The RV industry has seen an unprecedented increase in the last two years, and the industry’s proven ability to come together even in the face of hardship is what made it possible.
This is the message of Craig Kirby, president of the RV Industry Association (RVIA), who gave a speech on the current state of the RV industry at the 9th Annual RV Industry Power Breakfast held on December 2 at the Northern Indiana Event Center, part of the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart.
Kirby believes that the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered how people view and interact with their world. It caused people to reconsider their lives and what is most essential. Reconnecting with the natural world and spending time outdoors is a must for many people. This ideal is precisely what RV life offers.
“RVing has experienced a never-before-seen level of interest, and our industry has risen to the challenging, meeting demand by producing record numbers of shipments,” Kirby told the crowd of about 1,000 RV industry officials and allies early Thursday morning. “As I look back on the past two years and how much we’ve accomplished, especially considering the industry was shut down for about two months, I quickly realized what I wanted to talk about this morning: industry unity.”
According to RVIA’s president, the unity could not be more clearly demonstrated than at the very start of the pandemic, when the brand new Industry Relaunch Task Force was established.
“Industry leaders from manufacturers, suppliers, aftermarket, finance firms, dealers, campgrounds, and U.S. and Canadian associations, were instrumental in providing real-time data and information as to what was happening in each segment of the industry, which enabled us together to target specific industry obstacles, especially focusing on having the industry members declared essential businesses by the government,” Kirby said.
“The Industry Relaunch Task Force exhibited the best industry collaboration I’ve ever witnessed, and that is saying a lot, considering how industry unity is responsible for some of our biggest successes.”
Another excellent example of unity in the RV industry is the long-running national campaign Go RVing. It is part of a joint venture between RVIA and the RV Dealers Association (RVDA) and is now in its 25th year.
“In the over 20 years that it’s been in existence, no other industry has been able to launch a campaign of the same size, scope, and with comparable success,” Kirby said.
Another such area is our coordinated industry advocacy efforts, which played a critical role recently in the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act, the largest funding of federal and state parks in over 60 years. Another is the RV Technical Institute. Manufacturers, suppliers, and dealers all recognized that more needed to be done to recruit and train RV service technicians, leading to a multi-million dollar investment, and now we have a full-time staff at RVTI focused on this crucial area.