In February 2009, the association initiated its “Aftermarket NOW” outreach campaign to provide the RV dealership community with additional tools and support for improving their aftermarket sales. In a teleconference meeting with, Karl J. Etshied, Executive Director RVAA, Piar Adams of Carefree of Colorado, Aaron Engberg of Winegard Company, Kevin Phillips of Thetford Corp. and RV Trade Digest asked how we could be an integral part of the campaign and help place our resources to use for the continued education and prosperity of the RV industry. By stepping up to the plate I feel that we can help supply a vital connection and conduit to the RV industry. RV Trade Digest has a history of serving the RV dealers with RVAA through our Aftermarket Success program. By continuing to partner with RVAA’s Aftermarket Now program we can help effect vital change in the industry that will pay off for the entire industry, not only NOW, but carrying on in the long term.

The RVAA Education Committee, chaired by Aaron Engberg and Kevin Phillips will oversee the campaign in presenting dealers with tangible tips and education to improve the aftermarket aspects of their operations.

Look for more information to appear on RVAA’s site, www.rvaftermarket.org and in RV Trade Digest’s print publication and our various interactive resources as well. NOW is time for change and information to ensure our customers will continue to return to the RV dealership that can provide the best that our industry has to offer. The answer is Aftermarket.

Colin Iwasa of Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A. Power Equipment Division stated:

• “In 2008 Yamaha Corp. saw generator retail sales shift from the RV channel to the motorsports channel.

• The end user customer did not change. The end user customer remains RV/camping customer.

• In mid-2008 RV dealers started reducing inventory as sales and floor traffic slowed.

• Magazine and distributor ads were successful in driving customers to the RV store but customers were not able to find what they wanted because dealers reduced their inventory. The customer then went to the Yamaha motorsports dealer and often found the generator they wanted.

• Customers were more likely to find what they wanted because the motorsports dealer had it in stock.”

So, when is enough, enough? With rolling stock sales down, many dealers are reporting that repairs, accessory sales and add-ons are beginning to rebound. However, are we actually losing sales because we don’t or are unable to have adequate stock?

Where do we place our resources to be sure that we can take advantage of every opportunity?

We don’t want to lose RV accessory sales to other markets. Often when the consumer finds another supply channel they could drift away from us. It’s natural for us all to go where we can get the best service. We need to make sure that time and again it is the RV dealer. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this timely matter.

For 2009 we have slightly changed the number of issues of RV Trade Digest in 2009 to seven. January/February, March/April, May, June/July, August/September, October and November/December. We have carefully chosen issues and time frames that will provide the maximum coverage at the proper times. We firmly believe that this is the right move for 2009 and this will allow us to better serve the industry through sound fiscal responsibility.

Though we are right-sizing our print issues, we remain committed to providing more information through our interactive delivery system. This will help ensure that we maintain our high level of presenting timely and pertinent information on and to the RV industry.

Point of fact, Jackie and I will be working closely together to deliver more information, services and articles throughout the year utilizing both of our media systems. As we continue this voyage through somewhat uncharted waters, please keep us informed of your thoughts and also please pass along any suggestions for industry coverage that you feel will help provide value to your workday.

And, be sure to check out the redesign of both the magazine and our Web site in February.

The Blue Moon RV lot is enclosed with a fence and Simmons had locked the gate the first couple of nights Sorrell had stayed, but decided not to lock the gate that night in case the customer had to run to the grocery store.

“I went out last night and closed the gate, it was dark and I thought, ‘Ahhh, he may need to go to the grocery store. I’m just going to leave it unlocked in case he needs to go somewhere. I was just being nice,’ Simmons says. ‘Today we were going to work out all the financing.”

Blue Moon does not require a deposit or down payment from its customers prior to repair. Its policy is they do the work and then the customer pays for it, according to Simmons.

Sorrell did leave a note stating he would return in two weeks and left a forwarding address to send the repair bill to. Simmons says calls to the customer’s cell phone go unanswered and the e-mail address the customer gave is invalid.

When filling out the police report, the police officer reportedly said, “Man, he is gone.”

Simmons wants other dealers to beware in case this gentleman attempts to get repairs at their facility. He suggests immediately calling the authorities and asks that if dealers encounter Mr. Sorrell, they contact Simmons on his cell phone at 888-800-5050.

This story presents an interesting question: “Is it legal for dealers to lock customers onto their lots to prevent this sort of thing from happening again? If not, how do dealers ensure they will be paid for repairs and customers don’t skip out?

If you have suggestions or comments for Mr. Simmons or would like to discuss your your dealership prevents this time of thing from happening, please share your comments below.

The RV associations are also actively trying to address the credit crisis. The Recreational Vehicle Industry Association (RVIA) and Recreational Vehicle Dealers Association (RVDA) have been working at the federal level on several fronts.

Richard Coon, president of RVIA said in a recent letter to members, “Staff, in conjunction with our government affairs consultants, member companies, and stakeholders in the recreation industry, has explored various programs and legislative/regulatory initiatives the association could undertake to lessen the current economic crisis for RVIA members. Of the identified possibilities, three specific actions have been selected for immediate legislative/regulatory action.”

Coon’s list included the following:

• First, credit markets are not functioning normally, dampening vehicle sales from a shrinking pool of willing buyers. The Treasury Department recently announced plans to use the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to infuse capital into specialty lenders and nonbank institutions to improve the availability of car loans, student loans, and credit card loans. RVIA has asked the Treasury to include RV consumer and dealer floor plan loans in this liquidity facility.

• Second, part of a stimulus plan to be considered next year permits the deduction of sales and excise taxes for new car purchases. RVIA has begun to ask Congress that this proposal be modified to include RV purchases as well, or alternatively, request an incentive for the purchase of diesel motorhomes that operate on B5 and/or B20 biodiesel.

• Third, to help ensure the availability of credit, the U.S. Treasury Department should require that banks and nonbank financial concerns receiving TARP funds use this newfound liquidity to actually make consumer and business loans available. Action is needed, perhaps stronger than mere urging, to require that a portion of the remaining TARP funds be used for consumer and business loans. Economic recovery depends heavily on a rebound in consumer confidence, and consumers who are credit worthy and that encounter barriers to financing purchases will make this rebound more difficult.

A new Web site www.rvact.org has been set up to help industry members determine who they should contact in the federal government to encourage enacting these initiatives.

Richard Coon said in his letter, “Your assistance in supporting passage of the above three legislative/regulatory proposals is requested. Please contact your U.S. Congress members today by going to www.rvact.org and sending an e-mail letter. Once at the site, simply input your zip code and the names and e-mail addresses of your Congressional delegation will appear along with a sample letter which should be customized with your company-specific information. The website sends your letters directly to your members of Congress.” You can read Coon’s entire letter on everything RVIA is doing to improve the credit crisis here.

According to RVDA’s website RVDA has joined more than 75 Net Operating Loss Coalition partners to support federal legislation that would extend the net operating loss (NOL) period for small businesses. RVDA says an extended NOL carry back period is a proven economic stimulus measure, one that can deliver vital help to our nation’s struggling economy. Because capital to continue operations (payroll, debt payments, etc.) is extremely tight, if available at all, the need to transform a future tax benefit into cash today is critical to maintain otherwise viable businesses. Extending the carry back period to five years would allow companies to carry back losses to earlier profitable years.

RVDA has some comprehensive information on their Web site under the “RVDA Lender’s Toolbox link. You can access that by going here. At the site you will find advice on how to approach lenders, questions you should ask before approaching lenders and lists of lending institutions and services. This site is definitely looking into before you approach a bank for retail or flooring options.

Additionally RVIA and RVDA put together a list of lending institutions that currently offer prime lending to the auto industry that might be sources for RV retail lending. Phil Ingrassia, vice president of communications says that there are a number of dealers who have had success in securing lending from local institutions.

The question I have for bloggers today is what more can the associations and us as business owners do to do our part to overcome the credit crisis? Let’s brainstorm…

Cumulatively, through November, total shipments are down 30.1 percent from 2008. When I compare the two graphs from 2007 and 2008, the trends pace very similar with a couple big hits in March and October. If the annual pacing trend continues, the good news is we should begin to see things on the rise now that January is upon us and the dealer shows begin. The big question is whether dealers are able and willing to stock up at the beginning of the year for their show season.

Some dealers are struggling to obtain flooring and cash flow is at an all-time low. Dealers may not be able to order from manufacturers in early 2009. Dealers who do have the cash flow to order may not have the confidence to part with what is essentially their safety net.

In other recent news, The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index showed that consumer confidence hit an all-time low in December. On a whim, I checked to see how the RV shipments graph compared to the graph on consumer confidence. Check out the consumer confidence press release and graph here.

I wanted to see if there was any correlation between consumer confidence and RV shipments. To truly compare the two, you would have to stagger back the consumer confidence data a couple months to allow enough time for any uptick in consumer confidence to translate into dealers restocking units with replacement orders.

Interestingly enough, when examining the two graphs, I didn’t really see any obvious correlation. With all the factors that impact these two, it probably was a little optimistic to think there might have been a pattern there. Even so, I still don’t believe that consumer confidence isn’t directly related to how our industry is doing right now. But maybe this does tell us that available consumer financing is the single most important factor hurting us. What do you think? Is that bigger than consumer confidence?

Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center said, “The further erosion of the Consumer Confidence Index™ reflects the rapid and steep deterioration of economic conditions that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2008. The Present Situation Index is now close to levels last seen in the months following the 1990-91 recession, but is not as low as levels reached during the 1981-82 recession. Declines in the Expectations Index appear to be moderating, but this index continues to hover at historical lows. Both sub-indexes bear careful watching over the next several months to see if they are starting to show signs of approaching a bottom. In the meantime, however, the overall economic outlook remains quite dismal for the first half of 2009, and only a modest recovery is expected in the second half.”

So the questions remain, will we see an uptick in RV sales in 1st quarter of 2009 like we’ve seen in previous years? Once Obama takes office will consumer confidence rise and people begin spending money again? Have we hit the bottom?

Well, the bleeding isn’t over yet. After many hard fought political battles, we have just approved bailing out the auto industry. We’ve agreed to give $17.4 billion to Chrysler and GMC, and they have three months to come up with a viable business plan. Personally, I’ve never heard of it working that way: “We agree to give you huge sums of money and we want you to come back in three months and tell us how you spent it to become better.” I don’t really see that as a workable plan.

The big question is, should we be bailing out the auto industry? People have strong feelings on both sides. If we don’t, it could lead to Armageddon. If we do, it may just be staving off the inevitable and may be a complete waste of money.

Personally, I’m still stinging a little bit over how the banks and various financial institutions have handled their bailout. A news story today on MSN.com revealed that $1.6 billion of that money went directly into bank executive’s pockets. Some of you may recall a story about AGI sending its employees to a spa and golf outing to the tune of $440,000, less than a week after receiving an $85 billion loan from the government. Read about that here. Another story broken by the Associated Press today revealed that most of the companies that benefited from the bailout either cannot account for, or are unwilling to account for where all that money went. Read that story here.

From my perspective covering the RV industry, I can tell you where it didn’t go – it didn’t open up funds to finance flooring for dealers, and it wasn’t made available for RV consumers to purchase new RVs. In fact we’ve seen many of the financial institutions who serve the RV industry, either pull back, or remove themselves from our industry.

This leads us to the auto bailout. I think we have seen how well the government does in ensuring that taxpayer’s money is well spent. There are a host of rules the auto industry will now face that the financial institutions didn’t, but the government’s track record isn’t very good. It appears that a number of dealerships will have to close for these two companies to become viable. Those dealerships have contracts that will be violated. This means that large sums of our taxpayer’s money will be paid to them to reconcile and part ways.

The RV industry doesn’t always work this way. We have seen a number of RV manufacturers go out of business and RV dealers completely lost out. They are stuck with inventory that has no warranty and finding replacement parts is questionable. Some dealers even now are owed large sums of money for warranty repairs they did in good faith that they will never be compensated for. Thousands of people have lost their jobs in our industry and we haven’t seen any bailout. This makes it hard to empathize with the auto industry.

So, what do you think? Does the government even have the ability to effectively bring the auto manufacturers into viability? Should we bail on or bail out the auto industry? Does this have any implications to our industry, often compared to the automobile industry? Is this issue impacting your decision, as a dealer, as to which RV manufacturers you are willing to partner with?

I recently got the press release from RVIA stating that he contributed to our industry by going on a two-week vacation to Phoenix in an RV to see the Super Bowl and then wrote about it in his sports column located in the New York Post newspaper. To Mr. Kernan’s credit, when he wrote about his RV experiences, a whole bunch of consumers were exposed to how great the RV lifestyle is. Even so, I have to admit, him being the award recipient made me smile.

As the newest editor in the RV journalism community (I’ve only been covering the industry three years), I wondered why some of the other trade journalists who have been here many more years than I weren’t chosen for the award. In talking with Greg Gerber at RV Industry News, I learned that RVIA stopped giving the award to trade journalists back in the 2000-2001 timeframe. The award goes to consumer journalists who have done an exceptional job highlighting the joys of RVing. This kind of makes sense since because it’s a pretty good public relations move for our industry.

Knowing the reasoning for choosing a journalist outside the industry, I’d like to throw out an alternative idea. If we look at the various industry publications, I think any one of my competitor magazine editors are well deserving of the award. They spend all day, five days a week, keeping the industry informed, trying to improve how members of the industry work together, how businesses communicate, in addition to making every effort to help RV businesses be more profitable. The RV trade editors have been doing this for years.

Melissa Broadus, the editor of the RV Dealer Association’s trade magazine, RV Executive, has been serving the industry for six years and has made a tremendous impact by helping dealers share ideas on how to be more successful. She has worked diligently to provide valuable training information to dealers, as well as keep dealers abreast of trends that may impact them through her publication. Melissa would be an excellent candidate for this award.

Sherman Goldburg, the publisher of RV Business by Affinity Group has served the industry for 23 years. Sherman actually received the award back in 1993. Sherman’s more recent accomplishments include creating this year’s Top 50 Dealer Awards which took place in September at RVDA. Offering dealers an award to acknowledge the best and brightest is great idea. Sherman would also be an excellent candidate for the award.

Greg Gerber, editor of RV Industry News has served the industry for eight years. Greg, introduced industry related blogs to the RV community. Many bloggers now participate discussing topics (some controversial), adding ideas and opinions to better our industry. This gave the RV community a voice and place to debate tough issues. For this, Greg would be an excellent candidate for the award.

Brad Worrell, the editor of RV PRO magazine has served the industry for four years. Brad worked to reveal how important the RV aftermarket is to our industry and how this segment is a viable profit center for dealerships. He relentlessly encouraged dealers to pay closer attention to the aftermarket segment of their business. For this, Brad would make an excellent choice for the award from RVIA.

So there you have it, a group of people who work day-in and day-out providing excellent journalistic content that is exclusively RV related. Everyone on the list has done this for years. Keep in mind that the list is not all-inclusive. There are a number of others that haven’t even been listed here. Don’t you think they deserve a nod of appreciation from the industry? I think the industry would suffer if they all decided to take an extended vacation, but hey if that is what it takes to get an award, I say send them to the Super Bowl.

40MPG.org and TheCLEAN.org are both organizations under CSI who lobby against global warming by encouraging cleaner emissions standards. The states with legislation that the auto industry is battling are California, Vermont, Rhode Island and New Mexico.

Pam Solo, 40MPG.org founder and CSI president says, “Just because Detroit is pleading once again for another bailout is no reason for Washington to give these companies a ‘free ride.’ If taxpayers are going to be put at risk by guaranteeing new loans, then any such new help should be conditioned on the U.S. car companies ending their campaign to frustrate state-level efforts to clean up car and light-truck emissions that cause global warming. Further, Congress should insist that every penny of the $25 billion in new loan guarantees that Detroit is seeking be targeted to building the cars of tomorrow, not the gas-guzzling dinosaurs of yesterday. Business as usual for Detroit is a bad investment without the incentives for Detroit to do what it seems it cannot do for itself.”

According to CSI, since the election, President-elect Obama plans to move swiftly to overturn a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denial of a waiver being sought by California that would allow the state to move ahead with its tougher vehicle emission standards.

A total of 15 states have adopted regulations requiring automobile manufacturers to reduce significantly the greenhouse gas emissions of their cars and light trucks. Under the uniform set of regulations adopted by these states, automobile manufacturers must reduce new vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent over 2002 levels. The reductions are phased in on model years 2009 through 2016.

The U.S. automobile industry has been waging a four-year legal battle against state emission standards. They prevailed upon the Bush EPA to deny California a Clean Air Act waiver in a decision that was contradicted by the analysis of EPA’s own staff. CSI says this denial will be reversed one way or another: California has sued EPA to obtain the waiver and, like other states, is faring well in court. President-Elect Obama also has promised to reverse the EPA waiver denial according to CSI.

My question for readers is, “Is this the time to put conditions on automakers to save their companies?” When one of our largest industries in the nation is over a barrel, do we stipulate any financial help they may get based major shifts in the products they produce just to accommodate a few states regulations? On the other side, are the current emission standards detrimental to our long term nation’s health and this is the perfect time for change? What would happen if the auto industry stood up to this type of regulation and said, ‘Hey, if you don’t want to drive our cars and trucks then we wont sell them in your state.” How do you think consumers would feel if they couldn’t buy a Ford 150, Dodge RAM or Chevy Silverado.

Ok, the long wait is over. Or is it better to say it’s the beginning. In countless budget meetings addressing what 2009 will bring, the question always asked has been, “Is the industry and the economy as a whole waiting for the uncertainty of the election to be over?”

I have spoken with RV dealers recently who expressed that the national consumer media outlets hurt us with slanted, negative coverage regarding purchasing large ticket items. And that no matter who you think would do a better job as president, the indecision of the election has made our consumers, to say the least, cautious. We also keep hearing that we are the first industry to suffer the pangs of a recession, but conversely, we are the first to rebound.

Looking to the future:

*We have a large buying event in less than one month.

* A new year approaching with continued challenges, and with that, opportunity.

* A chance to gain new buyers and marketshare.

My question is, what will our industry do now to take advantage of this time of optimism and opportunity? Do you have plans to add new lines to your rolling stock? Add new and profitable accessories to augment your existing lines.  Will you be lobbying to get new credit opportunities? Will you demand improved, greener and more economical products?

I don’t want to make this a commercial for RV Trade Digest and rvtradedigest.com, but we are gearing up for the future with new ideas to help the industry improve and stay better informed. But what I really would like to know, and have readers comment on, is what do you think we as an industry can do now to get back on track to success?