Celebrating Derema Group’s 25th Anniversary of Repping Industry Vendors

Outside of Philadelphia in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is the headquarters for Derema Group — a company that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and firmly rooted in the marine and RV industries.

Founded in 2000 as a sales and marketing solutions agency for the marine arena, Derema Group came together after the convergence of two different rep companies on two different coasts. This merger occurred when many companies in the marine space were also consolidating in the 1990s.

Kurt Forsman, now president of Derema Group, had been with Eastern Marketing Associates since 1991; that company eventually made up the “EMA” of Derema.

“They all got together and said, ‘this is crazy, we’re the two biggest companies,’” Forsman says, referring to the East Coast and West Coast agencies. “We should think of this differently. And so, in 2000, it merged together.”

RV came into Derema’s fold later in 2017. Forsman says that just as some distributors were merging on the marine side, such as Land ‘N’ Sea buying Bell Industries, Derema was a player in that industry, but their clients were asking them to get into the RV space as well.

“We don’t like to build things and hope they come,” Forsman says. “We very methodically plotted it out and then hired RV individual specialists to come into the industry when we thought it was the appropriate time with the appropriate backings of different parties, different stakeholders within both the vendor community and the customer community.

“They said ‘you should do this.’ And we finally said, OK, that’s fair. We’re ready now.”

How It All Works

The goal of Derema is to work with a vendor to build its catalog of products — organizing part numbers, using field intelligence to inform pricing, etc. So, there is that side of marketing and product development, Forsman says. Then from the customer side, Derema Group calls on the dealers to learn what they need, and with the understanding of their vendors they can bring programs to distributors.

For the dealers, Forsman says it’s important to have “meaningful sales interactions” — or MSIs, as he calls them.

“I want our team to go and really look at the opportunities. And that opportunity doesn’t mean sell it to somebody,” he says. “That opportunity means how can we assist this company, this dealership, to grow, to be profitable, to be all those things they need to be.

“From that perspective, when we go to a dealership, we’ll reorganize their store — we’ll do a store set if they want us to. We’ll help them figure out what should be in starter packs or their plumbing aisle. We help them with popularities, and then we tend to do things that help move it off the shelf.”

Forsman says much of what they do with dealers is to be their “partner within.”

“And that’s because of our partnership with [the brand] to help bring awareness to the marketplace on the products and how they work. It’s not about selling; it’s about showing the marketplace the advantages and then they can decide if they like that or not.”

Giving dealers tools such as consumer coupons, doing a refresh of the retail store once a year or offering a rebate all helps the partnership, Forsman says.

Partnering With Intentionality

While Derema Group’s headquarters is outside Philadelphia, most employees work out of their homes because they’re often on the road. “We feel being in the marketplace near the customer is more important,” Forsman says.

Conducting those MSIs — the meaningful sales interactions — is an important measure of an employee’s success at Derema, but those get carried out by tactical steps that have proved to encourage growth for clients. In addition to the MSIs, promoting products by building content such as videos and setting up a digital twin of their store that includes that video content are all elements that fuel growth.

Distributors and dealers can access vendor content with Derema Help and Derema Help RV – a marketing library housed on Derema’s website and on Android and Apple app stores. These are assets that a distributor or dealer can use to make a sale, Forsman says.

The key for Derema is to look at the process backward, Forsman says. What’s most important is for the distributors or dealers to sell more — the more they are selling, they more they are buying from the vendors.

“We really work on making sure the dealer has the information and the assets and the materials to help them come through,” Forsman says.

For instance, typically when unit sales are down, repair work goes up. During those times, the agency tries to work with dealers on what they’ll need to keep repair work humming along. Derema will help them with things such as information to email to consumers on replacing their RV’s roof or other maintenance or repair jobs.

“So, it’s not about selling it to them, it’s about them selling it. We really focus on how to pull it through. If you think of it that way, as those challenges come in, we just change the narrative toward the thing that’s moving at the time,” Forsman says.

On Solid Ground

Forsman says that at this point in the company’s history, after 25 years of business, he feels it is in a good place, with “definitive succession planning” in place and a desire to grow year over year. Derema Group is involved with the RV Technical Institute and the RV Industry Association (RVIA) and won the RVIA Rep Group of the Year this year for the second year in a row.

With 36 employees, including 25 outside sales specialist and four customer specialists, Forsman says they can handle different segments of the industry and different marketplaces, including Amazon, Walmart and more.

“We’re here to support the marketplace in all aspects of it,” Forsman says. “We’re always working on programs to make it a level playing field and support the dealer through to the consumer.

“It’s not about loading a dealer up. We’ll give them every asset that they need. We’ll help them merchandise, [and] we’ll get them all those pieces that they may need to engage customers.”

And after 25 years in the game, Derema Group has the roots to help others grow.