Airxcel Debuts New Brands, Products at Elkhart Showcase – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
ELKHART, Ind. – Once again, Airxcel Inc. has used its annual New Product Showcase to introduce new products in new category segments. Last year it was the InVision brand of RV appliances, while this year it’s the Solace line of furniture and Forma, which will be Airxcel’s chassis components division.
More information on those the new Solace and Forma brands will be forthcoming, but suffice to say both are part of the company’s growth plan that is led by product innovation and market opportunities.
“We’ve had a plan to grow our business through new products since the day I joined the operation, which was 2016,” Airxcel President Anthony Wollschlager told RVBusiness. “We’ve always focused on new product development and innovation. We may have accelerated that over the last few years. We’re being opportunistic where we see there being opportunities and, really, our partners are supporting us to enter new spaces.”
Concluding today at the Peter Orthwein Pavilion at the RV/MH Hall of Fame campus in Elkhart, Ind., Airxcel’s New Product Showcase is the company’s opportunity to gather under one roof its different divisions – now up to 16 – located across the country.
“And then, secondly, I think it’s an opportunity for us to show the industry our entire scale,” Wollschlager added. “Airxcel itself doesn’t make anything, but we have significant brands that do all the heavy lifting. So, to bring them all in one location, I think it also shows the marketplace the scale that we have.
Certainly, the Solace furniture line and Forma chassis component brand will garner much of the attention, but that’s not to say Airxcel’s existing brands didn’t introduce their own innovations as well – including the Aqua-Hot Wave40. Again, more information on those products will be released by the company over the coming days.
“All of our legacy brands have significant product extensions that we’ve been focusing on and a lot of innovation with core products that we’ve always taken to market,” Wollschlager said.
Troy Nusbaum, vice president of OEM sales, added that “every product that’s in here is new. We haven’t brought anything that’s a carryover or as we say, a ‘re-tread.’ They are all brand new products that a lot of our customers are seeing for the first time.”
Mentioning that the timing of the showcase so closely after the Open House is also a benefit, Nusbaum said the new products in new segments are oftentimes the result of leveraging Airxcel’s various skill sets.
“Let’s use Suburban as example,” he continued. “At its core, Suburban Manufacturing is known for furnaces and water heaters. But they have a great skill set in working with metal fabrication, which is where we bore into this Suburban step program. People might think, ‘How do you get into steps when you’re working with gas appliances?’ Well, ultimately, they’re really good at fabricating metal. So, we were able to lever that skill set and actually get into new segments where customers have asked us to.”
