Priority RV Network’s 2024 Annual Meeting was ‘Best Ever’ – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
The Priority RV Network (PRVN), a 28-year-old independent RV dealer collective, held its best annual meeting to date last week (April 2-4) at the M Resort Spa Casino in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, according to PRVN’s leadership, having drawn about 185 dealer-members and 47 exhibiting suppliers to a busy session that included vendor meetings, board elections and an OEM panel featuring THOR Industries Inc. President & CEO Bob Martin, Grand Design RV President & CEO Don Clark and Forest River Inc. Group GM Doug Gaeddert.
Montana-based PRVN, comprised of 156 independent retail outlets, also handed out more than $4.5 million in rebate checks to its dealer-members at the Vegas meeting and facilitated a special finance-related session for PRVN members regarding today’s lending environment led by Florida-based Brown & Brown Dealer Services F&I Division President Shawn Moran.
“I believe we had the best meeting in our history,” said PRVN Chairman Michael Peay, president of Holiday World RV, a six-store dealership based in Katy, Texas. “I’ve heard from a few other dealers and other board members who agreed with that assessment. It ran smoothly. Our vendor presentations stayed on topic. They were concise and informative. We had great attendance with full participation and we had a great (OEM) panel discussion moderated by RVBusiness.
“And following that,” added Peay, “Shawn Moran’s presentation – a mini F&I school – gave the group a number of key insights for finance managers to improve their F&I immediately upon their return to their dealerships – helping dealers make sure they’re shipping deals to the right banks, structuring them right and getting the most out of their programs.”
That’s consistent with PRVN’s overall recent performance, according to Priority RV President Mike Regan, president of Buda, Texas-based Crestview RV with three central Texas outlets. “I think that 2023 was our third highest revenue year ever,” said Regan. “The key to that in my view is thatour dealers are utilizing the programs to maximize their revenues. Even in this down market, our dealers are participating and are electing to use the vendors that we do business with.
“We have programs with just about everything that we touch at a dealership,” he added, “whether it’s uniforms, internet, website hosting, the DMS systems as well as the banks and finance and insurance companies that we use and the parts and accessories business, just to name a few.”
Likewise, PRVN board member Andy Heck, president and co-owner of four-store Alpin Haus RV, Amsterdam, N.Y., also sees Priority’s programs as an antidote, so to speak, for retailers working through a marketplace that has shown early signs of a turnaround with four consecutive months of wholesale shipment gains.
“To echo what Mike just said, we’ve been educating the members on the programs in tough times,” said Heck. “Every dollar matters to dealerships and I think between our board members and Corey (retiring PRVN Executive Director Corey Ruzicka) and the vendors, it’s just really doubling down on how we maximize and utilize all the programs whereas in good times, you didn’t have to do great things to have a strong year. Right now, you have to really execute at all levels. That’s why we’re seeing so much success among all our programs.”
Added board member Ben Hirsch, COO of Campers Inn RV, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based owner-operator of 36 RV stores in 18 states:
“One of the interesting things is, as the board was reviewing last year’s performances, we saw that there was actually a lot of dealers who on a per-unit basis improved the programs that they used,” he noted. “Just piggybacking off what Andy (Heck) said, a lot of our dealers actually saw more financial gains on a per-unit basis this last year than they had previously. That was actually really good to see because in a tougher year, dealers need every dollar they can find. Priority RV is giving that to them.”
“To add to what Ben is saying, when you look at the wholesale shipments, I think last year at this time pretty much everybody from a dealer standpoint had their feet firmly on the brakes,” maintained PRVN Secretary Brian Wilkins, also president of seven-store Wilkins RV, headquartered in Bath, N.Y. “I think that was when the manufacturers were hitting the bottom. Now I think that’s just beginning to change, although the market is still tough. I think we’re still working through some pent-up demand from the Covid years.
“Ultimately, I think ’24 is going to be a lot of what ’23 was, and I guess I’m a little bit more hopeful that in ’25 we can start to see some incremental improvement.”
Suffice to say that while RVB plans to recap the OEM panel in the pages of its May/June print issue, there’s not enough room in this post-show coverage for much of that. But Martin, Clark and Gaeddert did cover an array of relevant topics in their relaxed and at-times humorous panel discussion in Las Vegas – topics having included everything from model year timing to September’s RV Open House to EV trends, the realities of a “margin compressed market” plus – in the first public confirmation of a widely circulating rumor – Grand Design’s upcoming plans to enter the Class C motorhome marketplace.
“Well, it was a secret before Bob (Martin) gave it up,” said Clark, half in jest, confirming Grand Design’s plans to roll out its first motorized products in the near future. “But yeah, yeah, it’s a tough market. And is it the right time? Is it ever the right time or is it ever the wrong time? I don’t know, but we’re going to do it the right way. We’re not going to rush product to the market. We’re going to enter it with different versions of Class Cs. And then there’s not enough van manufacturers out there yet. So we’ll probably, at some point in time do that (add a Class B) as well.
“But, yeah, we’re excited about it. It’s something that has been on our minds for a number of years and I think we’re doing it the right way as far as coming out with something different, unique and not just cloning what’s out there.”
