Camping World’s current consumer retention numbers are not good enough for chairman and CEO Marcus Lemonis.
On the company’s third fiscal quarter report conference call Lemonis said, “We have recognized that our retention of customers who buy from us has room for improvement in the second, third and fourth year of their ownership.”
Lemonis said the dealer chain is developing strategies to counteract this. The company will roll out the developments in 2025.
He said, “We are not pleased in our ability to retain those people at the rate that is consistent with how we do everything else in the company.”
Lemonis said another initiative is to drive down Type C motorhome monthly payments. He said around a decade ago, a monthly payment would have been around $399; today, payments average $699 and higher.
He said the company will work with manufacturers to adjust rates while avoiding de-contenting approaches.
On the motorhome subject, Lemonis said the company is concerned about the overall Type A motorhome diesel market. According to Lemonis, the segment continues to contract. He said the dealer is moving away from diesel Type As and toward entry-level Type A motorhomes along with the Type B and C segments.
Asked about the broader health of the RV dealer network, Lemonis said after challenges encircled dealers throughout the year, “We are pleased to tell you that it looks like a large chunk of the RV market is much healthier than it was a year ago.”
He said dealers have the right disciplines and inventory strategies. Lemonis recognized Forest River and Thor for helping dealers by not overproducing inventory.
According to Lemonis, although a subset of vulnerable dealers remains, “as we head into 2025, we are excited to be opportunistic about doing what this company does very well, which is making acquisitions that on a long-term basis have 20-plus percent returns on a cash-on-cash basis.”
Lemonis projected acquiring between 12 to 15 stores annually going into 2025. He said certain years may exceed this range. The chain currently has more than 200 locations.
During the quarter, Camping World dealerships were affected by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.
He said, “It was the first time in my 20 years that we had so many stores negatively affected by a back-to-back storms in the same region.”
For a few days, between 25 and 30 Camping World locations were closed due to the storms. Lemonis estimated between 300-400 RV sales were lost.
However, the storms did not reap widespread devastations compared with Hurricane Ian, which struck Fort Myers, Florida, in 2022.
He said, “We have not quite seen that demand and candidly, we are happy that happened, because we do not need to sell on top of other people’s peril.”
