Despite the talk of a worker shortage and a March unemployment rate under 2%, economic growth continues in Elkhart County (Indiana).
Grand Design RV, a manufacturer of high-quality towable fifth wheel and travel trailers, is building four new support and manufacturing facilities at the Middlebury branch.
Grand Design plans to employ 700 new workers before the end of 2023, which would be an increase of 25% in its current workforce.
“The labor shortage is real, and there are multiple different industries that have a crunch on their labor force, and staffing is difficult, and the cost of labor has gone up,” Elkhart Mayor Rod Roberson told 16 News Now. “But the market adjusts because goods are still in demand, and we adjust to that, and we keep going.”
Grand Design, on Thursday, hosted an opening celebration at its new 300,000 square foot facility located at C.R. 17 in Elkhart.
The company isn’t planning to build anything at its Elkhart facility, with the possible exception of customer loyalty. The building is a service center.
“We’re in the service business, we just happen to sell RVs,” said Grand Design’s President and CEO, Don Clark. “We’ve moved into this almost 300,000 square foot facility which about doubles the capacity of our service, parts, and warranty.”
Grand Design now employs a little over 2,700 workers.
“We decided that we weren’t going to force our growth,” said Grand Design CEO and President Don Clark.
“That our growth was going to be dependent on the customer retail demand for our product. We haven’t forced any growth. We let the customers kind of dictate to us, in the popularity of our products.”
This story originally appeared on WNDU.