Craig Kirby, president and CEO of the RV Industry Association, wrote this letter to membership in advance of the holiday weekend.
Good morning members,
As we enter Labor Day weekend, I thought I would send our members a quick note with my thoughts on the current state of the industry. For the first time in well over a year, we saw monthly RV shipments decrease. While it is easy to look at this as a negative, the truth is we’ve been expecting and forecasting a decrease in shipments in the second half of the year – primarily due to dealers across the country managing through their inventory and planning out for 2023.
I think it is important that we take these recent decreases in context. Beginning in July of 2020, the RV industry set a new monthly record for 19 of the past 25 months. We saw every month in 2021 best the previous year’s number for that month – apart from December 2021 where the record was missed by 35 units. And that record-breaking trend continued through May of this year. The RV industry has never experienced a continuous run like that in as long as the RV Industry Association has been collecting RV shipment data.
ITR Economics, who manages shipment forecasting for the RV Industry Association, still projects 2022 to be the second or third best year on record for RV shipments, and projects 2023 to be in line with our 10-year average – considerably above our 20 and 30-year numbers. For decades our industry has seen ebbs and flows, yet we’ve seen overall continuous shipment growth for more than 40 years.
Looking ahead, what we’ve learned from our new buyer research is that today’s RV buyer is younger and more diverse than ever, and that positive trend is happening not only here but also globally. I just returned from Caravan Salon, and in talking with my counterparts in Europe and Australia, they too are seeing younger buyers flocking to RVing. People realize that RVs are the perfect way to experience the mental and physical benefits that come from living an active outdoor lifestyle.
Even with shipments leveling off from all-time highs, this is still a great time to be in the RV industry. If we continue to focus on building innovative, quality products, serving our customers, and providing excellent experiences at every level, our trend of growth will extend well into the future.
Thanks to the hard work and dedication from those in our industry, millions of people are heading out in their RV to their favorite campgrounds to spend time with friends and family this weekend. I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend, and thanks for your continued support.
Best,
Craig