Champion Home’s Tuyo Reflects on Solid Showing at Tampa – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
The Florida RV SuperShow in Tampa last week was a strong event for manufactured housing heavyweight Champion Homes, according to John Tuyo, the company’s director of park model sales.
”We partnered with Sun Outdoors on three units in one part of our display. In another display, we partnered with Winterhaven RV,” Tuyo explained. “They were giving away a golf cart with every unit purchased at the show. And we actually had five units, so we sold the three units that were there plus two additional units that needed to be ordered for communities in the state of Florida. That was a tremendous few days based on weather and history. That’s a strong showing for Champion park models and cabins along with our partnership with Sun Outdoors.”
“And traffic was strong,” he added. “Weather was a very formidable adversary, but it worked out great. I didn’t think we had any issues with the weather. Our units were strong; they were heated, so that helped a bunch. At one point, I counted 24 potential buyers in a park model – that’s 399 square feet – at one time. And that would probably be the most we’ve ever had flowing through during a show.”
He noted that Champion was one of only two park model builders with displays at the SuperShow this year and the other builder, Gulf Coast Atlantic, brought just one model.
“It’s crazy how we went from eight or nine units last year to just six,” he said, since the park model business in Florida is solid. “We have permitting issues across the state post hurricanes, but generally the business is looking up for 2025. From all indications of what we’re seeing from our large corporate buyers, 2025 seems to be setting itself up for a strong fall during the buying season as long as we can continue to work through the permitting process with our retail partners.”
And the park model market, he said, while down from the COVID surge, is normalizing.
“Our market’s down as we know it from a partner model perspective overall for the country,” he said. “But it had to normalize itself pre- and post-covid and we’re at that point now, so inventories are getting to a manageable level and our capacity and our deliverability of the units is back to a normal zone also. So, today we’re generally eight to 10 weeks out, which is a workable timeframe. During COVID, everybody – including us – got out 10 months to 13 months and that’s really hard from a business perspective to put your numbers together and do what we want to do. All that is now normalized back to what is a workable level. Our retailers are loving it. The communities are loving it. We actually have two new communities in the state of Florida that are being built right now for RV resorts and that’s tremendous. And one of them will open this year.”
Ground has already been broken on what Tuyo described as a “huge project” and he’s hoping to have units there in time for the fall selling season. He would identify the location only as south central Florida.
On the product side, Tuyo said, Champion exhibited an all-new unit at the Glamping Expo in Aurora, Colo., in October.
“We presented a product (an Athens Park “Sonoran” model) that was a two-story rear porch observation deck along with a front porch that was extremely well-received in the marketplace,” he said. “It’s more for your mountainous areas or your beach resorts so that you can have a visual of the landscape of your community from an 18-foot by 10-foot observation deck above your lower porch.
“That was spectacular,” he added. “The other item we’re working on now is for the resort and hospitality industry,” he continued. “We’re working on a new version of an A-frame, a mostly glass model that will put us in a position as a company to continue and be in the forefront of what’s happening in certain geographic areas – whether you’re at the beach or you’re in the mountains or in the desert – it just brings the outdoors in with the amount windows and the amount of light that’s coming through.”
Tuyo said that model – just now headed for prototyping – will be unveiled at the Campground Solutions Summit West in Reno, Nev., an all-new conference for park owners and operators planned April 1-4.
The photos below provide various views of the new Athens Park Sonoran.
