rlw999 wrote:
toedtoes wrote:
So for most people, paying for a better quality vehicle is a no brainer. But for an RV, many folks will forego quality to get a better price, or get the floorplan or size they want.
I think the floorplan variety is part of the problem - like look at Forest River - they have 4 bumper pull travel trailer sub-brands (and that doesn't even include their fifth wheel and toy haulers), and each of those sub-brands has between 10 to 17 different floorplans.
There's no way they can develop custom jigs and other tooling devoted to each floorplan when they need to assemble 40 different varieties of TT, and they also can't develop best practices for how to assemble them because lessons learned on cable routing or how to mount the cabinets more securely aren't the same for each floorplan.
This is the fundamental problem.
- 30-50,000 units per year is marginal to keep a model of car going.
- A very popular RV model may do 5-10,000 per year.
There is no way to do a dedicated production line for each model of RV.
There are plenty of threads where people are looking for some oddball layouts...where those layouts exist, it's likely sales numbers in the 100's not even 1000's.
Home building is a much more comparable industry and anyone who has had a house built, knows there is a teething period where the contractor is called back to address issues.
On top of this, it's boom times for the industry and they can't hire enough workers...let alone high quality workers. Expecting them to give up 30-50% of sales when they are getting top dollar today is insanity.
Disrupting the market is far easier when the economy is down, particularly for a luxury item. Companies can be choosy about picking workers. Companies aren't under pressure to get more units out the door, so they can put more emphasis on quality and cutting warranty costs to protect thinner margins.
And to be quite honest, probably 90% of buyers of new RVs emphasize layout and cool looks over quality. The guys who buy so they can keep an RV for 20-30yrs are a negligible part of the market.
