Dealer-to-Dealer RV Wholesale Website Platform Debuts – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
For years, Joshua Van Valkenburg wished a smartphone-friendly website existed that would allow him to easily buy and sell wholesale used inventory with his fellow RV dealers without ever having to leave his sales lot.
More recently, he decided that if it was ever going to become a reality, he would need to develop it himself. So, after spending about a year working with a close group of dealer friends and associates on the project, including three months of beta testing, he recently launched the website, DealerBackStock.com, which he is touting with the tagline “RV wholesale made easy.”
“We’ve seen a significant need to communicate wholesale inventory easily from one dealer to the next,” said Van Valkenburg, owner of Landon’s RV, a Mesa, Arizona-based dealership that primarily retails high-end fifth wheels. “It doesn’t matter how small or large an operation you have, when it comes to procuring inventory or selling off inventory, there is a gap in the marketplace for a tool like this.”
Currently, there aren’t a lot of good alternatives for dealers wanting to acquire or dispose of used inventory, according to Van Valkenburg. Using auction houses or calling other dealers looking for inventory to buy or sell can be a time-consuming process that doesn’t have any guarantee of success, he noted.
With DealerBackStock.com, Van Valkenburg said dealers simply sign up on the website to gain access. Once they are verified by website staff, they can access exclusive dealer-to-dealer wholesale inventory on the website, allowing them to buy and sell RVs nationally. They also can sign up to receive emails or text notifications for listings tailored to their dealership’s specific buying preferences.
“This is designed to be direct dealer-to-dealer, with no middleman,” Van Valkenburg said. “We’re not playing the broker. Everybody has their own dashboard, their own control and their own listings.”
The website had a soft launch about two weeks ago. In that time, about two dozen dealers, many of them dealer friends and acquaintances, have signed up on the website, and about a dozen RVs have been listed. More importantly, simply by word of mouth, the website is attracting a lot of buzz from dealers nationwide, including some of the largest dealer groups, according to Van Valkenburg.
“It’s been a surprise how much response we’ve gotten from dealers across the country, including conversations with big enterprise dealers,” he said.
For now, during continued beta testing, buying and selling on the website is free of charge. If the website becomes as successful as Van Valkenburg said he believes it will be—potentially drawing in thousands of RVs and hundreds or even thousands of dealers—the business could transition to a low-cost subscription-based model.
“We’ve been receiving daily inquiries already and we haven’t even begun to really market the website yet,” Van Valkenburg said. “We are pushing really hard to get things in place (and) if we can do that I would say we could get 300 to 500 dealers in the next 60 to 90 days. … I don’t see that as being an unrealistic expectation.”
