller flick). “It’s a good position to be in. We get to choose who we want to partner with,” said Calvin. The scooter appears in a recent issue of Rolling Stone in a giveaway promotion with Interscope Records. “That demographic, the college student and the urban hipster, is a key one for us,” Calvin said. Advertising and marketing, he added, is not part of the mix just yet. “Most of what we’re doing right now is just keeping up with demand.”