Leading by Example

While Chris Davis has always been attracted to entrepreneurship, his move to the RV industry came from a helpful connection — his family.

His wife, Genna, is part of the Baidas family, which opened the business in 1953 as a Mobil gas station in Detroit, Michigan.

That venture has grown into 23 full-service dealerships in 10 states, with the son of founder Abe Baidas, Rob Baidas, serving as chairman. Loren Baidas, grandson of founder Abe Baidas and son of long-time President Richard “Dick” Baidas, serves as CEO.

Davis was named president in 2024 after serving as director of finance since 2011. With a background in real estate and banking and a degree in finance from Miami University, Davis says coming onboard with the family business was good timing.

“I think they’ve always had a growth mindset. I think that’s what’s always attracted me to working with them,” Davis says. “We’re never complacent. We’re always moving forward, and growth doesn’t always necessarily mean we’re adding locations. Growth can be we’re building new buildings; we’re making a better customer experience.”

The Many Forms of Growth

Davis says during his first 10 years with the company, growth is where much of his time was focused.

“There wasn’t a facility that we didn’t touch and make better, make bigger, add service capacity,” he says.

It was important to the company to invest in the markets it believed in, he says, and ensure the facilities reflected the experience they wanted customers to have. The ability to execute on the changes the company wanted to make was appealing, Davis says, noting that progress can be slow in a larger corporation like where he used to work.

“When you go to a family business, [it’s] the exact opposite of a corporate environment. We are able to move quickly, try new things and say ‘why not make that change?’” Davis says.

In addition to being involved in the company’s real estate transactions and its Finance & Insurance team, Davis was also involved in construction projects — wearing a number of hats like many people do in a family business.

“I wanted to be a leader on the team, and I wanted to make an impact, and I wanted to just work hard,” he says.

As the company grew and began building its leadership team, Davis says they added a few titles such as CFO and human resources director, while other titles were realigned on the leadership team, including him being named president.

“General RV is, with their leadership team, incredibly transparent,” Davis says. “We’ve got a very good leadership team that we’ve built over the last 15-plus years, but many of them have more tenure than that … so it’s exciting to be able to work with a team that has that.”

In addition to the 23 retail and service locations, General RV operates a pre-delivery inspection (PDI) facility in Elkhart, Indiana. This is where coaches are prepped for sale.

General RV is focused on bigger markets, and recently add a location in North Carolina where there has been a lot of population growth.

“We like the synergy of our locations being a couple hours apart from each other,” Davis says. “So there’s a little bit of a synergy you get from sharing resources and inventory and things like that.”

It’s not in the company’s plans to open locations in what they would consider B or C markets, he says.

“We like the big markets. We like to be on the freeway. And that’s really kind of our core. So you’ll probably never see us go to tertiary markets … that isn’t part of our formula.”

The People Differentiator

One of the company’s most important assets — if not the most important — is its people.

“We think of people as one of our biggest differentiators. We think it’s part of what makes us unique,” Davis says. “I think enthusiastic is a great way to describe [them]. We have a great group that is always willing to help, whether … it’s a resource issue and we’re staffing a show in another market — can we help send some people from store A to B to help that inventory flow? I think our people are always willing to help out our other stores and our other teammates.”

Davis says you’d never hear a team member from Florida refuse to help out a team in Michigan, for example.

“That’s not part of our DNA. [You] would not last very long if you’re not willing to help. … We look at it [as] they’re all General RV locations. We’re all trying to move them forward, and we know it’s a team effort to make it happen. So we want to make sure that everyone’s playing a role in supporting that.”

Facing the Ups & Downs

While the last few years have been a little tough on the industry, Davis says General RV is weathering the storms.

“Overall, I think we’re in a really good spot. We’ve added nine locations over the last three years. So I think we had a very disciplined approach to how we wanted to grow. I think that’s one thing [that] is absolutely unique about us,” he says.

It was important for General RV to have a disciplined strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic and coming out of it. Davis says they were focused on making all of their facilities and customer service better.

“We’re entering our third difficult year of RV business; we’ve been preparing for it,” he says. “We’ve focused on how [to] integrate the nine new locations into General RV … we really want to focus on those new locations and making sure that we’re really progressing them to become a General RV store.”

As for the leadership teams at each store, Davis says they typically come from management at other locations, bringing the company’s story and formula to the new local team.

Davis says that while 2026 could be a difficult year, he feels it’s important to focus on the fundamentals, so you’re ready when the market does come back.

One way they’re focusing on the fundamentals is by improving customer satisfaction. The dealerships have started every meeting discussing a customer service topic, he says. General RV’s customer satisfaction metric tool, Net Promoter Score (NPS), went from an average of mid-30s three years ago to a company high of 55 this year thanks to that focus on customer service. And they’re not done improving yet.

“It’s taking care of the customer, and that’s what it’s all about. That’s part of the fundamentals,” he says.

For General RV’s leadership team, it’s important to stay dedicated to people development and training, growing new leaders for the business, Davis says.

“We’ll always be a company that focuses on people at end of the day,” he says. “That growth mindset — we’re never going to be complacent. You might not see us grow locations, but that doesn’t mean we’re done growing, finding ways to get better.

“And I think we have a mindset of always being willing to help, always willing to be a team player. I think a lot of [employees] share the same philosophy — the drive to be a better company every single day.”