Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis, speaking at Baird’s 2018 conference this week, detailed that the company’s plan behind the acquisition of Gander Mountain – now Gander Outdoors – was to add RV dealerships to the locations.
Dubbed “Gander RV,” Lemonis clarified that getting into “pure-box retail business” and “sell[ing] sporting goods … was never ultimately the plan.” Various Gander Outdoors locations have adjacent land that was bought by Camping World to build full dealerships. About 80 percent of the 198 Camping World and Gander Outdoor sites will sell RVs.
“The goal,” Lemonis said during the conference, “was to get into markets and into real estate that allowed us to go in and install RV dealerships into as many as we possibly could and come through the marketplace in the back door.”
The Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana markets, he said, didn’t have any “attractive” acquisition opportunities. And that, rather than purchase land and construct dealerships, that it was more cost effective to buy Gander Mountain.
“The capital that’s been invested in capex in these 60-something odd locations was largely done to pave the way for the RV showroom to be set up, the sales offices to be set up and for the units to be displayed outside,” said Lemonis. “And the capital that’s been deployed for Gander on the inventory side is at its highest watermark.”
Lemonis admitted not wanting to alert RV competitors in the regions what Camping World’s ultimate plans were.
“The plan always was to use those as entry points for additional dealerships,” said Lemonis. “What I wasn’t willing to do was have competitors in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas brace for it, prepare for it and strategize for it. We wanted to get the store set up. We wanted to get the processes and the licensing set up.”
A version of this story originally appeared on SGBOnline.com.
