MC Fireside Chats – August 28th, 2024

This is MC Fireside Chats, a weekly show featuring conversations with thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and outdoor hospitality experts who share their insights to help your business succeed. Hosted by Brian Searl, the founder and CEO of Insider Perks, empowered by insights from Modern Campground, the most innovative news source in the industry.

Brian Searl:

Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be here for our fourth week episode talking about the RV industry, outdoor rec, all kinds of cool things like that. Welcoming back one of our special guests, Eleanor is here. The rest of our special guests are missing in action and clearly not as devoted as Eleanor is to this entire cause here. No Phil’s gonna be missing. Hopefully Susan Carpenter will be able to join us a little bit later. But super excited to have three special guests, two of which have audio working. So hopefully we’ll get Aaron back here who now has disappeared from camera. But we’re excited to talk to him. Mark, it’s four o’clock in the morning in Australia. Thanks for joining us, Mark. We’re gonna go around and have everybody introducing themselves in a second. And then Andrea or Andrea, which one? Andrea. Andrea, okay. Is gonna talk to us about boating and some of the things that are happening in her industry from an outdoor recreation area. Hopefully I won’t be blurred throughout the whole show, but maybe that’s better for our audience, like we talked about before. So I really need to build a studio here, Eleanor. Can the RVDA fund that for me? Not this year. All right, not this year, but maybe next. Okay. I like the not this year. That’s interesting. Okay. So Eleanor, you want to introduce yourself first? Talk a little bit about who you are.

Eleanore Hamm:

Sure. My name is Eleanor Hamm. I’m president of the RV Dealers Association of Canada, and we’re federal and regional associations across Canada. We represent the RV dealers from B.C. all the way to Atlantic Canada. A lot of the things that our association looks at are topics that are national in scope So, you know, you’d have an RVDNBC that would look at provincial issues, but we work closely with the federal government. Our strategic goals basically fall into education and training, government relations, industry intelligence, which is statistics and marketing, as well as member benefits. We represent almost 400 dealers across the country. The majority of RV dealers are members of our association.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Well, thank you for being here as always, Eleanor. Mark, you want to go next?

Mark Fawcett:

Yeah. Hi, I’m Mark from Earth Cruiser in Australia. We manufacture high-end four-wheel drive off-road motorhomes that are built for off-grid. We manufacture in one area here, but we manufacture the entire vehicle from fiberglass right through to final assembly, manufacturing many of the parts in-house. Very little do we go outside for. Yeah, that’s us.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Thanks for being here, Mike. I’m excited to learn more about what you guys have to offer. Andrea.

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Hi, I’m Andrea Parentazzi with the Recreational Boating Association of Washington, or ARBA for short. I sit on the board as VP of Government Affairs, transitioned from our administration position a couple of years ago. So we are focused on the state of Washington to, sorry, represent all recreational boaters. of which there’s about 250,000 registered in the state right now. So we represent them for state issues, regional, local, even get involved in some federal things related to how they vote in the state of Washington, what’s accessible to them, how their tax dollars are used and to advocate, you know, proactively on things that voters would want or reactively on things that maybe we feel aren’t the best for recreational boaters in our state. So we’re kind of self-titled the Voice of Boaters in Olympia, and so represent everybody to make sure they get to boat the way they want and have access to the waters that they want to be in.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Well, thank you for being here. We’ll let Aaron introduce himself if he can, if he gets back on here in a second for now, we’ll just kind of skip over him and hope he gets his mic issues and things like that fixed. So let’s start with boating, right? Because this is an interesting topic. We never really discussed this on the show before, because for all the people who watched us, right, we’re more focused on camping and RVing and outdoor hospitality and obviously the RV industry and things like that, right? trying to make a concerted effort more to tie some of this stuff together, because it is all related. You see people who have RVs pulling into campgrounds who are towing their boats behind them or dropping them off at a marina nearby, or wanting to stay at an RV park that’s closer to a lake that has a boat ramp versus the other side or farther away, right? So I think all of this has synergy. We were talking about this briefly before the show, just about the boating, like not everybody who goes boating is going to go RVing, not everybody who goes RVing is going to go boating, but there’s a lot of synergy and cross development kind of between the industry and love of outdoors, right? Is that fair? And I think what most interests me first is kind of just exploring a little bit more about your role, because I don’t think, you know, when I came into the campground industry, it was hard for me to kind of And it’s silly when you look at, like, Eleanor’s been doing this for so many years, right? But it was kind of hard for me to believe there’s an organization that’s dedicated to standing up for all the rights of people for the dealers in Eleanor’s case, right? And like, obviously, like, now that you think about it, and you learn about it, like, that’s a no brainer that that is necessary, and it needs to be there, right? So what do you do for the voters? Because I assume it’s more complex than the voters just coming to you and complaining they can’t, like, have open containers, and then you legislate, lobby for that, right?

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Yeah. Very true. So, in my understanding, ARBA, in the state of Washington, is really only one of three in the United States. So there’s a much larger representation in California, RBCA, I think it is, Recreation Voters of Canada. I’m sorry, Canada. Canada on the brain. California. And I believe there’s one in Maine or Vermont. But outside of that, we’re not aware of any big organizations like this. So we We take our work pretty seriously. We’re a 60-year-old organization, started in the 1950s. There was a bunch of passionate boaters that loved going to a place called Susha Island. And you can see British Columbia from Susha Island. It’s just an amazing place. You can only get there by water. And they were going to sell part of it to private developers so nobody could go there unless they owned a cabin. So this group of passionate boaters got together, raised $50,000. a lot of money back then and bought it and donated it to the state of Washington to keep it as a marine park in perpetuity. So everybody would have access to it. So that’s kind of how Arbos started with boaters that felt like, you know, we pay taxes every year to put a little tab on our boat and they wanted influence over how that, you know, boater generated money was spent in the state. So fast forward to now, um, We feel like we represent with advocacy how those tax dollars are spent, how much taxes they’re getting from boaters. As a little side note, in the state of Washington, recreational boaters are the only vehicle that pays an annual percentage-based excise tax. And the state determines how much your boat is worth. RVs don’t pay the same. Airplanes don’t pay the same. So in our state, boaters are a little bit more passionate because they know they’re the only ones, right, that pay this money. So we want to make sure if there’s marinas and marine parks that they remain. We don’t want anything to go out of business because in the state of Washington, and maybe United States and Canada might be the same, they’re not building any new marinas anymore from an ecological perspective. That’s just impossible.

Brian Searl:

Aaron, your little audio has been there. OK. I don’t want to give you a hard time the whole time, Andrea, but I just want to ask about the specific tax thing real quick. Sure. Sorry about that. Is it because Eleanor is better at lobbying than you, that you guys have to pay the taxes?

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Years ago, there was a person who got into office in the state of Washington that had this grandiose plan of having everybody pay $20 for a car tab. And as he went through and started reworking those tax laws, things got a little out of control and everybody got theirs reduced with the exception of voters. And everybody knows once a tax is in place, it’s really hard to repeal it. So what we’ve done right now with those taxes, and I should have looked this number up before I joined, I wanna say it’s, let’s call it five to 6 million a year from voters We have allocated over 30% of those collected taxes to voting programs. Prior to Arbaugh’s involvement, those were just going into the general fund in our state, could be spent on anything. So we’ve had some success and we continue to chip away at that actually in the upcoming legislative session which starts in January. We’ll be working on other plans to get more of that money allocated to voters.

Brian Searl:

So what are some of the priorities like that you’re working on now from a voting perspective? I mean, for, for those of us that come out from outside the industry, like I’ve been on boats, I know people who own boats, right. But I haven’t thought about the issues that are facing voters. What are those?

Andrea Pierantozzi:

So, um, number one, I’d say would be equitable treatment in the tax laws, which we just kind of talked about. So we’re always watching to make sure they don’t want to increase those taxes. So that’s the first protective measure. Outside of that, I guess I’d put regulations in that. There was a potential regulation coming our way a couple of years ago where essentially before you got on your boat, you would have to have a life jacket on and have that on during your entire boat ride. Now that may make sense as I say it out loud, right?

Aaron Pfadt:

But why do you need to regulate that?

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Yeah. So there’s like a civil liberty safety balance there that we, just to make sure that there sometimes are unintended consequences to rules that come out of our state capital, Olympia, maybe everybody’s state or provincial capital. And so we just want to make sure we’re that voice in Olympia. Unintended consequences is usually how we start the conversation. If nobody’s going to enforce it, why would you want to put something like that out there and distract from things? Because it’s good VR. Yeah, right. There you go. Outside of that, the paper cuts from the legislative side, it’s really access to boating grounds and services. So for example, BC has amazing provincial parks. We have marine parks in Washington. We want more people to get access to those. Get outside and grow boating. So we watch when buoys are out of service for long periods of time and people bought their pass They go to Susha or any other marine park, and they can’t get access to a buoy because they’re out of service. So we kind of try to keep them on tabs of making sure they’re maintaining everything with those tax dollars, as well as just having access to other boating grounds, boat ramps. Of those 250,000 boats I said were registered in Washington, over 80% are trailerable, meaning that you would take them out of your backyard or a storage facility, go to a boat ramp and launch them in the water. That’s a lot of boats and that’s a lot of people that are keeping their recreational dollars in our state. So we want to make sure they have opportunities to spend that money.

Brian Searl:

I think this whole thing is fascinating and maybe not as many people who are watching the show are as big of a geek as me and like to dive into the weeds of things. But I think it’s just fascinating learning about how, how much effort goes into the simple things that so many people enjoy on a daily basis from your lobbying to Eleanor’s lobbying to everybody else, to Australia, to everywhere. Right. It’s fascinating. Like how many of these things would be more headaches or less headaches or not safe or unsafe. It wasn’t for organizations. Like, you don’t think about it, right? You just go out, and you enjoy the boat, and you don’t realize. Probably why you should have more members. And Eleanor should have, well, Eleanor’s got almost everybody, but more members. We need more than 400, Eleanor. But yeah, some of that stuff just fascinates me to learn about. So I think I’d be interested to learn it. And if any of you three have questions, I know we’ll get to you in a second. And Erin, I want to let you introduce yourself. Sorry, can’t see you yet. But I’m interested, if any of you three have questions, please feel free to pop in. Just because we haven’t talked about the boating industry, how did you guys fare over COVID? Did you see a surge in people, like we did in RV, who were trying to get outside and purchase boats? Or how did that impact you?

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Yeah, for boating, there was a huge surge in purchases of boats. We called it social distancing Puget Sound style. where you just jumped in your boat and took off, right? And went somewhere. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go to Canada for a while, but there were plenty of places in Washington to boat. That’s really coming down. It came down almost like a cliff. And I just saw the numbers a couple of weeks ago, and I think boat purchase numbers are coming back now to where they were in 2019. So pre-COVID. So big, big burst. You couldn’t find a marina slip anywhere in Washington. Then there was this cliff, I think, when folks realized that boats are expensive to maintain. And then it just wasn’t part of their lifestyle. Does this sound familiar, Eleanor, by the way?

Eleanore Hamm:

Yeah, it sounds very similar to our industry. We had the COVID bubble. And then, obviously, when things opened up, people could recreate in other ways, maybe go boating in the US and take planes. that we saw 2023 was very soft. I mean, we also had some availability issues in 2022 at the end of just the new product to our dealers. And we’re still soft, but we anticipate, you know, we think by 2025 things, the cycle will start to go back up.

Mark Fawcett:

Interesting. I think not only being the economy being a little soft, I think we also have the added difficulty that there’s a glut of both boats and RVs on the market where the purchases were sort of inflated through COVID. And now, as you said, you know, the maintenance and everything else starts to kick in and they want to sell it. And the problem is now we’ve got a soft market and we’ve got excess stock of secondhand vehicles or boats on the market. That’s what we’re seeing here anyway.

Eleanore Hamm:

Yeah.

Brian Searl:

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s fair to say that’s what we’ve kind of heard over here, right, as a narrative, Eleanor?

Eleanore Hamm:

Absolutely. I mean, there’s a lot of pre-owned product on the market, you know, whether it’s being sold at a dealership or privately. You know, people have decided either RVing wasn’t for them or, you know, they’ve tried it for a while and they want to go and do something else. So, you know, that’s definitely impacting new unit sales as well.

Aaron Pfadt:

Yeah, I’d like to jump in if you don’t mind again sorry I missed the entry introduce yourself please real quick and then yeah yeah I’m Aaron Fodd I’m the owner and founder of. off-highway van based in Salt Lake City. We’re a class B manufacturer, primarily building on Mercedes chassis. So all, you know, all van based RVs. And yeah, I started in 2016 prior to the COVID as a sort of a lifestyle hobby business, like a lot of van builders got into it. And So, you know, we rode through the COVID period where anybody who could build a van could sell something. And, you know, we’re seeing the same trends that both you, Mark, and Andrea, and the boating, and Owen are talking about. You know, the market is soft right now. And, you know, we talked about it maybe for us bottoming in December or so and I think it’s still kind of dropping through the summer and it’s kind of floating at the low point right now. We’re hoping it it kind of ramps back up and you know, and there is you know, the industry in class bees in particular. I think they’re down 40% or something like that year over year right now and we’re we’re beating that but we’re in a pretty specific little niche, you know, small volume manufacturer, you know, less than 100 units a year. But the softness in the market coupled with that inventory that you were talking about, Mark, is really the key to it. Our vans are in the 200 to 250 price range, and there’s just used stuff on the market that’s below 100 or floating around 100. It’s a compelling case for somebody who’s just getting into the RV space or specifically the Class B space.

Brian Searl:

Yeah, that makes sense. So tell us a little about you, what’s your company do? I mean, I know, but tell them, right?

Aaron Pfadt:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, we have our sort of our quick elevator pitches. We make three models of van, three floor plans in two different lengths. So we build models. We started as a full custom builder, like most small class B van builders did. but it’s not a particularly scalable business model. So we have been in a transition post COVID to a model based. And the differentiator for off highway van is that our sales are fully DTC. So we do not use a dealer network. Whereas a lot of my competitors that started similarly outside van and some of the others that are started small and have grown up, have really embraced the dealer network. We’re sticking with the D2C concept and it works for us and I think it’s, you know, the ceiling is still pretty high even in that because the ground has been laid by you know, manufacturers like Tesla, you know, really breaking the mold of big purchases, big dollar purchases going, you know, buy it, see it at a showroom potentially, and then have it delivered to your house. And certainly the outdoor industry is familiar with it. Bicycles, Canyon, and YT, and a bunch of those bike manufacturers have gone full DTC. And so that’s the model that we’re embracing, and we’re scaling and growing with it. And, you know, and then Our particular segment within the class B is sort of the higher end of things, you know, a Winnebago rebel is in the hundred and 80s storyteller hovers in the, you know, starting in the one 90s, up to the, you know, 240 range and we’re a little bit above. even storyteller in terms of where our product fits. So yeah, kind of our high-end niche seems to be good. We’re certainly up in 24. We’re up pretty significantly, 25, 30%, which compared to the trend of being down 40 is pretty significant. So our company’s doing well, we’re outperforming, but it’s a lot of work post-COVID. There’s just some hurdles.

Brian Searl:

So how did you get started? How did off-highway vans get started in the beginning? What problem were you trying to solve in the industry?

Aaron Pfadt:

Yeah. So my background is I do a lot of mountain biking, a lot of motocross riding. And so I spent a lot of time camping in the desert. I had a previous business and sold it and ended up with some time on my hands. And so it was practically living in the desert in the back of my suburban and riding my motorcycle with my dog and sometimes my wife. You run into a bunch of different solutions for being in the desert, being in the outdoors, and a friend of mine came to me and was like, hey, I know you’re an engineer and you’ve got this background. you know, would you build me a van? And so I jumped into that. And, you know, and I had obviously, you know, as an entrepreneur, longtime entrepreneur, I’d seen the, you know, the opportunity there. So I jumped in with a small team was set to, you know, engineer, which is a little different than most builders, you know, ended up being sort of more like custom home builders, things like finished carpenters, things like that, that could do the finishing work inside of a van. And I came back more from an automotive background. I was an automotive engineer for 10 years in Detroit. And so I bring some, you know, like professional level engineering into this, into the design. And, you know, and I kind of got lucky. I was in the right size, scalable position when COVID hit, and that allowed me to ramp up. I don’t know, made some okay decisions to not expand too fast and get out of control. And then post COVID had stuff in place to be able to survive the downturn and, you know, and reevaluate what the business looks like in the post COVID world. Yeah, it’s been very good. So yeah, engineer, enthusiast, outdoor enthusiast, and love the design aspect of it. I’m a designer at heart. My comfortable spot is to sit down in front of the CAT terminal and drop a new design or shake out a new floor plan and then order some parts. So I love it. And we’d all love our manufacturing right here in Salt Lake. It’s just a great city with a great manufacturing base. And yeah, we’re trucking along and looking to the future.

Brian Searl:

So if I’m a consumer, and this is kind of my last big question, and if anybody or other guests have questions for you, please feel free to ask. My last question, I think, is if I’m a consumer and I’m coming to you and I’m saying, like, we’ve talked about this glut on the market of a bunch of used vehicles. There’s a bunch of new vehicles. Obviously, the manufacturers are coming out with new models that are latest and greatest with technology, new floor plans and things like that, right? If I’m coming to you, I’m saying like, I’m not sure really what I want to buy. I’m looking at used vehicles. I’m looking at new vehicles. Why is off-highway vans the best? What makes you different?

Aaron Pfadt:

Our value proposition is really, we kind of call it internally the four W’s. Warranty is first. We offer the longest warranty. We offer a five-year warranty on our class B’s, and that’s pretty unique. And that is allowed because of our build quality, because of our designs, and our stability and production and manufacturing quality control, you know, my auto engineering background. lightweight, so the second W is weight. We use a lot of aluminum. I’ve built a lot of race cars, and I appreciate that. And the reality of Mercedes chassis is their gross vehicle weight rating is pretty low. And so a lot of these builders just throw everything in there, including the kitchen sink, right? And so that really pushes the boundary of the GVW of that. And so ours are about a thousand pounds lighter than a comparable model from any other manufacturer. And so that’s a thousand pounds more gear that you can haul. And so that’s number two. Number three is wait time. We are, I’ll call it a semi custom builder. So we use our, our three floor plans on two different lengths of chassis. And so you’re not a six to eight months lead time of a full custom builder. And so you can have a, configured build in two to four months from us. And you choose one of our floor plans, you pick the colors, you pick the fabric, you pick the, you know, some of the interior, you want to choose this particular seating feature or a different seating feature. And it’s built to your spec within that two to four month timeframe. So the long, the wait time isn’t there. And, you know, and then that’s the final W is what you want. And so it’s you get that customization with that short So those are our four value propositions. And then with the direct consumer, it gives you the ability to contact us from anywhere in the country, and you can fly in and visit us, or we’ll send the van to you when we’re done with it.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Mark, I think you’re in kind of a similar situation, right, with some of the things you manufacture?

Mark Fawcett:

Yeah, so we manufacture, as I said, four-wheel drive remote vehicles. And we manufacture from end to end. So we start off, obviously, with the design process. of about five in-house engineers. We are lightweight manufacturers. We’ve done that, well, I’ve done that all my career. We’ve been manufacturing Earth Cruisers for about, Earth Cruiser Australia has been around for 15 years. Just recently, we brought all of the composites in-house. So originally, the composite cell of the house unit was manufactured using a layout technique, which is pretty much standard across the industry. We now infuse everything where we actually put them into built moulds. We dry stack everything and we draw the resin through. Now, what that does is it creates an extremely strong panel or cell because we do them in complete units. And it’s also not only the strength, but lightweight. So it’s really important that we keep the weight down. As Aaron said, vehicles, we have to meet Australian standards and world standards for And so, therefore, everything and anything that goes onto our vehicles is weighed. We use lots of aluminium and lots of composites. In doing that, we are a very heavily based R&D company. Everything we do is how to build a better mousetrap, I guess. We look at everything and say, well, we could do that better or we can do that. A lot of times we’re just doing it by ourselves and people are copying us, which I guess most people say that’s nice. You know, it is hard work when you’re at the top end of the pile and you’re trying to stay there and you’ve got people, you know, nipping at all these things. And I don’t spend enough time, I guess, seeing what everybody else is doing. We’re just too busy doing our own stuff. We don’t do the same quantity that Aaron does. We do about 10 to 16 vehicles a year. Our pricing sits between 500 and 1.2 million a vehicle. And we build on platforms such as Iveco, which I don’t think the US has Iveco, Unimog, which is a Mercedes product, G Pro, which is a Mercedes product, Toyota Land Cruiser, which I’m sure you guys know. And then the Fuso is another vehicle. And we’re looking at a couple of other platforms right now. And from what we’ve experienced is we started off with a very, I suppose, tight envelope of what we were building, still very customizable. But we have seen that we’ve had to even more and more customise where Aaron’s pulled his into a maybe more scalable build. We’ve had to actually go the other way to maintain sales. And also, it’s the way we want to go. And if you want to keep attracting the right people, and I mean, it is hard to keep good engineers and good production guys. And pretty much everybody on our side is either qualified as a tradesperson or an engineer or of sorts. We don’t have production guys, just assembly people. Everybody has a trade. Everybody is either training to have a trade or engineering based. So to keep those guys focused and wanting to stay and come to work every day, you’ve always got to be attacking the hill. You’ve always got to be trying to find that new barrier to break. And our systems, every part of our vehicle has specific systems that various people, people in the organization are looking after. So our electrical system, they’re looking at that and making sure it is the best in the world, or world-class, let’s say. In our composites, the same thing. Suspension systems, and we work with some great, great people outside of the business as well, like Bill Steen for our suspension. And because our vehicles are manufactured to be put inside containers and shipped all over the world. Cause that’s, that’s how customers buy them in Australia. And then they would put them in a container and go anywhere in the world. You know, pre COVID we had 30% of our market traveling the world. COVID brought them all back. And I think we’ve got, we’ve probably got maybe, maybe 10% of back on the track. It’s really hurt, not necessarily our production side of our business, but our community side of our business. Our community side of our business is huge. We have some very active customers that really push home the family, the community family. And when I say that, it’s not to do with your own family, it’s to do with involving themselves with like-minded people. Our customers are extremely, I wouldn’t say anti-caravan park, but especially in Australia, we have so many places you can go, just like the US. but they are very much looking to disconnect to camp remote. I think you guys call it boondocking, I think over there, is that right? Where you basically disconnect off grid, no camp grounds. And that’s what’s really nice about our product is that they can just drive and drive until they’re ready. They find a nice place to stay and they just stop. In saying that, you know, everything in Australia is owned by somebody, even if it’s the Commonwealth, they’re owned. But going back to the actual vehicle itself, so we start off with a cab chassis. I think Aaron said he’s building on vans, so he’s fitting out internal vans. We actually build from a cab chassis to a module, and then we wire and suspension. We also manufacture chassis as well. So in other words, we get a cab chassis, we cut it, we extend it, we put a six by six under it. and we then manufacture the whole process. And that also requires all of the infrastructure to create a vehicle of that magnitude, because it’s huge when you’re actually building the entire vehicle, our paperwork, our systems, to be able to have a customer that has a fault somewhere in Australia. And it’s not like the US or Canada where you can just, well, it’s probably more like Canada, where these guys are 5,000 kilometres from the nearest health And it’s hard. So Elon, thank you, has created Starlink, which has made our job a lot easier.

Brian Searl:

I have one sitting over here. I just bought one, a mini, to go to Asia with.

Mark Fawcett:

We install them all the time. So we actually have modules. I’m up to, I think, our 25th incarnation of Starlink, because Elon keeps bringing out a new one, and we’re just using the new now, which is 12 volt. Thank you, Elon, for that. So small. Yeah. It’s unbelievable. But what that’s done for us is our customers will, and I say remote, we’re not talking about, you know, caravan parks, caravan parks, or fuel station to fuel station. We’re talking about our customers are creating or adventuring to no return points. In other words, they are calculating their fuel like an aeroplane. In other words, they know how far they can go before, if there’s a problem, they’re going to come back. It’s a lot more intense than the normal RV, let’s say. And in that, when they do break down in one of those parts, I mean, we’ve had to do air rescues, medical evacuations. We’ve had to fly mechanics in with helicopters. You know, we’re their team on the ground. So no matter what happens to that customer, we always encourage them to CC us in the problem. And even if they’ve got it in hand, if they at least let us know, we can maybe help as well. We have a team of people that are ready to help them, you know, getting a pill box of, you know, heart medicine out to someone in the desert because they’ve either run out, lost it, can’t find it, whatever. That’s what we do. And that can be anything from a clutch to a

Brian Searl:

Box of pills, you know, that would be a good YouTube show. Eleanor, you should consider this. Like, can you imagine like Eleanor just flying in on a chopper and rappelling down into the dealership that needs help?

Mark Fawcett:

I can tell you the last time we did it, we had to, we had no. Okay. So, so a gentleman’s blowing his clutch in the middle of the Simpson deserts. One of the more, well, it’s becoming less harsh now, but it is a very harsh environment and our trucks are always out there. So there’s 10 trucks out there. He’s blown a clutch. He’s got medical issues. We need to get him out of there. And the quickest, we couldn’t tow the truck out. It was too heavy across 1100 dunes. It’s just not possible. So we could get some mechanics out of Tasmania. So if you understand that, that’s about 3000 kilometers away from the Simpson desert. So we flew the mechanics from Tasmania up to Alice. We had clutch kits up there waiting. They got in a helicopter and from Alice, they flew out to the Simpson with the clutch kit. They couldn’t find 10 trucks. even though they’re in radio contact, they couldn’t find them. The helicopter was running out of fuel. They found three Land Cruisers with one person in each Land Cruiser, which meant, and there are only two seaters. The two guys out of the helicopter get out and say to the Land Cruiser, look, we know they’re around somewhere, we’re going to stay because the guy’s in trouble, whatever. They get into the Land Cruiser, the helicopter flies away, then the Land Cruiser spend the rest of the night trying to find the 10 trucks. They find the 10 trucks, change the clutch, And they all get out. So they’re the kind of things that we were involved in. It’s sometimes it sounds fun, but until Elon came along, we were doing this through radio relay. We were doing it through sat phones, which were pretty much useless. And $12 a minute each way was just ridiculous, especially with the condition that the signal or the communication was so poor on these things and you’re paying ridiculous prices. Um, yeah, it’s terrible. And so when we would get a phone call on a Wednesday, we knew that we were going to be doing radio work and satellite phones for maybe five days to get someone out. Now with Elon, it’s like, yeah, no worries. You’re online 24 hours a day. It’s all very easy. And we can basically hand the problem back to the customer in that he’s the solution. We’ve organized all of this. Now you take over and let us know if there’s a problem because they’re not doing anything and they’re quite capable, very practical people. but they just don’t have the means. So we set it all up, and then they might be getting a clutch out of South Australia or somewhere in the world, and they can handle it from there. And that takes a lot of the emphasis off us, even though we still do the whole plan for them. Yeah, we get them out of that problem. So that’s a big part of our business. That’s the business part we can’t sell. It’s very hard to tell that story, except if you’re in a format like this where you can tell it. But trying to advertise the fact that we are with you through every up and down.

Brian Searl:

I can’t believe it to you, man. You’re the new Bear Grylls in your show.

Mark Fawcett:

We do this a lot. So it’s an interesting part of our business. But anyway, and then it gives us a problem globally as well. We have people in Mongolia and Germany and Italy and through South Africa that have the same sort of problems. And we’ve got to deal with it. And I say to them, it doesn’t matter how competent your family is. When I’ve got four or five guys on the phones and computers with access to every part that we can get, it’s always better to ring us. And we don’t charge for that. It’s just part of owning one of the earth cruisers. If you own an earth cruiser, you get access to us. And that means that we keep you going as best you can. So yeah, that’s what we do anyway.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. I mean, I’d love to, I want to talk about in a second about the crossover with all of you, right, between the boating industry for Andrea and RVs. But the first thing I have is just for you, and I’ll go, I’m actually going to go get the Starlink. I want people to see how small this thing is. But for you specifically, when you talked about breaking new barriers with the things that you build, how do you, how does this process go? Because it fascinates me. There’s so many different things you could do. so many different directions you could take and obviously you have consumer studies and what people want and where technology is going that can inform your decision, but I assume this is much more complex than just typing like I would into AI and saying what can I do better, right?

Mark Fawcett:

Well I guess one of the problems is you can make a big mistake lots of times if you’re not careful and I have done that. You go down a path which looks great, feels great, works great, and the customer doesn’t want it, That happens, I’m sure every business goes through that. I think the main thing is that we are customer driven. We’ll have a customer say to us, I want this. And then we go through and run it to its end. So we design it, we manufacture it, we test it, we fit it. And then we are lucky enough to have a group of customers that love being guinea pigs. Even if they’re a new customer, I’ll say to them, they’ll say to me, can you do this? And I’ll say, yes. but you’re the guinea pig and they’re fine with it. And that means they’re gonna bear some of the financial load, they’re gonna bear the frustration, all of that, but knowing full well, we’re on the job as well. So it is important that they are aware they’re going to be that guinea pig, but as Australians, they are very high tech. They’re very, I won’t say high tech, they’re very, They’re very good on the tech take-up. They love to take the tech on board. We noticed that with a sister company, we have a relationship with Earth Cruiser in the US, and they seem to be less likely to take tech up. I mean, we use the most advanced battery system in the world. We are using a Garmin control system with hundreds and hundreds of switches, where if you look at some of the more normal motorhomes, they just have banks of switches. All of ours are on a remote, like an iPad, that sort of size. And you can take it outside the vehicle. We have three of them on board every truck. So we have one in the back and one in the front. And you can take it out at night, sit by the fire and put your truck up and down and turn it off, turn it on, do everything remotely with that Garmin interface. And that’s something that I don’t see. You see it in boats all the time. Boats are very advanced with that sort of stuff. And I guess that’s where we align ourselves more with. I’m from the boating industry. I’m a marine mechanic by trade. That was one of my first trades. But I see that as we are much more aligned with boating than we are with motorhomes. Motorhomes to us are very backward. They’re very old hat, which is fine. That’s just how they do it. But our stuff is far more aligned. But even the construction is more boat.

Aaron Pfadt:

I’d love to jump in on that because I think that even when our position within the RV world, you know, I think we’re, I would argue that we’re more RV adjacent than really RVs, you know, we’re more overlanding, even though we’re, you know, we fall under the RVIA and, you know, and all, you know, that’s our cert board. But yeah, our best materials come out of the boating industry and that’s the level of electronics and the level of engagement that we put in technology that we put in is generally from the boating world as well. 12-volt air conditioners, which are not artery standard still, but in all of man world, we embrace that, the efficiency, the lightweight, and the reliability. We compare ourselves a lot more to the boating world. It’s interesting that it goes more than on the build side in terms of componentry. It’s also on the the sales side, you know, dealing with this full cu to you and you say yes, w engineer, I love that, ri fact check me and say no to things because, you know, with our volume, the level of service required to maintain that into to put those new systems in is, you know, is a little bit unsustainable at our level. But I was going to ask, when you have a customer, are you in the advisory role? I feel like that’s where we, as our sales process has evolved over the last couple of years, we just become RV advisors or overlanding advisors because people come to us with everything that they’ve seen on the Internet. Like, oh, I really want, you know, the Starlink is a great example. People started coming to us with that. And initially we’re like, well, we can do that. But again, like your answer, you’re the guinea pig. Now, though, we have it as part of our system, right? It’s an option on our 2025 models. But, you know, because we can’t make every customer a guinea pig and there are so many things like that, you know, Starlink’s got enough of a system behind it to actually come around. But there are a lot of other things that are much smaller and they don’t have that support network. And they seem like a great idea, but they don’t ultimately work out. And I can’t have a set of those systems out in the field. So we tend to advise people away. And as an engineer who loves high-tech things and loves the best thing or the most optimal solution, it’s kind of frustrating sometimes to turn people away from a potentially good solution. But until it’s proven, it’s not really worth anything in our side of the industry. And I’m sure you do some of that as well. People come with all kinds of ideas. And you’re like, no, we’ve tried that. Don’t do it.

Mark Fawcett:

Yeah, we have. Oh, that’s all the time where someone will come to us with their greatest idea and you say, that’s not going to work. And look, I too love, you know, pushing that limit. But unfortunately, you will get customers that come here and they’ll say, I’ve got the best idea in the world. And you have to say that that’s going to look really good. But someone down the road is going to build it because we’re not. Because that’s the problem is you’ve really got to have that recipe. And whilst I say we are super customizable, exactly what you said is like Starlink, obviously it came out and it was a, you’re the guinea pig, blah, blah, blah. And we have had a lot of problems with the Starlink interface because of the wiring and you know, just that sort of stuff. But the Starlink product is brilliant. And that’s why I like 12V. But anyway, as, as parts become tested, then they become an option and then the customer orders it. But you do have to be that advisor to everybody. And some of them are looking for guidance, but I think most of our customers are pretty well-researched. They’ve followed us for a long time. They’re spending a lot of money. They’re extremely practical. Nobody buying an Earth cruiser really doesn’t have a clue. They’re all pretty astute people. They’re trying to keep the grey matter going, I think. I think part of buying an Earth cruiser is there’s a lot of planning involved with the trips they’re doing. As I said, they’re not just travelling up the coast between petrol stations. They’re actually travelling to no return point. So therefore, that requires to keep this going. So I think the reason someone buys an Earth cruiser is that you’ve got 15 years left of agility. There are overland vehicles, full remote overland vehicles, and they buy it for that reason. But in saying that, we have the age. You’re probably not in that boat, maybe, where we’ve got the gray nomads sort of syndrome, where we do get the older person. So we’ve had to build systems like our big tires at the back that come down. I mean, our Unimog tires weigh 125 kilos. You can’t lift that. I can’t lift that. Two people can’t lift that. And two people at 70 years old definitely can’t lift that. So we’ve had to innovate systems where winches allow them to come all the way down. We have systems of how to actually tip a wheel and change 125 kilo wheel by itself, which we can do quite successfully. But that comes out of need. It comes out of the market that we’re in. I mean, I suppose if you had 40 year old guys that were really built, maybe they could do it in a much more manual way, but we can’t. And everything on our trucks is sort of push button. And it’s not because we want to be the glamorous truck on the market. It’s simply because we have that maturity in our customers and they need it more than anything. And that’s also then led itself to people going, well, it’s got all this, I want it. You get the people that just have the money that want to buy it too. But it was always brought out by a need of customers wanting it. That’s how we came about. But so often we are advising customers how to do so. And the other thing we have is you talked about, I suppose, how do we integrate that customer into an overland vehicle? So not only do we advise them, but then because we have such a strong community, we always set them up so they can go away on a trip. We don’t organise any of the trips, our community does that. So therefore, they are in very good hands. When we send them on a trip with other earth cruisers, the motto is leave no man behind or something like that, I don’t know what they call it. But it’s a really important thing because they’ve got to feel like they’re not stupid. Because these guys are doing 40 and 50 trips in their lifetime across, say, the Simpson Desert or the Great Central Desert or whatever they’re doing, or they’ve traveled around the world. And you get a newbie who’s never even driven a four-wheel drive before. How do you integrate them into a seven-ton truck and show them how to drive across 1,100 dunes with fuel restraints and water restraints You’re at zero minus four degrees overnight and you’re 40 degrees during the day. And, you know, obviously our vehicles maintain those systems. Great. There’s also that interface with the customer. And so our community then takes over and shows them how to use all the systems and to use the truck. And I think that is probably something that’s maybe different. I’m not sure with you guys. The other question you brought up is. We’ve made a conscious decision not to expand into 100 units a year. And the fact that we still only do 12 to 16 units a year is simply because I don’t want to stretch that line between me and the customer. I really want to have that one on one. I’ve had much bigger businesses before, 400 staff and tens of thousands of customers. That’s not me. You end up sitting in an office doing paperwork. I want to be on the floor. with my hands, I’m a tradie by design, I guess, but I’m also an engineer. And also, that’s important to me. And that’s important to me to talk to the customer and go, okay, this is what you want. And this is what we can give you. And me being that conduit, I guess, and that means that scalability is a problem for us, is because I’m then, I’m the funnel, I’m the, I’m the reducer in the whole equation. But I like it that way. And I think our customers like it that way.

Aaron Pfadt:

Hey, can I, this is great. Mark, I’d love to talk to you all day about your composites and stuff.

Brian Searl:

Thank you, but I do want to get, go ahead with your thought, but I want to get to the voting thing and talk about that for a minute. So go ahead.

Aaron Pfadt:

Yeah, yeah. And the only thing, I’m going to pose a question to Eleanor and you can answer it whenever, but what is your thought on the, I mean, Mark and I, I think are in lucky situations where our target market is, they still have the money. And so we’ve both been able to continue to maintain sales at some reasonable level and keep the companies moving forward. Yeah, I get it. No, there’s touch and go days. Eleanor, would you have a sense, you don’t have to answer this right now, we can go back to boats a little bit, but I want to know what you thought on like, how’s this going to ramp out? I mean, RVs and outdoor in general, I mean, I’m a big motorcyclist and I see the KTMs down almost 50% year over year and they’re the biggest, you know, off-road motorcycle manufacturer around right now. And like, I don’t know, it’s a little, it’s a little like gut checking just being in the outdoor industry right now. I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re feeling is going to come out.

Eleanore Hamm:

Yeah. I mean, I think you’ve got, you know, obviously with the with the current conditions in our economy and, you know, Canada, the US, probably Australia as well. The people that are buying high end product are still buying higher end product.

Brian Searl:

Yeah.

Eleanore Hamm:

When I look at our stats from statistical surveys, the only segment of the market that’s up right now are fifth wheels. So, you know, fifth wheels have a price point or start at a price point, right? They’re not your entry level product. So I think those and probably the types of products that you’re both selling are, you know, like you said, people who do have some money, who have had some research, who are familiar with the industry. We’re seeing less, less impact on that segment. What we’re finding right now is it’s the younger families, right? People who would have bought product, you know, travel trailer, First of all, product has become more expensive than it was previously. I mean, it’s coming down a little bit again, but there was a project, you know, price creep has gone up and interest rates obviously were up. Now, unfortunately in Canada, we’ve had a couple of price drop, kind of point drops. I think there’ll be a couple more. So I think until the economy, you know, gets a little bit stronger, consumer confidence gets a little bit stronger. It’s that entry level family product that is going to probably suffer the most. Having said that, you know, we have our Go RVing Canada campaign, our marketing campaign. I mean, they’re getting, you know, really strong traffic on their websites. They continue to get millions of viewers. And, you know, people are now wanting to use their RVs in so many different ways, right? It’s not just going camping anymore. It’s maybe going to a campground and going boating or maybe going off-roading. We have a lot more young adventurers who are going, you know, I mean, we’re in BC, so rock climbing and exploring the north. And so they’re using their product in many different ways instead of just camping. So I think, I think in the long run, you know, I said this at the beginning, you know, our demographic studies show that we have lots of people still that are outdoor enthusiasts and really interested in the outdoor lifestyle. But whether new unit sales right now, I think they’ll still be a little bit soft for the next little while. But I definitely think, and then some of those niche products are doing quite well. Because like you say, you know, to Mark’s product, it’s, you know, I’d love to take one of those out. I mean, I’d love to go to Australia. It seems like such a great, great adventure. And you have those people that are so focused and driven that that’s exactly what they want to do. So if you’re able to engage that consumer and build your community, I think you’ll do quite well.

Brian Searl:

Are you looking for guest rescuers, Mark? Yeah.

Mark Fawcett:

I want to transition to this for a minute and like I do have that like look at this thing.

Brian Searl:

That’s the Starlink mini. Like that’s for people who have never seen it. That thing is that’s going in my backpack on a plane like that’s. And that works on RVs and boats, right? So let’s use that as a transition.

Mark Fawcett:

Also, Brian, you might mention that, just hold that back up again. The difference between what he’s got there is that’s everything. The router and everything is in that. And all you do is plug 12 volts into it. See, before that, you had a much bigger dish and it moved to start with. They had the moving dish, which didn’t really work for us. We have to cut it all off. But that one there actually allows you just to plug in 12 volts and it works. Yeah. Game changer.

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Game changer.

Brian Searl:

This is 150 megs down and you two, I haven’t set it up yet. I just got it. It’s 150 megs down and you’re like anywhere in the middle of nowhere.

Mark Fawcett:

Yeah, we’re already using them. We’re already feeding them fantastic, unbelievable stuff. Really good.

Brian Searl:

So talk to us about the boating industry and RV crossover. I want to hear Andrea from you first because we’ve kind of haven’t got a chance to get back to you yet in a few minutes. But just talk a little bit about how you view kind of the crossover. Yes, a little bit with RVs, but just how everything kind of relates in the outdoor industry and funnels business. And then, Eleanor, I want to hear from you too and your thoughts on that. And then, obviously, if you gentlemen want.

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Well, I guess I can kind of speak from the recreational boater, obviously. We don’t represent the industry. So we’re the organization that just focuses on the boater. By the way, there’s a great organization in the Northwest called NMTA, Northwest Marine Trade Association. They might be somebody you guys want to talk to about, you know, it’s almost, you know, what you guys are talking about with your industry on the RV side, they’re kind of dealing with on the maritime side. But I think, I don’t know, I’ve heard, as I was listening to you guys talk about, the thing that popped into my mind was more the services that a recreational boater needs. as you guys were aligning to like the services that RVers need, whether they’re going to go campground to campground or marine park to marine park, or really get out there like we love to do in British Columbia, right? Up in the broadens, desolation sound to some extent and further up than that. So what services do boaters need? So to me, there’s like a little bit of a crossover there. You know, we have things on our boat that need to be filled and emptied. And I think you guys have the same in RVs, right? You’re looking for water. Maybe you can make your own. Maybe you have to go get that from someplace. You have black water waste on your boat that needs to be disposed of. The very different rules between Canada and the United States. In Washington, it’s a no discharge zone, meaning you cannot dump your waste in the water. You must go to a facility or a mobile facility must come to you. And those are things that Arbaugh is really advocating for. when the Department of Ecology changed the rules, right or wrong, whatever your opinion is, we have to make sure that when those big changes occur, the, you know, recreational boating is a $9 billion annual industry in the state of Washington. There’s a lot of money and jobs in our state that come from recreational boating. So we want to make sure that the services are there to kind of keep that industry going. the black water side of it is something that we really advocate strongly for to make sure there are places that boaters, even paddle boarders or kayakers, because most boaters have an electric bike to some extent, a paddle board or a kayak on their vessel. So they can, you know, go to a place and get offshore and either do exercise or get to a town and reprovision, that kind of thing. So those for me, I guess, and I don’t know if exactly that’s where you’re going from crossover, but I see those things as being similar to both of our industries.

Brian Searl:

Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I have an answer that I was expecting. Right. But I think there’s a natural inclination to assume that, you know, like we’re dealing with like we do. One of my other company is is insider perks. We do marketing for 500 campgrounds, RV resorts, stuff like that. And one of the things we’re talking to them about is, well, let’s write some blog content. about things that relate to the outdoor industry, about fishing, and lakes, and hiking, and nature. Because those people who are valuable content, but those people who read that content are probably more likely to want to then be able to transition to glamping, or cabin rentals, or RVing, or things like that, than the writing about the museum downtown, or the five-star luxury restaurant, or things like that, right? And so that’s kind of where I think I was. I think a lot of it complements each other. Would you agree with that, Eleanor?

Eleanore Hamm:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in terms of, you know, back to what Andrea said about services, services and servicing, I mean, I think those are two key things. And I liked, you know, when Mark said they have full service, I mean, they parachute people in, well, maybe not parachute, but helicopter them in and really take care, probably parachute if they had to really take care of the customer, because that’s where we find is that, you know, people will purchase the unit, but they first of all, you know, they’re going to need servicing at some point in time. So we need to make sure that they have access to that in whatever manner. works for them where they’re going to use their product, but also have the services available. And, you know, similar to Andrea’s point, I think at the beginning about, you know, fewer marine parks, fewer marinas. I mean, we are seeing that as an issue in the RV industry in terms of campgrounds being either purchased, there’s been consolidation, business models have been changing. And so just to ensure that consumers have access and you know, advocating for us, it’s for our national parks to ensure that when, you know, when I love what you did there, Andrea, in terms of the tax dollars, but when, when campers are in the national parks camping, that that revenue goes back into the infrastructure of campgrounds, whether it be to make the sites bigger, but just to ensure electrification, you know, water access to that, because instead of just going into overall revenues, Because without those services and those facilities in place, I mean, consumers are going to have not a great experience and then are going to leave the industry. And whether they leave the industry of RVing or even just outdoor industry in general, right? Because they feel it’s going to be easier to go to the luxury resort or downtown Toronto or something like that. So we really need to ensure that regardless of what they’re doing and whatever leisure activity that they are in the outdoor hospitality space, I think that they have a positive experience.

Mark Fawcett:

I might like to give you a different take on that. No, you’re not allowed, Mark. We need all of those services, fuel, discharge stations and all of that. But in Australia, we have extremely remote towns and we call them, sometimes they’re called government towns, where there’s no jobs, there’s no nothing. So basically the government pays for people who live there. But in getting to these towns, we have—well, I don’t know what you have in the US if it’s the same problem, is that we have towns—and they’ll have signs up that say, RV-friendly town. Now, what that means is that they don’t mind you staying in and around town, and they don’t mind you parking in the main street, which could be one street. And we’re now finding that it is really taking hold. In other words, that the RVs that those towns that don’t want them there, they just won’t stop. And we always encourage, because we can get our trucks all packed up with everything, food and ice creams and everything they want, and just drive. And they don’t have to see anyone for three weeks. What we encourage our customers and our users is to stop in those towns, have a cup of coffee, put a bit of fuel in the vehicle, buy an ice cream, whatever it is. What’s happening though in those towns is they do have those services, but because they’re not RV friendly, the people are just driving straight through them. And I see that being a big change in Australia. And I’m not sure what you guys do in the US for that sort of thing, but yes, all of these little towns have to have the discharge and they have to have the, we even have in those towns where you’ve got to pay money to get fresh water because there’s no water. So it’s filtered onsite right there as you put the money in, if you want to get, 300 litres of water, you’ve got to pay for that water to come out of the tap. It’s not something you can just turn a tap and it comes out. It’s coming out of boil water, it’s being refined and it’s for your drinking. But that’s the difference in the services that you were talking about, Andrea and Eleanor, it’s quite different here.

Brian Searl:

I don’t have a scientific study to back me up, but I’m pretty sure there’s only about three places in the US without a Walmart within five minutes. So, it’s different in Canada, but yeah. But yeah, it’s fascinating. So we’re, you know, a little bit overt. I want to make sure everybody, you know, if you have to go, well, I’m blurry again. If you have to go, feel free to hop off, but I just want to wrap it up real quick. Give everybody a chance for final thoughts here. Mark, you want to go first? Just tell us, you know, where can they find out more about your product, your services, stuff like that?

Mark Fawcett:

So obviously we’re in Australia, quite different, although we do have a lot of American customers where they own trucks in Australia and they fly over for three to six months a year and use their trucks. We are, we’re manufacturers in Australia, earthcruiser.net.au. I’m happy to, you know, talk to anyone that’s interested in that sort of lifestyle. But yeah, thanks for having us on.

Brian Searl:

Thanks for being here, Mike. I appreciate it.

Andrea Pierantozzi:

Andrea? Hi, our information is at rbaw.org for, you know, folks in the state of Washington that are focused and want to help us, you know, with our member supported organization. Our individual memberships are a whopping $20 a year. We also have organization and contributing businesses that are invested in the recreational voter that support us. And the last thing I wanted to throw in that I didn’t get to mention earlier is a few years ago, we started a 501c3, so a nonprofit organization called the Marine Parks Conservancy that we mirrored off of BC Parks Forever. We have a good ties with them. So when we see marinas that are derelict or they’re going to go out of business, we try to work with our members and the state to buy them, fix them up and turn them into marine parks that we can donate back to the state. So there’s a little bit about that on our website as well. Again, services to this business that we think is the lifestyle that we love. And it sounds like you guys think of that similarly for our views as well.

Brian Searl:

I’ll eventually buy a boat. I’ve got to have enough money though. Maybe Eleonora advertises me one day. Eleanor, wrap it up. Tell us where they can find out more about RVDA of Canada.

Eleanore Hamm:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, RVDA is www.rvda.ca. You know, it’s mostly for members in an industry association. And then if there are consumers out there that want to find dealers in Canada, they can go to the gorving.ca website as well, just to find information about places to go RVing and camp.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Thank you again for being here, Eleanor. Aaron, last but not least.

Aaron Pfadt:

Yeah. offhighwayvan.com and again, manufacturing class B RVs in Salt Lake City, Utah. On the advocacy side, I think it’s interesting. One of our initiatives, and it’s a little self-serving because social media is everything nowadays. We have building our own community out there and our sales team and our customer service team. It fits with what you’re talking about, Mark. We have our own list of You know, recommended places most of our customers are from all over the US and even, you know, outside of the US and when they come to either pick up their van and do a road trip in the American West we we provide some road mapping for them to say hey here’s some great places to go see and it helps to generate that community and. Yeah, it is an important part. Some of our people are, like yours, probably trying to just get away from everyone. But also, they’re trying to build a community of people that they know and like and that they can relate to. So we do a little bit of that. But yeah, it’s interesting to chat with you guys. And thanks for your time today. It’s been nice talking to you, Brian. Thanks for setting that up.

Brian Searl:

Yeah, thanks for being here. And I appreciate it. So thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. I will not be here the next two weeks. So you’re going to have a guest host next week, which is going to be Mark Kepp. And then after that, it’s going to be Greg Emmert. I’m going to be in Asia on a business trip. And so, yeah, it’s hard, Eleanor. My life is very rough. But thank you all for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Really appreciate it. We’ll see you next week for another episode. And see you guys later. Take care. Have a good week. Thanks.

Mark Fawcett:

Thank you.

Brian Searl:

Bye. See you.

SPEAKER_03:

This episode of MC Fireside Chats with your host, Brian Searl. Have a suggestion for a show idea? Want your campground or company in a future episode? Email us at hello at moderncampground.com. Get your daily dose of news from moderncampground.com. And be sure to join us next week for more insights into the fascinating world of outdoor hospitality.