This week, the RV Industry Association turned a spotlight on Brett Randall, president and CEO of Aliner.
Six years after being brought in to turn around then-struggling Aliner, President and CEO Brett Randall was feeling confident enough about the future of the business to buy out some of the investors to become the majority shareholder. Then COVID hit.
While its former customers tended to be empty-nesters and early retirees, Aliner suddenly experienced a large increase in interest from young families and millennials. So, the company introduced its first four-person, lightweight towable model for young families and for grandparents and their grandchildren. It also revamped its website, making it more consumer-oriented and easier to peruse floor plans and options.
“What we’ve been seeing are a lot of both first-time RV buyers and people returning to camping as a safe and economical way to recreate and spend time with their families,” said Randall.
“A lot” are the operative words here, as the company has had to reduce its variety of floor plans to focus on increasing the quantity of units it produces. A-Liner now features 13 floor plans – some with toilets and showers – and three more for their European market. All can be set up within 30 seconds and collapsed for easy storage in a home garage. They are currently sold out for 2022.
“We’ve been really fortunate with supply chain issues,” said Randall. “We saw them coming in early summer 2020, so we met with our key vendors to see how we could be the best customer we could be for them. All of them had different asks, but we wanted to stay high on their lists.”
The results speak for themselves, and Randall has been very pleased with the vendor and dealer partners with whom they’ve worked so closely over the past 18 months.
“Our vendors really stepped up and we have a great dealer base representing the brand,” he said.
Once again, the future is looking bright for Aliner and for manufacturer-turned-entrepreneur-turned manufacturer-again Randall.
Click here to read the full article from RVIA staff.
