PMRV Market Remains Steady for Skyline Champion’s Tuyo – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
TAMPA, Fla. – The park model RV market for Skyline Champion is stable, according to the company’s newly-minted director of park models and cabins, John Tuyo, who replaced retired long-time PMRV industry veteran Dick Grymonprez.
“It’s not any stronger, but it’s not any weaker,” Tuyo said of the market. “We’ve been maintaining a 25% to 25.9% market share. The units are up – that’s park model units year-to-date – but our market share has stayed the same. What that’s telling the market is that there are more park model builders than there have been in the past, but that we’re still building the equal amount.”
Tuyo said Troy, Mich.-based Skyline Champion – with 47 manufacturing facilities and nearly 8,600 employees nationwide – will build just shy of 2,000 park model units this year and he hopes the company will be able to top $100 million next year, “as the industry is settling down post-hurricane.”
The market is at the point now, he pointed out, where orders and new products are being brought in as backlogged units have been sold and are moving forward through the market.
“So business is great right now,” he said from his company’s very busy display at the Florida RV SuperShow. “The market in park models alone is steady. As an industry we are up but, again, it’s because we’ve had a few more manufacturers get in. Generally, next year, all of us are looking for a little bit bigger year that we had this year.”
He characterized the campground and community business as “extremely strong” right now, but it’s within existing communities.
“What I mean by that is right now with the way interest rates are, to borrow money to build new communities, we’ve seen a little bit of stepping off the gas to find out what’s going to happen with interest rates,” he told RVBusiness, adding that developers may be holding off until after the election in November.
Tuyo started in the manufacturing business after college in 1993 as a wholesale rep and sales manager, holding numerous roles in what he jokingly referred to as “’Brand F’ as we called them from the past, which would be Fleetwood.”
After stints at a couple of other manufacturers, he owned his own retail store and worked on the financial side of the business before coming back to wholesale.
“So, I’ve completed the circle from wholesale, to retail, to finance and now back to wholesale again,” Tuyo said. “I’ve kind of crossed every ‘T’ and dotted all the ‘I’s — and now I’m heading up the park model business for Champion.”
