State of Market Dominates Priority RV Network Conference – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
HENDERSON, Nev. – As the Priority RV Network (PRVN) Annual Conference culminates today at the M Resort & Casino – highlighted by a panel discussion with the three men leading the three largest RV manufacturers – the one topic permeating all conversations is the state of the market and how it might play out the rest of this year.
The market and all its complexities will certainly be one of the questions posed to THOR Industries Inc. President & CEO Bob Martin, Forest River Inc CEO Doug Gaeddert and Winnebago Industries President & CEO Michel Happe during their time on stage this morning.
But that is only one of the highlights of the week-long conference, in which the nation’s largest co-op of dealerships assemble to learn PRVN program updates as well as network with each other and the 50-plus vendor partners also on hand.
Among them was Chad Shepard, owner of Pete’s RV Center, who only recently joined PRVN.
“Yeah, we’re brand new to Priority Group. It’s been a long time coming and we’re super excited,” he told RVBusiness. “A lot of the dealers are in our great business are friends of ours already, so it’s a really good time to catch up and see all the improvements that they’ve made to give us a competitive advantage in the market. It’s something we’ve been trying our hardest to get into, and the way the stars align this year, we were able to get four of our eight stores in, so super exciting on that.”
But, again, the quiet and not-so-quiet conversations were dominated by the state of the market – especially how the flurry of tariffs is undermining consumer confidence. Dealers seemed to have a mixed bag of market activity, but none were turning cartwheels.
It was much the same report from the vendor partners, including the following three who spoke with RVBusiness about their thoughts on the market and how their respective companies are coping with the times as they are.
Mark Boessler, Senior Vice President of Lippert Components Aftermarket
So, Q1 quite frankly was really favorable. And we led with a lot of new products to market in key categories: our air conditioning, towing, and safety groups. So, honestly, the show season was really positive, and dealer receptiveness was positive as well. So, I’d say the start of the year proved to be fortuitous for us.
Lippert’s leadership is so focused on new product development and what’s in the pipeline. And many of those products never come to market because of market changes or the price points maybe weren’t finalized or ready to be in the market. But new product development is really a big thing for us, obviously, as we try to continue expanding our core lines. And I would say that we’re pretty invested into it.
As far as the rest of the year, I think it’s going to be a lot of waves. I think, ultimately, it’s the sooner we could put to bed what a ‘new norm’ is – and find consistency in that norm – I think everybody will be able to manage more consistently in where do products finally land in pricing. A retail customer wants consistency, the dealer wants consistency, distribution wants consistency, and we want consistency. So, as soon as the (tariff) deals are done, we’re going to have really good consistency.
Rich Elliott, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Progress Manufacturing
I hear a lot of different things and I feel like it changes daily, right? Costs are going up, but sales are good or sales aren’t goo. And it’s different in different parts of the country.
But we’re still optimistic on how the season’s going to shake out. We did what we’re calling a ‘price revolution’ in January, where we went down in price – kind of crazy in the face of potential tariffs. But we did that, and our sales have gone way up. So, we’re happy with how the year started out for us personally, but as we get into the season now we need the retail sales to really come and help all of us, especially the dealers.
(On the impact of tariffs) I get that question a lot. We’re an American-made company, so Equal-i-zer’s 100% American made. Even with the price change, we didn’t change how or where we were doing this price revolution, we just gave a lower price. But tariffs, how they impact us is that we still see it’s a supply and demand game, right? So, we are not tied into a lot in China. Our e2s hitches do come from Taiwan, so there’s a smaller impact versus a Chinese-made hitch.
But with Equal-i-zer, what we found is the steel infrastructure here in the States is not necessarily ready for everybody to come back and do everything here like President Trump might want it to be, so then it becomes a supply-and-demand game. Simple economics, right? So, if there’s greater demand, the price goes up. Our steel hasn’t gone up significantly here domestically yet, but we anticipate that it likely will. And I’m not blaming the steel companies. I’d probably do the same thing if I was sitting in their shoes. But our aluminum’s already been hit here domestically. Our domestic aluminum that goes into our Flash Ball mounts is already up 30%. So that puts us in a situation to try to figure out how to best handle that.
Ben Johnson, Director of Sales, Meyer Distributing
Meyer is strong right now. Being a private, family-owned company is probably the best position for any company to be in right now. We feel like that matches the dealership aspect more than anything out there. Clearly, there’s (dealer) acquisitions happening – some of the larger groups can do it – and we are supporting those acquisitions. But we love servicing the brick-and-mortar mom-and-pop private family-owned dealerships.
Meyer has continued to invest heavily in hub-and-spoke model distribution. So, being able to house product across our 11 distribution centers across the country, and adding more and more crossdock locations across the country to service more than 80% of the U.S. and Canadian population next day with our delivery fleet. That recipe has proven itself for decades now and still continues to show us some growth this year.
I mean, partnership with the dealer is far and beyond the source of where success comes from. When it comes to anything that may happen – whether you might not get your part on time like we originally promised, or if you just need support on a return to get stuff taken care of –we have a relationship with the vendor so we are there to help with any of those circumstances.
