Airstream president and CEO Bob Wheeler said his company has seen a 50 percent increase in sales in the past year due to an expansion into markets his company left during the recession, an expanded ad campaign, and new products rolled out in the past year.
“Our typical customer isn’t affluent. They’ve saved up for the best and they believe our products will be around forever,” Wheeler said.
While most of that growth has been on both coasts, Wheeler said Ohio ranked fourth out of 50 states in total sales in 2013 and eighth in total sales in the past 12 months.
Due to the sales increase, hiring at the company is up 26 percent, according to Wheeler.
Inventor, writer Wally Byam designed the aerodynamic rig back in the 1920s, started his company in Los Angeles in 1930, saw the business go on hiatus during World War II but then come back with a boom in the late 1940s.
Even amid periodic gas crises and the push for more fuel-efficient means of transportation, Airstream keeps molding aluminum in impressive numbers. Its factory still produces 50 trailers a week and, according to Investor’s Business Daily, enjoyed a 59 percent increase in revenue in 2013 over the previous fiscal year.
Perhaps more impressive, the company boasts that 60 percent of all the trailers it has produced over the past 80 years are still in use.
RV sales saw a nine percent increase in 2013, and the retail value of 2013 shipments reached $12.9 billion, a nearly 20 percent increase over 2012’s numbers, according to the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association.
Campers aren’t picking out just any RV. They are choosing higher-end vehicles that range between $42,000 up to $160,000, according to Sherman Goldenberg, publisher of RV Business magazine.
“It’s a combination of a national chain called Camping World, NASCAR events, a national go RVing campaign, and word of mouth that has led to a resumption of American love with RVs,” Goldenberg said.
Eddie Unger, general sales manager at Tom Raper RV’s, said stabilized fuel prices and low interest rates have meant campers can afford RVs.
But people also like the convenience of the RV in place of needing to pack every little thing each time they go camping.
“People can just pull into the campsite. The silverware is all there, the bed linen is there. You just have to hook up the the electricity and water,” said Brad Cattran, sales manager at the Dayton branch of Midwest RV.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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