Lippert purchased Camping World’s aftermarket furniture business on Friday. The company said the acquisition expands Lippert’s furniture portfolio offerings for RV and marine OEM and aftermarket customers.
Lippert said the acquired furniture will provide enhanced and innovative products.
Jason Lippert, president and CEO of Lippert, said, “We are very excited to bring the Lippert and Camping World partnership to new levels. While we have been key partners for years, both organizations feel strongly that there is more to do to improve the customer experience as suppliers and dealers. Our goal is to combine Lippert’s technical subject matter expertise, training, products and innovation with Camping World’s vast network of dealerships to be the leading force in RV installations, enhancements and repairs.”
Lippert first entered the RV interiors segment in 2009. As a Camping World premier vendor, Lippert will have the opportunity to influence how its products are positioned within Camping World retail stores. Camping World and Lippert will also work together to enhance selection on Camping World’s websites, campingworld.com and overtons.com.
Camping World Chairman and CEO Marcus Lemonis said, “We look forward to our expanded partnership as we collectively work toward further elevating the retail and service experience in our dealerships.”
Lemonis previewed the announcement on Camping World’s analyst call May 2. He said as part of the furniture business sale, Camping World entered into a supplier agreement to give the dealer chair the “proper pricing for giving them the proper amount of business.”
The sale is part of a year-long retail store reset across the Camping World chain. Lemonis said the company will spend $10 million to bring all 215 locations to one retail store standard.
“As most people know, we accumulated all 200 stores over 20 years, 30 years, 40 years,” Lemonis said. “They have different iterations inside of them, based on where we were in our lifecycle. We are going to press the reset button one time. We have now come up with the proper assortment to address aftermarket parts repair, replacement and enhancement.”
Lemonis said Camping World stores will primarily feature Lippert products, with Airxcel products secondarily and then other suppliers and distributors such as NTP-Stag.
“That doesn’t mean we still won’t…import our own products for margin improvement,” Lemonis said. “There are a variety of other vendors that will be there but we needed to do the same thing on the retail side that has given us the dominance on the RV sales side.”
