RV Weekly

Ever heard the phrase, “The show must go on?” Is that entirely true? Reducing the cost to do business is a top priority for everybody in the RV supply chain these days. I suspect this will be especially evident in the coming show season. The RV Aftermarket Association had its annual executive conference last week and it should come as no surprise that attendance was slightly down. Surprisingly, it was down a measly 7 percent.

The National RV Dealers Association Convention/Expo is just around the corner and preliminary numbers indicate that attendance is currently down 20 percent, modeling the industry as a whole. Those numbers could change as the date gets closer but it will still be down slightly.

It seems that travel costs are closely being scrutinized by not only suppliers and manufacturers but dealers also. Distributors are faced with a tough choice in the coming year –Will suppliers and dealers spend the money to come to their shows in 2009, or will they decide it is cost prohibitive? Sure distributors pay for the dealers to come but there are always additional costs with traveling and leaving the dealership for any period of time.

Another question for distributors to consider is what if dealers come but don’t spend money at the show because they need to keep inventory carrying costs down? Generally aftermarket inventory is a fairly small percentage of a dealer’s overall exposure but dealers are cutting costs any way they can. It has been said many times that the aftermarket store and service department can carry a dealership’s entire fixed costs, but the same is true on the other side of the coin when the retail store has slow foot traffic.

Today I spoke with Andy Mullin, vice president of sales of Arrow Distributing regarding some of the rumors surrounding Arrow’s show. He confirmed that Arrow will not have a traditional show in 2009 but were trying something new. Mullin said dealers tell him they are hesitant to leave the dealership for three or four days to attend a distributor show.

Arrow decided that based on what the company’s customers wanted; Arrow would instead bring the show directly to the dealer’s lot. This would allow the parts and service managers who might not normally attend a distributor show the chance of seeing what new product options exist. All told, the distributor would only take up a 1/2–day to a full day of the dealer’s time and no travel expenses would be incurred.

Arrow will use six to eight trailers somewhere between 20 to 24-feet-in-length chuck full of new products for dealers to review. Mullin says the company will make appointments for the trailers to visit and all of the special pricing that dealers would normally see at the show will be offered during the visit. While this approach may be new, it seems to put the supplier and dealer’s best interests to the forefront.

Rumors also abound regarding Coast Distribution and whether they will have a show in 2009. In speaking with Dave Berger, executive vice president of Coast, he said Coast will be finalizing show decisions in early September and the company would have no comment until it’s plans are finalized.

NTP Distributing and StagParkway have both committed to a distributor show in 2009.

The buzz with some of the smaller regional distributors has been that they might entertain hosting one large distributor show together in a central location to cut costs and reduce the number of trips dealers must take to attend the 20-plus distributor shows across the country. There is some speculation as to whether distributors could pull off a single aftermarket show because it would take a ton of cooperation between competitors. I think both suppliers and dealers would welcome a change to lower the costs of traveling. Having an assortment of supplier price sheets in each booth might prove problematic though. There is also the risk of reducing parts/accessories to the lowest common denominator, essentially making them a commodity.

What do you think? Is it time for the aftermarket to have its own show? Do the costs for suppliers to attend all the distributor shows make sense with the present state of the U.S. economy? What about dealers? How many shows will you attend this year? Does the industry have too many shows? Are the shows meeting your needs and making it easy for you to do business?