Photo courtesy of RVIAGiven the challenging national economy, the number of RV manufacturers that have gone out of business and the ongoing battles to secure retail and wholesale financing, many dealers are no doubt pleased to put 2009 behind them. Still, many dealers who did survive told RV PRO they learned valuable business lessons last year and are optimistic 2010 will be a better year.

Steve Lewis, General Manager
Lightnin RV
Lawrenceville, Ga.

“It (2009) was pretty rough, but I think 2010 will bring improvements. In my opinion, I wouldn’t forecast 2010 to be great, but it should be better than 2009. I’m cautiously optimistic.

“What we did was get out of the motorhome business during 2009 because it was killing us; we have been motorhome-free since the middle of the summer. Recently, we decided to bring back some Class C’s and see how value-priced units will sell. Right now, we are hanging our hats on towables – travel trailers and fifth wheels. We aren’t offering toy haulers in a big way, although we’ve done so in the past and we will explore offering them in the future.

“Getting rid of the motorhomes was a good decision, allowing us to weather the storm better than some other dealers. We now have Flagstaffs and other Forest River units and we have on order Sunseekers by Forest River. We also are in the process of picking up a Gulf Stream line of trailers, which we have on order.

“Again, we scaled way back on our toy haulers. The manufacturer was getting greedy and wanted us to order more when we had four in stock already. We told that manufacturer that, if it needed to find someone else then they should go ahead and find someone else, and the manufacturer did. I haven’t replaced that product, but the irony is the dealer they gave it to in April only has four in stock today.

“(In terms of marketing), we are trying to more selective with the products we promote and sell and are more focused on customers, instead of just making noise in thin air. We are very limited with the marketing dollars we are using.

“Our typical customers haven’t changed. We see more people with children buying in the summer and empty nesters come out in September.
“Our best selling units in 2009 were the Flagstaffs and I expect that to continue in 2010.”

Rachelle Schaap, Co-owner
Schaap’s RV Traveland
Sioux Falls, S.D.

“It (2009) was a challenging year and we had to be careful and watch our expenses so that we could produce a profit while our usual volume of sales, parts and service was not the same. Service suffered the least in terms of work, but the service department was still down because one of our largest consumers of its work is the sales department with its get-ready work and the add-ons, such as slide-out covers.

“The actual service work from customers was probably up a bit because there was more room on the calendar because of less service work for the sales department. We obviously had many of the same issues as other dealers with getting warranties honored and we had some manufacturers go out of business, which meant services that should’ve been covered weren’t. We did goodwill some of that work and other times, if we weren’t sure if we were going to get paid or not, we had to ask customers to pay upfront and then we did everything to help get them reimbursed.

“That was a very tough line to tread, particularly if we sold the coach new. I credit our service writer and our parts manager for trying to find out the component manufacturers involved and go directly to them. They have a huge list of those sorts of resources.

“The other challenge was parts and whether we could get parts from the manufacturers. We are a Holiday Rambler dealer, so Monaco was one of our biggest challenges before it was bought. And we were still left with quite a bit of unpaid warranty work, which had been approved. We had to tell customers that their coaches were not under warranty, which was rough.

“We believe 2010 will be better and we can see positive signs with some manufacturers hiring back people. The traffic for our dealership has been better, but it’s going to be a slow crawl out of the hole.

“Our popular sellers in 2009 were used units and new family friendly units. We typically don’t go to auctions to buy our used units because we get enough through trade-ins, but I should have forecasted that better and bought used.

“In fact, we took some of our model-year carryovers, didn’t mark them as used, but moved them into the used lineup and people seemed to be more willing to look at them; when we would start to walk to the new line up, people told us they only wanted to look at used. You almost had to get past a mental barrier with people to get them to look at the new stuff at times, even if it was inexpensively priced.

“Bunkhouses, as always, sold well. Some of the lightweight towables also sold well. Really, mid-line family floorplans and bunkhouse units, whether new or used, sold the best; anywhere from 26- to 28-footers. Sprinter did very well for us. Keystone Outback did well, too.

“The Bullet (which is a Keystone product) was a new product with us in 2009 and we are really looking forward and are excited about what it will do for us in sales in 2010. It’s lightweight, half-ton towable travel trailer.

“The focus for this coming year will be new units rather than used because I think the market is going to be stronger. What’s going to be an issue for 2010 – if there are problems – is getting stock. The manufacturers may have difficulty ramping up fast enough if the demand picks up. I worry if we have strong sales in our show season of February and March, it will cause problems if I can’t get good replacements in the spring and summer. But, that will mean the market is back and it will be a good problem to have.

“I will focus on fifth wheels, travel trailers and other family oriented units. I will be looking at new floorplans and I’ll look at lightweights. I want bunkhouses that are lightweight.

“I may be taking on a new line or two; but, for the most part, I plan to stay put with my current line up of manufacturers.

“The heroes of 2009 are the manufacturers that stayed in business, honored warranties and continued to supply us with good products without pressing us to buy more when they knew times were bad. I would include Forest River and Keystone on that list.

“Our primary parts supplier is Stag-Parkway, but we certainly do business with others. Stag really hung in there with us, as we switched to more real-time inventory and began carrying less. We only ordered things as we needed them. Stag has a large warehouse in Des Moines, which is in one state away from us, and the real-time inventory cut down on the numbers of obsolete parts. We still try to have enough to stock the shelves; we order now when we are down to one or two, rather than stocking up on 10.

“We sold more do-it-yourself repair items, as well as rubber roof repair kits. RV wash-and- wax products were popular because customers seemed to want to take better care of what they had. We carry a lot of Thetford RV products.

“So far, no new product has really interested us. A lot of times, we make those decisions at the Stag show in January.

“In terms of marketing, we cut back on advertising. We cut back on TV, using it for a couple of our events; we cut back on print and we cut radio advertising out completely. We continue to shift more of our efforts toward the Internet and direct marketing. We are promoting our own Website at every turn and we use Ultimate Video Showcase. We are considering an e-newsletter and, while I’m not very big on the social networking, I hear it’s the wave and we will be looking at that.

“We do sell online to people from around the country, but I see our Website more importantly as a sales tool for our local four-state market. I love it when people get on our Website for info, get excited and then come in with a printed page from our site. I appreciate sales from anywhere, but I am most interested in my local market and the Internet is a great sales tool.”

Joe Barbagallo, Owner
Escape RV Center
Branchville, N.J.
 
“We had a decent year in 2009. In 2010, I think the banks are going to dictate the story and the dealerships are at their mercy. They are cutting out floor planning, so that dealers can’t buy inventory. I think that’s one of the biggest reasons dealers are going out of business. They seem to be tightening up on the retail financing as well. It’s more up to the banks than it is to the consumers or the dealers.

“I’ve adjusted the way we run our dealership and have adjusted the way we market it. I’m going to move forward either way.

“The more expensive, larger motorhomes, we have pretty much eliminated. We are in an area with a lot of campgrounds, so we are catering to the needs of the campers who seasonal camp.

“We are selling Gulf Stream towables and Winnebago motorhomes and Forest River towables. They are all manufacturers that we have dealt with in the past, but we have adjusted the inventory from those manufacturers and we’ve also begun doing more with the used end of it; (for) used, we will put almost anything out there as long as it’s reasonably priced.

“The used market is good in both motorhomes and travel trailers because there are more people who can just pay for the pre-owned ones they want, versus going to the banks for money. I’ll sell anything from old to a very late model if it’s in good condition.

“We are probably right on par with previous years in terms of aftermarket. We do a lot of hitch work and we sell a lot of Reese products. Our product sales have been pretty consistent.

“Our typical customer is younger than the average RVer because of how we have marketed in the past. There are two groups: the seasonal campers and race chasers. The race chasers, who we get from our marketing in motor sports, are very loyal to us and they are traveling to local dirt tracks and asphalt tracks and to some NASCAR events.

“As far as marketing in 2010, I’m getting away from traditional newspaper, print and radio advertising. I’m attending fewer shows. …

“I’m looking forward to the new year. Despite what’s happened with the banks, we had a decent year and our competition has certainly thinned out. We should be reaping the benefits of that this year.

 “If RV dealers continue to operate the way they have for the past 15 years, they aren’t going to prosper. You have to make adjustments and I’m willing to make those adjustments. With those adjustments, we will have a decent year.”