The owner or general manager is probably the guy who wouldn't pony up the bucks to buy the brochures in the first place. Harley doesn't supply brochures and catalogs free of charge, they treat the dealers the same way they do the actual customers, as an easy source of extra profit. Folks who used to get annual parts catalogs and sales brochures and motor clothes catalogs mailed to them might think that H-D was doing that, but they would be wrong. The dealer was footing the bill for those things, and with the current economy a lot of them have cut that expense out. If the dealer bought enough CVO brochures for every Tom, Dick, and Harry who walked through the door and asked for one, he'd be out a significant chunk of change. I'm not saying what happened here was right or a good business practice, just trying to present some possible reasons other than just having an idiot salesman.
One solution could be for Harley to post high quality pdf versions of the brochures online. Unfortunately, the greedy jerks would probably force you to pay a fee to download it.
Jerry