This profile on Winnebago appeared in Forbes magazine.
Winnebago Industries reinvented itself just in time, acquiring some other RV brands to add to its iconic marque so that the company could participate fully in the ongoing RV sales boom that has been accompanying the pandemic.
As a result, Winnebago Industries’ revenues for fiscal 2021 were about $3 billion, about triple its corporate revenues in fiscal 2015. And its market capitalization rose to more than $2 billion from just $450 million in January 2016. In a market that practically is synonymous with the company’s name, Winnebago Industries’ market share has risen to 12 percent of U.S. sales from just 3 percent five years ago.
This is good news to the growing stream of American RV buyers, of course. But it’s of more immediate consequences to three other important stakeholders: employees, dealers and suppliers of the Forest City, Iowa-based outfit, who had grown worried about the future of the company several years ago even while the pre-pandemic, decade-long boom in U.S. RV sales was well underway. Call it a win-win-win-win-with-Winnebago Industries turnabout.
Winnebago’s paltry share of that market “scared people, because they associated the brand with a leadership position,” Winnebago Industries CEO Michael Happe, the executive responsible for the company’s turnaround, told me. “Winnebago didn’t have the share that it probably deserved and wasn’t participating effectively in most of the RV market. And it wasn’t providing a strong return to shareholders.”
To read the full story from Dale Buss in Forbes, click here.