Airstream CEO Bob Wheeler wants to be clear that he’s in no way happy about the COVID-19 crisis. He is, however, happy that none of his factory employees have tested positive for the virus. And it turns out that the pandemic has led to a business boom for Airstream, the likes of which Wheeler has never seen. It’s easy to see why.
“It’s hard to imagine a product that checks as many boxes as an RV for the emerging pandemic lifestyle,” he said in an interview with Business Insider.
Airstream has been manufacturing its silvery, aluminum travel trailers in Ohio for 86 years. Wheeler, who has been running the show since 2005, couldn’t have anticipated a complete shutdown of the company’s production due to the coronavirus pandemic. One that hit particularly hard, since Airstream had just opened a new, 725,000-square-foot factory. But that’s exactly what happened on March 20. Airstream didn’t get the greenlight to restart manufacturing until May 4, just in time to get cranking.
Click here to read the entire story from Matthew DeBord at BusinessInsider.com.
“We had anticipated in April that we’d be off by 70 percent year-over-year for retail sales in the U.S.,” he said. “But we were only off 30 percent. Then in May we broke our all-time record for a month, dating back to 1980, when we started to keep track.”
That translated to a 45 percent jump compared to 2019, according to numbers based on warranty registrations. In June, sales were up more than 100 percent.
