RV Weekly

Most people don’t think life exists at 7 a.m. in Las Vegas, but it does. Early Wednesday morning a handful of dedicated RVDA members gathered for the Women Leaders in the RV Industry breakfast forum.

The forum featured speakers Debbie Brunoforte, Ellen Kietzmann and Fran Van Pelt. The forum began with an introduction from Van Pelt. She spent the first twenty minutes of the breakfast discussing topics such as: how to communicate effectively, how men and women view conflict differently and how to deal with different personality types.

After Van Pelt, the forum broke out into two sections. Brunoforte headed a discussion on achievement and how to slightly change your daily life to accomplish personal and professional goals while Kietzmann lead a presentation on self-confidence.

The mostly female audience was thrilled with the overall presentation from all three speakers. Phyllis Learn, from Ontario, Canada, described the breakfast as, “Excellent and very enjoyable.”

The forum will be followed up with a networking happy hour wine tasting Wednesday evening beginning at 5 p.m. at the Rio Wine Seller.

Las Vegas has a new act. Dr. Lowell Catlett, one of RVDA’s keynote speakers, spoke to RVDA members at the opening general session Tuesday afternoon about the economy and its roll in relation to the RV industry.

Catlett’s speech was based around the idea that the American and Canadian economies are OK despite recent activities on Wall Street. Quoting Thomas Jefferson, Catlett explained that when it comes to the economy, “Read, but for God’s sake, don’t read newspapers.”

Using no PowerPoint presentation, Catlett kept the audience laughing for an hour and a half with personal stories and physical comedy.

The main message of his speech was that despite fuel prices, and other economic difficulties, the RV industry need to learn how to sell people their dreams.

Watch our a five minute video of Dr. Catlett’s RVDA keynote speech below.

I’ve heard a number of rumors concerning Casper, Wy. - based Teton Homes and that it is closing its RV division. According to the Casper Star Tribune newspaper that serves the company’s local area, Teton customers are being told by the company that it is out of the RV business. Read about it here.

The newspaper reports that the Massachusetts-based investment firm who owns a majority share of Teton Homes denys the company is shutting down.
A Casper dealer, Ray Stalkup of Stalkup’s RV Superstore says many of the Teton employees have contacted him looking to give him information and also to inquire about possible jobs.

Stalkup says Teton has lain off its warranty service department employees and that warranties on the company’s products are now void. He also says Teton laid off its dealer reps, sales coordinator and mechanical designer/engineer among others. Teton says it hasn’t laid anyone off when I recently called the company.

Stalkup says the company owes him an estimated $65,000 in rebates and he doubts he will ever see it. Other dealers may be in the same situation according to Stalkup.
I’ve personally have called Teton Homes numerous times and left messages with Tom Kim, who is reportedly now in charge of the company, but have not had any return phone calls.

One Teton employee who wished to remain anonymous confirmed that the company has received a “letter of intent to foreclose from Zion National Bank based out of Salt Lake City. He said that a rumor that the company will venture into producing oil field skid mounts is untrue, if a buyer is not found for that segment of the company’s business.

“I have Teton employees calling me. These people are standing in my office so when they tell the newspapers and journalists that they haven’t laid anybody off. It’s just not true,” Stalkup said. “I just wish they would be honest with us.”

I did briefly speak with minority interest holder, Tony Ingram, who told me that the company is in the middle of restructuring and that it will be a couple of weeks before Teton can respond.

I’m sure Tom Kim has a lot on his mind but my experience, if you want answers, he’s not going to return your call. Dealers and RV customers may be out of luck when it comes to parts and warranty. So I guess we’ll tag the company as “M.I.A.” until further notice but most likely, it’s closing its doors.

Each day the staff of RVTD will broadcast events from the Rio in Las Vegas. 

What better way to keep our readers informed on what is happing and to allow them instant feedback to the industry than to post show happenings directly from the trade show each day. Whether you are attending the show or not, you can hear  about the events that make up the show, plus post your comments.

 Be sure to check back each day to stay abreast of what the RVTD staff considers ”blog worthy” from RVDA, Las Vegas, 2008, and add your own thoughts and observations.