MC Fireside Chats – September 27th, 2023

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode [00:01:00] of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be back for our fourth week episode focused on the RV industry and outdoor recreation. We are missing a couple people this week who are our regular guests. They are down at Elkhart for something that apparently I wasn’t important enough, or Patrick, or Mark, or Eleanor wasn’t important enough.

To be invited to, but we’re here anyway with you guys talking about all kinds of different things related to the RV industry. So apologize for my like blown out background. I’m getting a new video camera, so I don’t know if there’s scratches there, but Eleanor said my flowers are pretty.

So just, if you can just watch those during the show instead of this, then you’ll probably have a much better experience. Appreciate everybody being here. Eleanor, is there anything that’s super important that you feel like? That’s what we need to talk about before we get to introducing our special guests, talking a little bit with them.

Eleonore Hamm: I just think from the dealer perspective right now as you mentioned, some of our guests are away. We’ve got the big open house in Elkhart, Indiana, where the manufacturers are showcasing their 2024 models. I’ll be really curious to hear from the industry board members[00:02:00] about what what the highlights are that they saw there.

I know there’s some new manufacturers that are coming out in, within the industry. It’ll be exciting to see what what they bring forward. And some new innovative products as well that have been showcased. You’ll probably know a little bit more on your next show in October. From our standpoint, we’re gearing towards our big convention in Vegas, which is at the beginning of November.

So really excited about the speakers that we’re going to be having there and the dealer education being presented on that as well. I’ll turn it over to your guests today because it’s always interesting to hear from the manufacturing and the van life I guess. And, 

Brian Searl: I’m gonna push back on you just for a second ’cause I do want to actually briefly, Patrick, just briefly introduce yourself, mark, briefly introduce yourself, and then I wanna brief, I wanna talk about this event in Elkhart while it’s on our minds and then we’ll get back to you guys for more in depth conversation. So Patrick? 

Patrick Botticelli: Elli with New Jersey Outdoor Adventures YouTube channel. It’s a channel based on van life, people’s [00:03:00] own creations and ideas, and it really helps, it’s entertainment, but it also helps educate people on what to expect when they get into van life, some tips and tricks, and I have weekly episodes.

And a pretty big following, about 345, 000 subscribers, so they’re all excited to see what’s next with the van tours. I’ve been in the auto and RV business for over 30 years, and the RV portion of the business for over 20 years. So I get a good background on the RV industry, and I actually work at an RV dealership, and that’s my 9 to 5.

My YouTube gig is a hobby of mine. 

Brian Searl: Very cool. Glad to have you here, Patrick. Certainly looking forward to seeing what you cover and what you’ve been talking about for the last couple decades, right? Almost. Certainly a lot of interesting support from there. Mark, do you want to introduce yourself just briefly?

Mark Harling: Sure. My name is Mark Harling. I’m the president of Bean Trailer. I’m also the president of Sterling ATM, and Sterling ATM is the mothership for Bean [00:04:00] Trailer. It is a company that features… Brand enhancement for major U. S. banks. So I’m, compared to you guys, I’m a relatively newcomer in the RV industry.

We’ve been doing this since about 2017 and we got into it because we couldn’t find anything that we liked in the marketplace. And we have a lot of passionate outdoors people here. And in five years we’ve become gone from page oblivion on Google to page one. When it comes to off road teardrop trailers.

Brian Searl: Now, just to clarify, when you say that we’re newcomers, obviously you’re, like, not referring to my, the way I look, right? Because you can clearly tell that I’m not a newcomer by observing, right? The gray hair, all that kind of, it’s all that kind of, 

it’s crazy. 

Mark Harling: No, we’ve we did we, we pride ourselves on not having known anything about the RV industry, before we got into it in 2017, and I think that [00:05:00] contributed a lot to our current success. 

Patrick Botticelli: Absolutely, I agree with that. When our dealership first got into the RV business we had no background on it and we took a completely different approach and quickly became one of the top selling Airstream dealers within two years.

Brian Searl: Awesome, very cool. Alright, I definitely want to get back to all that. Eleanor, before we forget, actually, before I talk to Eleanor, we need to thank our sponsor for the show, Access Parks. I need to briefly play a clip here for them and then we’ll get back to Eleanor and I want to talk a little about Access Parks.

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Brian Searl: Super grateful for Access Parks, they’ve been a long time sponsor of us in this fourth week episode, so just if you are a Camp Grenada Park owner, really, I guess they would work for dealerships too? Eleanor? Maybe? 

Eleonore Hamm: So yeah. 

Brian Searl: Will certainly, reach out to Access Parks and learn more about their product and what they have to offer. I do want to talk briefly about, again, we talked about Elkhart, right? For those of us… And maybe this is just me, right? I’m more in the campground, RV park, outdoor hospitality industry than I am in the RV industry side of things.

And so from a standpoint of, a lot of our audiences, campground owners, who have never been to this open house or don’t really know what it is or how it works, can you just dive into a little bit about, how does this work? Like when you say, They’re showcasing their new 2024 models.

Have they already finalized these? In other words, are people just going there to see them and learn what they want to stock? Are they there to get feedback? Does Shane, for example, walk in and be like, oh my god, that’s horrible. And then they drop and don’t manufacture that model? [00:07:00] Or how does that work?

Eleonore Hamm: He might say that, but that’s probably not the case, and I’m not sure they’d listen to Shane, but, no, so what happens is that back in, in the day, historically, dealers would go to a show in November in Louisville, Kentucky which was right around just after the American Thanksgiving, and that was really a buying show to stock their inventory for the upcoming year, but what we found is that it was almost Christmas, It’s of manufacturing product and just stocking products for some of the shows that were starting in January, especially in Canada, they start usually early in the new year.

The manufacturers, and obviously it’s the three big ones, Thor Forest River, Winnebago, they started moving actually I think it was Forest River that, that started the trend to have this open house where they would showcase their product which is the new models. They’re already built.

It’s not, they may have some prototypes of things that they’re working on for the future, but generally it is their new line [00:08:00] for 2024 that would have come out in 2022. Typically in August, so the dealers from across North America would go to Elkhart and Venice, they’re invited by their manufacturers and they would go and see what what is available, what the trends are, what new products might be, but how floor plans or how, some of the floor plans might have changed, there might be just updates in floor schemes because there’s probably also updates in terms of, Materials that are being used or colors and then just layouts as well.

So it’s a great opportunity. It’s the premier opportunity. There’s a there are a couple shows. I mean there was recently the Hershey Show which is in Pennsylvania. I know Patrick mentioned he was there. They do have industry days as well before the consumers come in. Dealers primarily on the East Coast would go to that, so they might not necessarily go to open house, but it’s an opportunity for the manufacturers to showcase all of their [00:09:00] products.

It’s a huge space, right? There’s a lot of land there, some of them are near the Hall of Fame some of them Redfields so there’s an opportunity to see. See a lot of product. And then the suppliers as well, so those that supply products goes to the manufacturers as well as to the dealers. They have a supplier show now that’s included with that as well that’s housed inside the RV Manufactured Housing Hall of Fame.

So it’s a really great opportunity for dealers to be able to pretty much talk to everybody that they purchase products. 

Brian Searl: And did I hear right, Patrick, you probably said that you went to the Hershey Show? 

Patrick Botticelli: Yeah, I attended the Hershey’s show as a vendor for Airstream and Colonial Airstream. So we had a display with all new 2024 Airstreams.

And some new product launches, so I was there for the launch of the Airstream foot travel trailer with 800 amp hours of lithium, 600 watts of solar, 3200 watt inverter. [00:10:00] It was pretty exciting. Airstream introduced some new touring coach vans Interstate SE and Interstate 19X. And it’s the first time people got to see the Airstream Basecamp 20X REI edition.

There was a lot of hype around the show for all the manufacturers because… There was new models that were released that it was first chance for the public really to get their hands on it. And what the open house historically it’s been where manufacturers release their half year new floor plans and new decors.

It’ll be 2024 and a half models that will come out for December, January, February timeframe. Being that the industry switches over usually in May. 

Brian Searl: How do you feel the overall, with your sense of how the Hershey show went? 

Patrick Botticelli: I think it went extremely well. The first day, the Wednesday that it was open to the public, I believe the attendance was down quite a bit by a few hundred people.

But the attendance quickly picked up the second day of the show, [00:11:00] and so on. It was still a little bit down from last year. Last year’s show is a little bit unique because… Dealers still didn’t have inventory. There were still long lead times for a product. And this year now dealers have full inventory.

They could take trades. I think it was a little bit more exciting for people. They weren’t ordering out of a catalog per se. They’re actually buying something that they can obtain and have instant gratification, pick it up in one or two weeks. 

Brian Searl: Alright, tell us about your YouTube channel. Let’s switch over to here, and then Eleanor, I want to come back later, we’ll talk about the RVEA convention.

Patrick Botticelli: New Jersey Outdoor Adventures YouTube channel started out as just mountain biking and New Jersey outdoor stuff, history of New Jersey, abandoned places. And, being that I have a background in the RV business I’m the Airstream guy on YouTube. If you look on YouTube, at most any Airstream, I’m the guy that gives all the tours for the dealership.

And I always said it’s not as much fun when I’m opening drawers and there’s nothing in it, opening up an empty refrigerator. Because I’m displaying a brand new model, telling [00:12:00] you the features and benefits and what it has. And, on my YouTube channel, I would bump into… People while I was out biking and do all these activities that had RVs had really cool setups and I would ask them hey it was okay if you filmed a tour and I would do these tours this is almost 10 years ago of RVs and you know there’s people doing RV tours on YouTube like me for Airstream but not many people like giving a tour of their own personal space so those videos really took off and that’s where the channel Made a right hand turn to, and that’s what the content is today.

Today, majority of the channel’s focus is on people building their own vans and some other ideas that come up. We, I wouldn’t think it is a, as a competition to the RV business, I just think it’s an A different expression of what they feel they need, and there’s contrasts between RV manufacturers, what they build, and what people build for themselves.

They also feature a lot of local [00:13:00] builders that are in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York that are just started out in their garage. Now they’ve got big shops. A few of them now are RVIA certified, so they’re RV manufacturers. So it’s pretty exciting to see the growth just in our local market, just from people that I featured in the past.

It really gives them a platform to, showcase what they’ve done. Have you featured Mark on the channel? Not yet, but I think I do another thing with Instagram for New Jersey Outdoor Adventures, and I do reel remixes where people send in a reel that they want me to talk about. So I’ll do a green screen, I’ll talk about What’s going on in the real?

So I think I’ve done a bean trailer once before. I get about a dozen a day that people say, Oh, I want you to talk about this. And it’s always based around camping or tiny house or something related to like outdoor activities. So I think I’ve done one. 

Brian Searl: All right. Let’s talk about what bean trailer is for a second.

And then we’ll come back and talk more [00:14:00] about the outdoor ventures and stuff like that. Mark, you want to introduce your company briefly? 

Mark Harling: Yeah we’re out here in Utah and basically on the doorstep of four hours in almost any direction, you have incredible outdoor activity, you have Moab, you have Southern Utah, you have the Tetons, you have Yellowstone, the list goes on and on, and those are the ones that people have heard of more importantly, there’s A million other ones, every time somebody comes and picks up a bean trailer, whether they’re from Nevada or Idaho or Arizona or Colorado, they tell me about places that they’ve been, I’ve never heard of, and they sound amazing we’re very close to basically a lifetime of outdoor activities and Cindy and I, my wife are mountain bikers and we were looking for a small trailer.

We were Didn’t really find anything that really [00:15:00] met our requirements. And so we, because I’ve got 30 years of design and manufacturing experience, came back and designed our own trailer. And it quickly became a big hit. And, it’s basically a trailer that’s all one piece fiberglass shell.

And I know the emphasis of the RV industry and a lot of the things that you are promoting are actually… Camping and campgrounds, and we’ve occasionally done that, but more likely than not, we’re off grid, so we try to, the whole tagline is being trailer can go where others can’t, and that, so that, that’s a little bit of a different build for trailer.

Because you have to deal with a lot of off road vibration. And you have big ground clearance, you have custom suspensions, and you have basically construction that doesn’t fall [00:16:00] apart from. Low Frequency and High Frequency Vibration, which is what you get when you’re overlanding or off road.

Brian Searl: Matt, we’re looking at your website right now, so I’ll just go on down through to look at some of the models and stuff. Is there any model in particular you want to dive into and just show off real quick, or? 

Mark Harling: Our most popular model is the Black Bean. And that is by far our biggest seller and, ironically, our most expensive trailer, that’s got the base model has a Timberland Independent Suspension, but the most popular is what we call the Cloud Suspension, which is actually an air suspension that has custom trailing arms, has a Fox reservoir shock, and the air suspension allows it to lower so that when you’re on site, you have a good height for the galley.

But when you start off roading, it will actually rise four inches from its lowest position. So yeah, basically [00:17:00] our trailers are a great galley and a great sleeping area. 

Brian Searl: So tell me tell me a little bit about this backstory, right? Like why your origin, like you talked about, you got into this, I think 2017, you said, right?

Relatively new to the industry trying to, I assume, solve a problem, right? So what problem did you see then that you have solved or are working toward solving that you didn’t see the rest of the industry kind of tackling in your mind? 

Mark Harling: Yeah I the first thing I did was I bought a sprinter van. I got excited about those. I decided that I was gonna, I knew I could design one and build it and I thought they were super cool looking and so I, like many people put their name on a list and waited Got my Sprinter book van, but by the time I drove from the Mercedes dealership to my plant, I knew that this wasn’t going to be a good match for [00:18:00] me, I could tell that the van, creative people, we were just at a van show in Reno and yourselfer, like Patrick was saying that it gives you an opportunity to really put incredible creative touches on that.

But. In my mind a van was basically from the ground up by, by design meant for utility and cargo. It was designed for workmen and people who are delivering packages. And so you can make them pretty cool, but there are some compromises that are baked into the inherent design.

And so then I saw a small trailer. I saw a little. This is a tab trailer. Trailer made I think in Elkhart, Indiana. And I saw that and I fell in love with that. And I did a bunch of research on the internet and saw that it was built by the Amish. And I thought, man, if it’s built by the [00:19:00] Amish, then it’s probably got a high level of refinement.

And so I went to a dealership here locally and saw one. The thing that immediately struck me was that the ergonomics were not right for me. I’ve been in creating environments with my human factors background for, 25, 30 years, and the space seemed a little cramped to me, and I could tell by the way that it was built that it was built mostly to be used on road with a little bit of gravel road.

And so I knew it wouldn’t survive. The places I wanted to take it. So I wanted something with more room and I wanted something that could go where you couldn’t take a van or you couldn’t take other trailers and that’s when we started designing. Bean Trailer. 

Brian Searl: Okay, makes sense to me. Anything else you want to add?

To talk about some of the, where are you headed in the [00:20:00] future? Like, where do you want to take Bean Trailer? Obviously you’ve got these great products, they’ve been fairly successful already. Is there something that you’re looking to develop that maybe you can share with us? If it’s a secret, you can just say, no, I can’t talk about it.

But where are you, where do you want to go, maybe in the next five, six years? Is there something that you’ve got your eye on that you’d like to produce? 

Mark Harling: Yeah ironically it’s our most luxurious trailers are the ones that are doing the best. And we’re going to go up from there, and…

Brian Searl: Which is fascinating to me, right? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but that’s fascinating to me, because we’re talking about, and Patrick, feel free to weigh in on this too, we’re talking about the merger of two worlds here, right? Like luxury, but also off road. Van life, but smaller, but still there’s a, I think there’s a perception from people who are outside of the small trailer industry, That luxury can’t work in such a small package.

Is that fair as a perception that’s happening, even though that’s not probably accurate, 

Patrick Botticelli: I think, are you a factory [00:21:00] director? You have dealerships. 

Mark Harling: We. We do not have any dealerships. We sell directly to our clients who come out and pick up their trailers. 

Patrick Botticelli: I think it’s smart doing the higher end because a person that knows exactly what they want, they’re going to, they’re willing to spend the money.

You don’t want to be in the price competition and feature competition of 15 other RV manufacturers that build a teardrop style trailer. You either want to pivot, if you’re not, if you don’t have dealership network, you either want to pivot to the ultra high end for that specialty buyer or really low end, entry level price point.

And I’ve seen smaller businesses become successful in both avenues. The middle’s tough to compete. 

Mark Harling: And the middle, it’s funny that you say that because in the last year, it is that middle that has been the most impacted, right? You would think that the high end would be [00:22:00] the most impacted, but it’s not.

It’s that middle, we notice that people in that middle category are much more careful, in, in 2021 and people would barely ask the price of anything, 

Patrick Botticelli: whatever they can get their hands on. 

Mark Harling: Yeah, it’s just I just want to buy it. Don’t you, I do care a little bit about the price but now, people research harder and they’re holding their checkbook much closer to their chest.

And so that middle area has been a challenge. That’s where we’ve seen the biggest decrease in sales. So Patrick, to your point, the area that we’re trying to do is we’re abandoning that middle for right now. We’re trying to, we’re trying to create a more value oriented trailer that doesn’t compromise on construction that you can still take, where you can’t take other trailers, but something that appeals to those.

Who [00:23:00] are much more price sensitive, and that, that is a big part of the market right now, at least from our small perspective as a custom trailer manufacturer. 

Brian Searl: Do you feel that’s, do you feel that’s the same, Eleanor, as the dealers? That the middle is being squeezed out a little bit? 

Eleonore Hamm: Yeah, we’ve seen that this year.

Mark was saying, 2021, everybody knows it was crazy. There wasn’t enough product out there for the consumer demand. 22 is a bit softer and this past year, we’re still seeing high end. High end is is still selling at the dealership level. It’s the, the family models. When you’ve got families that have a limited discretionary income with interest rates obviously that have gone up and the price point for just affordability of living.

So we’re seeing some of the affordable models that are a little bit on the lower end are going and then the higher end as well. So it’s very similar. 

Brian Searl: And the reason I ask that, I feel like that, and [00:24:00] sorry, I’ll just jump in one second Patrick, I feel like the, that’s the same thing we’re seeing on like the camping side of the business too, is that there’s a shift towards, I’m going to stay on BLM land, or I’m going to take it off road in Van Life, or I’m going to stay at a state park, or a provincial park, or I’m going to go all the way to the high end, to the glamping, to the luxury experiences, to whatever, like certainly there are tons of people still camping in the middle, but I feel like there’s, From the outside looking in, not owning a campground and just talking to everybody, I feel like we’re seeing that same pivot, but go ahead, Patrick.

Patrick Botticelli: So it’s smart having, entry level, medium, and high because you’ll have loyal customers that will only buy your product. So you got to get them in the door. So you got to have an attractive price of an entry level unit. And whether they decide to upsell themselves straight away or they buy that entry level model, if they’re a loyal customer of yours, they’ll be back for the higher end model.

So you gotta actually, you gotta check off all those boxes to scale the [00:25:00] business. But I see with the craft van builders right now, they’re only doing and excelling right now in the really high end stuff. There’s still a market for the really low priced value stuff just to get people to call, get people in the door.

But, with all the RV manufacturers now that have inventory… The dealers have inventory, there’s rebates, there’s high discounts available. It’s really hard for some of the smaller manufacturers that started off in 2020, 2021, 2022 to continue scaling because now they have more competition. They had no competition because RV manufacturers and dealers didn’t have any inventory.

Bean Trailer’s been around before all this. So they actually got their foundation built prior to Everything that exploded and they learn a lot from their customers. I’m sure when they do their rallies and get togethers, they get a lot of feedback and that’s how other RV manufacturers build and develop their products and improve their products [00:26:00] based on what their customers say.

And those loyal customers, I’ve had Airstreams that I’ve sold families 8, 9, 10 Airstreams over the years, because they keep coming back. And not only because they love the brand, but they love the dealership, they love me. And loyalty is very important to keeping those customers happy. 

Brian Searl: Do you feel like there is, and we, again, paralleling the campground industry do you feel as people do start to be more guarded to their pocketbooks and careful about where they’re purchasing and again, steering more toward luxury versus just buying whatever is available on the lot, like they were the last few years?

Is there a need for manufacturers to have their thing or their, Airstream obviously has their thing, right? Or Bean Trailers has their thing. Is there a need for them to identify in order to compete, like you were just talking about, is there a need for them to identify something that really sets them and their brand apart?

Patrick Botticelli: I think it’s going to be important that they have something, no matter what it is, that sets them apart, but in order to stay [00:27:00] competitive, they’re going to have something else that every other RV manufacturer has at their dealer showrooms. Otherwise, they’re going to miss that little market right there.

Brian Searl: What are your visions? Yeah, Mark?

Mark Harling: I think I’m trying to remember a saying, but a bull market is sometimes mistaken for brains. And I think when, a bunch of people got in, based on what’s clearly proving to look like a spike, which is, I think for the RV industry, it’s a year different, The spike for us was in 21 and all the way through the summer of 22 and then it slowed down. I think it slowed down for the RV industry before that. But I think a lot of people got in on an artificial rise associated with, in the market associated with COVID. So to [00:28:00] answer your question, if they’re going to survive, they’re going to have to differentiate. Because There’s a compression, I don’t know if people are talking about it or not, but there is definitely a compression in the market and the, if you’re going to survive a compression, you have to be able to differentiate.

Brian Searl: For sure. And that’s happening everywhere, right? That’s happening in campgrounds too, where you need to like, like in 2021 and 2022, everybody was just going camping. Everyone was outside. You didn’t have to do any, virtually any marketing. You just had to say, Hey, I’m the campground and raise your hand. And then there’s 300 people there the next day, right?

That’s maybe an over exaggeration of it, but you understand, I think what I’m saying. And so I think that’s the same kind of thing we’re seeing here is that. That need to differentiate yourself, set yourself apart, even if it’s just doing a little bit of marketing. I’m curious, Eleanor, how does this, when you’re a dealer and we’re talking about, back at this open house, right?

How do you adjust for what we may or may not be heading into as far as the inventory you’re carrying on your lot? And I [00:29:00] know every dealer is different, but… 

Eleonore Hamm: For sure, I think there’s some really good tools out there for dealers to use. We have reports from Statistical Surveys, Inc.

On new unit sales. And while they report, what’s been sold in them you can really drill down to what’s selling in your market area. I think for dealers to be able to do a bit of analysis of what’s out there, what’s selling in their area, they are able to determine, do I have the right brand mix should there be some, somewhere, maybe I am heavy on this type of product, and I’m seeing that the need is for that, for another type of product, so that’s a great tool.

Another tool that both in the U. S. and Canada, we have some, surveys that are done on, The Consumer Demographics from BORAVING and BORAVING Canada. And really too there’s some new reports that analyze who the new RV consumers are going to be. So I would recommend that dealers have a look at some of the marketing materials and some of the research study [00:30:00] that is available to them.

Because then they can, again take the mix that’s selling in their area or their county in their states or province. And then, And then determine, where is my confluder going to be, and then figure out what what product type is going to be best suited for them to load up on.

Brian Searl: Go ahead, please finish. Sorry, before i… 

Eleonore Hamm: What I was gonna say, and then in terms of, the manufacturers, the big ones obviously have a mix of everything and all, cover all the bases. For a smaller manufacturer, we are really seeing, them really focusing on one particular type, you’ve got leisure travel vans in Canada, obviously, a triple ERV who focuses, primarily on class B, they used to do class A’s and travel trailers as well, but they’ve really found their marketplace and focused on that and then done a, really good job in that. 

Brian Searl: Are there ways? Are there any, and this is just, maybe this is an ignorant question coming from outside the RV industry again are there ways for a dealer to pivot if the market were to change after they have all their inventory, or are they just locked into the best educated [00:31:00] guess they can make at the time they purchase?

Eleonore Hamm: I know, Patrick, you’re actually out of dealerships, so maybe that’s something you can answer a little bit better than I can. Feel free.

Brian Searl: If you want to switch, go for it. 

Patrick Botticelli: We our dealership, we only sell two brands, Winnebago and Airstream. And at Winnebago, we only sell the motorhomes.

And we focus just on those two brands, two solid companies that have been around forever. My gut feeling is that some dealers that have multiple brands that maybe picked up new brands during the 2020 2021 just to get more inventory, might be re analyzing some of the brands that they’re carrying.

and start shedding brands. I was in the RV industry in 2008, 9, 10, when a lot of RV manufacturers actually went out of business, went bankrupt, and I know what happened to a lot of dealers that had excessive inventory of that specific manufacturer. Banks would not offer loans on a orphan RV [00:32:00] manufacturer.

You couldn’t get extended service contracts. It was a mess and it was a real big mess. I hope that doesn’t happen again, but I think dealers are really pulling back right now, really analyzing what do we carry? What do we sell? Who are our customers right now? What’s the sweet spot? And then making sure that the manufacturers that they carry are stable, that they’re going to be there to support their customers for warranty claims down the road and, keep those loyal customers coming back to that dealership.

Brian Searl: Does it hurt from, and again, maybe this is an Eleanor question too, or even a mark you can weigh in on, that’s just because you only carry the two brands at your dealership. But is there harm that does to innovation in the industry by cutting back on and just saying, I’m only going to rely on the Airstreams of the Winnebago’s or the Thors of the, right? Is there? 

Patrick Botticelli: I think I’ve seen more happen in the last year with innovation because the supply chain opened up. Manufacturers now [00:33:00] have to figure out how to sell more products, right? So you’ve got to come out with new stuff. I think the marketplace was a little stale for the last three years because they were just trying to keep up with demand.

They weren’t coming out with that much new stuff. What could we build? What could we get? Manufacturers did pivots. If they couldn’t get 3,500 series Sprinter chassis, they’d build a different thing on a 2,500 or a 1500 chassis just because that’s what was available. Let’s design a motor home around this chassis and payload.

I think it was just to get product out the market. But right now manufacturers are really trying to, and they all are trying to innovate now that they have to. Sell dealers more product. What can we come out with that’s new that’s going to get the dealer excited and the customers excited again?

Brian Searl: Do we have a sense of anything that is being shown or being done that we can look forward to in 2024 that they’re innovating on? I know we’re seeing that at the open house now, so maybe, again, like Eleanor said, maybe next show, but… 

Patrick Botticelli: Airstream participates in that, and so does Winnebago. I believe I didn’t get to pop [00:34:00] on to RV business today or yesterday, but I think Winnebago is announcing some new products.

Airstream is bringing the stuff that they had brought to the Hershey RV show for that part of the country to see. What’s new? But I’m sure some of the other manufacturers, I think Winnebago announced a new entry level travel trailer. Ember RV just announced a new entry level travel trailer. They went for that higher end market, then they sat in the middle.

Now they’re trying to capture that lower price point. And it’s really based on what maybe their dealers are telling them. Say, hey, we need something that can compete with JCO, right? I think that was originally one of their companies. But anyway. So now they have a full gamut.

They were only one product when they first came out and they could barely make them because they didn’t have enough parts to build these things. I think they had a hundred trailers out in the yard. With tape over the windows. ’cause they couldn’t even get windows and they couldn’t ship ’em to dealers.

But now they have a full product line. So I see that [00:35:00] manufacturer scaling pretty well and actually weathering the storm pretty good. 

Brian Searl: Share those sentiments. Eleanor, Mark? 

Eleonore Hamm: Yeah, I would say, and I think, consumer, consumer demand, Dealers hear about it and they pass it on to the manufacturer.

Some of the things that there, there is innovation because they’re having to deal more with, with sustainability and electrification and whether it be in the campground or just with the different power sources that are being available and the government regulations that are driving some of those changes.

So I think you’re going to see quite a bit quite a bit of innovation that’s going to continue through the next few years. 

Brian Searl: How does, I’m curious, like if a bean trailer just picking on you, ’cause you’re here, mark, right? But if any of these smaller manufacturers is, are there ways for them to get easily into a dealer network or be sold at dealerships? Or is it really a steep, uphill climb? 

Mark Harling: For, I mean for network is not [00:36:00] necessarily it does improve the placement of your trailer because, all of a sudden you’re not having to fly to Salt Lake City, which, probably two thirds of the country considers flyover territory that is a challenge and obviously getting trailers but there, there’s so many significant differences between a custom off road trailer And what you would find in an RV lot that it, it makes it makes it difficult.

I, I haven’t seen that, that model used successfully. And I can weigh in on that too.

Brian Searl: Yeah, please go ahead, Patrick. And I guess just for clarity, I was going to say I’m not talking about the custom trailers, but just the smaller manufacturers in general who are trying to get a foot in the door. 

Patrick Botticelli: I think it’s the smartest thing he did just to stay…

As a factory direct, Phoenix Cruiser out in Pennsylvania has done it forever. Coach House, there are a lot of manufacturers out there that are factory direct. [00:37:00] That you don’t have to sell it wholesale, have a dealer, pay a dealer to do warranty claims. Every state has different laws on how an RV manufacturer, what happens if the dealer goes out of business and buying back inventory.

All it’s very complex. And, you’re, he would be taking and selling these at a lower profit margin to satisfy these dealers or the price would have to go up. Substantially, because now you have MSRP invoice, and then you would have obviously his cost to build it. I think he’s doing better this way.

And, also too, it’s a destination. Casita, if you want to buy a Casita trailer, you drive out to Texas, and you buy a Casita trailer, you have it delivered to your house. He has the same business model, and he can really do some more custom stuff, if a customer wants, where if it’s sitting on a dealer lot if that dealer can’t sell that stuff, he has to buy all that stuff back, it goes back to the factory.

So in different states, there are different laws for that. 

Mark Harling: Let me [00:38:00] give you an example, okay? So the average beam trailer, which is about a 14 foot teardrop trailer, all one piece fiberglass construction starts at 26, goes all the way to 70, and the average price is 42. So now a bean trailer is on a RV lot, and the salesman who knows nothing about the bean trailer relative to the other trailers on that lot, somebody asks them, how much is the price of that trailer?

It’s 42. 00. How much is the price of that fifth wheeler? Oh, it’s 42. 00. What’s the difference? That one’s bigger. They’re just not in a position to differentiate. The value proposition, the fact that, if you took that same fifth wheeler on the places we took a bean trailer, you would come back with a pallet of splinters, and so [00:39:00] it just, it doesn’t work for our model. 

Patrick Botticelli: Yeah, you’d have to do a lot of education at the dealers, get the salespeople excited for it, have a SPF program. I think what you’re doing is extremely smart and it’s working well for you. Do you have a yard for full of inventory? I noticed like a 14 day lead time to get one.

Mark Harling: So we have we have inventory trailers and we have. Custom order. Most of our trailers are custom order and they get delivered anywhere from 90 to 120 days after the order date. But we do have a handful of inventory trailers but those but that is, it’s a, Patrick, a year and a half ago, we wouldn’t have had a single inventory trailer. It wouldn’t have been here. It would have been gone.

Patrick Botticelli: Financing and trade ins? Is it up to the customer? 

Mark Harling: Nope. 

Eleonore Hamm: And then, my question would be on the service side. That’s the one thing is that we know that when you [00:40:00] purchase a unit, at some point there’s going to be servicing.

So how, when you’re factory direct how do you ensure that there’s quality servicing available to your consumer? 

Mark Harling: We do it all on our own. So we try to ship a trailer that’s not going to have any service issues. We do, our warranty claims are less than 3 percent of our of the trailers that we have.

And in general, we, I know this is going to sound crazy to you, but if we don’t trust that there’s a shop that’s going to be able to mitigate the issue, we’ll fly somebody out. We do it all the time. We repair it at your house. And that is the greatest motivation to not send anything out that needs to be repaired.

Brian Searl: Does this in some ways, and I just want to give you a chance to weigh in from a dealer’s perspective to Eleanor and obviously Patrick, you can too, but does this in some way compliment and work [00:41:00] better for dealers too, given that they can specialize in certain areas and models that maybe have a broader appeal than a niche market?

Does it like, does it make sense for? All this to work this way for on both sides? 

Eleonore Hamm: Obviously I’m a dealer’s association, so…

Brian Searl: I know that’s why I’m giving you a they’ve been talking about some negatives. But I don’t think they’re actually negatives. 

Eleonore Hamm: And I think there is product that might be similar that is sold through a dealer network.

I, for me the big thing is the servicing part. Now if it’s true, and it doesn’t need servicing, then great. But we do have laws in Canada about, selling product and standards. And so I just want to ensure consumer safety, and as long as the consumer safety aspect is met, then, it seems like Mark has a business model that’s working for him.

Patrick Botticelli: Are you RVIA certified yet, mark? For your product? 

Mark Harling: Oh, heavens no. I will never be. That, that is the lowest. I can’t imagine… 

Brian Searl: We’re treading into some dangerous waters here. [00:42:00] Alright, go ahead. 

Mark Harling: Yeah I… Yeah maybe the the politically correct thing to say is that, 

Brian Searl: we’re not politically correct here, Phil.

Mark Harling: Yeah, that, that is of no interest to us because that is such a low standard. We are… 

Brian Searl: Okay, but hold on, because I I don’t know anything about the RVIA standard, right? But I want you to explain why you believe it’s a low standard instead of just saying it. 

Mark Harling: Because our, because in general, RV quality…

Is an oxymoron. The reason we started Bean was because of, I couldn’t think of any other industry that can get away with such schlocky, poor craftsmanship. And if you built anything else in the world to that, to what most RVs are built, you would immediately get sued. If you hired a contractor in New Jersey and said, Hey, And the guy said, good news man, I built [00:43:00] your house to RV standards, you’d, Patrick, you’d immediately hire a lawyer to to litigate.

So yeah we, I think we owe a lot of our success to not taking the lead. In how RVs do it. So we do have the certifier it’s PNW out of the Northwest, but it’s, but the REVA standard is something we’d never be, we wouldn’t, we would not be proud of that is, I don’t know how else to put it.

Brian Searl: I just want to, I want to make sure that we’re giving a chance to balance this from a dealer side, right? So Patrick or Eleanor, because I don’t know anything about it. 

Patrick Botticelli: There’s a standard, just like when you’re building a house, it’s building code. 

Brian Searl: Generally with the standard, right? 

Patrick Botticelli: It doesn’t mean that the manufacturer has to do the bare minimums.

Some do. But it has to have a fire extinguisher of a certain size, within a certain proximity. The appliances inside have to be UL listed. There’s a whole long list of things that [00:44:00] they have to do. And it just gives the customer peace of mind that at least it was built to the bare minimum of the standards of the industry, hopefully better.

Brian Searl: But keeping at least, right? Again, keeping at least. It doesn’t, every RV is like that. 

Patrick Botticelli: We build way up and above the RVIA standard. Here’s their guideline. We got the seal on the trailer. That means you can trade it in down the road. It’s NAGA JD power listed. You can get RV insurance on it lemon law, whatever comes with that.

But it’s definitely something, even though you don’t agree with the way the RVs are made and your product is believed to be better, it’s something to think about down the road to protect your customers when they go to purchase, gives them a little bit more peace of mind. And if they have a total loss, they have a value based on J.

1. Power, because it’s R. B. I. manufacturer, and they won’t have any problems trading into a dealer if they wanted to get out of it. And a bank won’t. [00:45:00]

Brian Searl: This is what I wanted to get to, right? Because obviously it’s okay for us to have and hear both perspectives of each side of the story, but very clearly there’s a lot of respect for the bear.

Minimum RVIA standard, whatever that may be, because it’s setting that ground floor, and it’s very important to do that, I think. 

Patrick Botticelli: And every year they up the ante, too, which is good. It keeps manufacturers on their feet. 

Eleonore Hamm: Yeah, the standards are, it’s actually the NFPA 1192, which is the National Fire Protection Association that puts it together.

And it is a safety standard, and in Canada we have the CSA Z240, which is the Canadian Standards Association. And ultimately, there are safety standards. I know in Canada we have provinces that mandate that. So if it is an RV, it has to be certified to that by an accredited third party inspection agency.

So it’s very stringent. So it’s, again, you can build above and beyond you’re utilizing the minimum safety requirements as deemed safe by the inspection [00:46:00] agency. 

Brian Searl: And I think to be fair, like again, like it’s okay to criticize. It’s okay to, again, I think we’re a base standard here, but I think it’s more important to say that.

From our VI standpoint, and again, I’m limited in the RV industry side of things, but when you look at the campground side of things, and even talk about we had a show, I think, a year ago about RVIC, National RVIC, a year and a half ago, trying to come out with standards for campgrounds.

I think there’s, it almost has to be a base set of standards, doesn’t it? Because if you get too high, you’re going to alienate a bunch of people who don’t want to participate in your standard anymore. I think that’s really important. 

Mark Harling: Let me clarify. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, please. 

Mark Harling: I’m not saying that it’s not a good idea to have a third party certification for all the reasons that you guys have enumerated, for sure.

I just don’t believe that’s the, I don’t, it’s not the right direction for you. It’s not the right direction for us. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, which is perfectly fine. Yeah We just want to make sure that we’re balancing with that is it’s a you [00:47:00] It’s not just a you thing, but it is what works for you. 

Mark Harling: Yeah, and there’s you know The thing that people don’t talk about is there’s a lot of political There’s a lot of politics and toll bridge fees that are bundled into your RVIA membership.

That’s, it’s just, it’s not, it’s not.

Patrick Botticelli: Sometimes those fees are really worth it for the RVDA. They go to bat for you with Congress when different laws are about to change that would affect the RV industry, especially when it comes to RV financing, RV insurance. They go to bat for you, but yeah, it is expensive. It’s a cost of being a dealer or a manufacturer, but you gotta understand that eventually someone’s going to be there on your side if for some reason Congress decides to make something [00:48:00] illegal or take something away that they had before.

I think there was just an RV business recently that RVDA was going to bat, but something with Congress in regards to… Campground usage or something in, in that effect, maybe with Harvest Host. 

Brian Searl: I don’t, yeah, I don’t remember, Eleanor, do you remember anything about that? 

Eleonore Hamm: No, you’d have to ask Phil to see what but, yeah, RVDA, RVD of Canada, like ourselves, that’s a lot of, one of our strategic goals as associations is advocacy.

Brian Searl: Lobby, keep, lobby. 

Eleonore Hamm: And, it. It’s, yeah. And that’s what the association brings and, RVIA in the U. S., yes, they’re a very strong voice at the table when it comes to, you look at the Great American Outdoors Act that, that was passed in the States and that, that was spearheaded by the associations and obviously the associations need funding. And that comes from the manufacturers as a member of the association. So it all kind of ties, ties it together. 

Brian Searl: That’s what I wanted to do is just make sure that we told Because obviously there’s [00:49:00] strong opinions on both sides in some cases depending on who you’re talking to and I don’t think it’s a kind of like the harvest hosts Versus the private campground owners if they don’t get together and talk They don’t realize that they’re both kind of benefiting each other and maybe they’re not a good fit Like not everybody’s a good fit in this bucket or this bucket, but there’s a common ground in the middle that everybody’s working towards.

And that’s getting more people outside and camping and in safe rigs. And whether that’s your standards or IVIA standards or whatever, there’s good things being done from all sides, I feel and so I just want to make sure we kind of balance that, it’s very easy to not and to just take one.

Patrick Botticelli: There’s a lot of times at the dealership level, people. I’ll just put camper vans. They had someone build them a van, and it’s beautiful, it’s gorgeous, but there’s no way to trade it in, because it’s not an RV, it’s not recognized as an RV, there’s no book value, so it’s just a converted van at this point, and then that person that owns that is stuck, they have to sell it on their [00:50:00] own, and then when they go to sell it, the person that wants to buy it, they go to their bank to try to get a loan on it, and it’s not an RV, They’re going to have the same problem when they go to get insurance.

That’s why a lot of these RV van builders are becoming RVA certified because they want to scale their business. And they heard all these pain points from their previous customers that had bought one of their products. So they’re trying to do the right thing in that respect. And there’s a lot of stuff that they did learn that the RV IA, it’s a big book that comes with it.

And they can actually come out and inspect your shop. 8 times during the year to make sure that you’re building to their standards and there’s it’s a good learning experience if that, even if they decided not to become RVA, just to know what’s expected. 

Brian Searl: Makes sense. Okay. All right. We got five minutes left.

That was our… Big unintended controversial dive into the show for maybe the rest of the year, hopefully, but we’ll find out So [00:51:00] what else do we have that we want to any closing thoughts guys on I mean we killed an hour pretty fast there Yeah, so I’m into van life. I don’t live in a van I live in a house, but I have a really cool Airstream camper van And everybody’s controversy is like, when did van life start?

When was the day it started? I can tell you, people have been camping in vans since the 60s and 70s. But it was a different approach. We need a date, 

Patrick. I need an exact date. I’m going to hold you to it right now. It is January 2002. That’s when Mercedes Benz brought the Sprinter into the United States.

Patrick Botticelli: It was the first van that you could buy off a dealer’s lot that you could stand up in. Before that, if you wanted a van you had to buy a van and have someone put a high top or a pop top on it. That was a game changer. When we were in the RV business, it was like our first year. When the Sprinter came out, the phone would not stop ringing off the hook.

Airstream didn’t even make [00:52:00] Class B vans during that period of time. They were just getting back into it. They stopped in 2000. Winnebago didn’t make camper vans. They stopped after they built the Rialta in that same time period. And everybody said, when is Airstream, when is Winnebago going to build something on the Sprinter?

And then we’d have a group of people that would come in just to, when the Airstream Interstate first came out. 2004 model year. Just to see it so they could take measurements because they wanted to build their own. And we’re like, are you nuts? Why would you want to build your own van? We have these vans here.

No. I want it my way. Then we actually seen people that would full time live in these vans. Because you could stand in it. You could have a full bed. You could have a shower, bath, and toilet. Whatever you needed inside of it. So that was like when it first really, it clicked in people’s head. People had an ah ha moment.

I could just buy a van and convert it and not have to crawl around and duck around while I’m inside of it. And then, as internet became more and more available anywhere, people said, wow, I could actually take this [00:53:00] van and still have some sort of work life or connection with my friends and family while I’m out on the road.

And then internet got better, and jobs started offering remote. This is before COVID. You could work remote. So people said, why can’t we just build a van or buy an RV and travel the country and still check in and go to a campground and earn a paycheck? And then COVID happened and people said now I definitely don’t have to go to work.

I have to work remote. Starlink is now available. So now you could be out in the middle of nowhere. Boondocking, Overlanding, and still get a signal and still earn a paycheck it really scaled. When I first started selling Airstream Vans The statistical surveys at that point I think between Road Track Pleasure Way Airstream, Leisure Travel was building vans back then, Great West Van.

There was only, I would say, less than 10 [00:54:00] manufacturers of building camper vans. Altogether, the shipment totals were 600 vans. And then the next year was 800, and then 1100, and 1200, and then a decline in 2008, 9, 10. And then Winnebago got into the Class B market and started with the era, and really scaled it from there.

And now, There’s probably 50 to 60 major RV manufacturers that are built, maybe there’s more, there’s probably more, that are building these camper vans and it really scaled. Now you see the shipments on statistical surveys, it’s in the tens of thousands of Class B vans that are being sold and shipped each year, it’s unbelievable.

And they’re mobile, it’s freedom. I know you’re in the campground world. There’s so many people that buy vans, buy them so they don’t have to go to a campground, so they have the freedom, they can be able to go and park wherever they can. I still go to campgrounds when I use my Airstream Campervan, but I don’t have to if I didn’t want [00:55:00] to.

It does give me that freedom, whereas if I had my Airstream Travel Trailer, I really am reliant on going to a campground to plug in and let it set up for the day. That would be my base camp, and I could go out in my truck and do my adventures and have a place to go back to so. 

Brian Searl: What we really need is like a some kind of a hybrid Tesla summon feature right so you can go hike In the boondock wilderness, do all your nature things, and then just send the trailer to the campground to power up its EV and then drive back and pick you up when you’re done, right?

Patrick Botticelli: Yeah, Airstream came out of the prototype. We get calls on it all the time. It’s nowhere near even being complete. It’s called the E Stream. It’s a trailer that actually self drives. It has to be towed by something, but it actually propels itself, so it doesn’t lower the fuel economy. On the electric vehicle that’s pulling it and it’s 100% runs off grid, off lithium.

It is unbelievable. And they had it at the Tampa RV show January 20 [00:56:00] maybe, yeah, January, 2022. And they were just driving this thing around remote control. And it was pretty fascinating. So I could see that’s the direction that the RV. industry may eventually go. They’re a long way away from developing this product because now you have something that actually drives.

So there’s National Transportation Highway Association, there’s lots of laws and things that they have to get approved in order for this to work, but the idea is out there. 

Brian Searl: All right, we’ll have to dive into that on a future show sometime ’cause I’m a big geek and I’d love to talk about all that kind of stuff.

Patrick Botticelli: But I really appreciate you guys being here. Eleanor. Any final thoughts before we wrap up? We’re a couple minutes over. 

Eleonore Hamm: Thank you very much for the opportunity. It’s it’s always a pleasure and it was nice meeting you Patrick. And maybe we’ll see you at the RVDA convention sometime.

Patrick Botticelli: Absolutely. 

Brian Searl: Patrick. We can patrick Kin thanks to find you 

on YouTube?

Patrick Botticelli: So it’s New Jersey Outdoor Adventures on YouTube. 

Brian Searl: Made you go outside of New Jersey. What’s that? You do go outside 

Patrick Botticelli: of New Jersey occasionally? I do but my home base is in New Jersey. I love New [00:57:00] Jersey. You could do everything in New Jersey.

You could drive an hour in any direction and you’re either in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, New York City, Catskills you could get to pretty quickly Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. So you could be in the city, in the country, on the shore. And I love the Jersey Shore. The beach is unbelievable. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Eleanor Hamm from RVDF Canada.

Appreciate you being here as always. And Mark as well. Mark’s here. He just popped back in. Hi Mark, we gotta go. But thank you so much for joining us and it’s beantrailer.Com. I’m just going to speak for Mark. 

Patrick Botticelli: Beautiful product. I love what you guys are doing out there. I admire it. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Appreciate you guys.

Patrick Botticelli: Thanks again to our sponsor, XS Parks. We’ll see you next week. We’ll be live from the Glamping Show in Denver, Colorado. Take care guys, appreciate you, See you!

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