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If you are an R-Vision dealer, you know what I mean.

It seems that R-Vision’s "Co-President" Denny Bailey has decided to take a page from Western Recreational Vehicle’s (WRV) playbook and impose an edict that didn’t work for WRV in 1996-1997 and won’t work any better for Bailey today.

Under the memo heading "New Advertising Policy" Bailey told R-Vision dealers in June that the rules are changing for the Internet. He wrote, "No authorized R-Vision dealer may advertise new, untitled R-Vision recreation vehicles outside of the dealer’s market area through any Internet, home page, browser, portal or publication. Dealer’s are further restricted from promoting any language that suggests a customer can take delivery of an R-Vision product at the factory or outside the dealer’s market area."

And what if the dealer does mention R-Vision’s products on his or her web site and it goes beyond the dealer’s market area? First time, the dealer gets a warning. If it happens again, the dealer is terminated as an R-Vision dealer.

RV News has no issue with the "factory delivery" aspect of Bailey’s new Internet policy. A manufacturer either does factory deliveries or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t allow factory deliveries, it would be nonsensical for dealers representing that product line to suggest that it does.

Our issue is with the shortsighted and lame declaration that RV dealers cannot use their web sites to promote the products they sell – including R-Vision’s. And as far as where and how a dealer delivers a unit to his customer is really nobody’s business but the dealer and his buyer.

I live in the Phoenix area. What this policy tells me if I bought a unit in this area, but wanted it delivered and set up on property in Colorado, the dealer could not service me. It’s really none of R-Vision’s business where I have my unit delivered if the dealer is willing to take it where I want it located.

Is R-Vision attempting to do away with free enterprise, one of the cornerstones of capitalism?

On the other hand, we admit that in a free enterprise system, R-Vision has the right to make policies no matter how stupid the policy is or how ridiculous it makes the company look.

It seems to us that Bailey’s new policy, even if it had any merit, will be hard to enforce. Why? Because R-Vision dealers do not have manufacturer-dealer agreements, only a letter; RVision does not have protected market areas—R-Vision can set up a new dealer in a current dealer’s back yard and the dealer really has no recourse except to accept it or drop the line.

So is the Internet perfect? Arguably no. But it is the greatest innovation in selling products and services to come along in many years. It does give businesses an inexpensive way to market and sell their products to a worldwide audience. Is it effective? Dealers who have learned to use the Internet sing its praise every day on the way to the bank.

The dealer has to make the judgment as to whether or not he or she can earn the sale and take care of the customer after the sale.

But that’s not a new problem that started with the commercialization of the Internet in late 1992. It’s the same context that we have heard for years about the mega dealers and so called "800-Number" dealers – dealers that advertise in national publications using their toll free telephone number as a tool to get customers from far away to contact and buy from them.

I can tell you a lot of RVision dealers are not real pleased with Denny Bailey right now. RV News’ investigation has come up with a scenario that we believe instigated Bailey’s bold, but not original idea. It seems that R-Vision has taken on a dealer or two that are happy to bank $1,000 profit on an Internet sale and that is very upsetting to other dealers that want to make $4,000 profit on each sale. So they whine to Bailey that these other dealers are robbing them of sales – sales in their market area – when the other dealer gets the sale.

What happened to the spirit of capitalism?

In a way, we are surprised that Bailey hasn’t learned a thing from history. But since we also sat in Bailey’s office in the outskirts of Warsaw, Indiana, and heard him expound on the Internet a couple of years ago, we really shouldn’t be all that surprised. If there is one man in the world who doesn’t have a clue about how the Internet has changed marketing over the past ten years for many businesses, including the RV industry, it’s Denny Bailey. I walked away from that meeting thoroughly convinced that Denny Bailey hates the Internet.

One imagines that Bailey longs for the good old days before the Internet, and maybe he even longs for the days before radio and television, when proprietors of businesses had a difficult time promoting their products and services outside their market area.

One of the greatest things about our civilization is that things do change; because without change and innovation we all might still be sitting around in caves gnawing on the hindquarters of water buffalo and courting our women with clubs.

We believe that when the history of the 20th Century is written, the commercialization of the Internet will stand as one of the ten most important changes of that century. And all the "Denny Baileys'" of the world cannot turn the clock back.

Bailey’s latest move is reminiscent of Western Recreational Vehicle’s policy in 1996. In a nutshell, WRV told its dealers that it couldn’t advertise any of the WRV’s products outside the dealer’s market area.

What that did was to effectively diminish WRV dealers’ ability to compete because it took their products out of the market as far as the Internet was concerned.

WRV dealers used all sorts of innovative ways to let the buying public know that they had more to sell than they were able to mention on their Internet sites. I remember one dealer in particular who told visitors to contact them about their "mystery product line."

Thankfully, WRV’s policy has long since been abandoned. Why? It didn’t work. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. But in the meantime, Bailey’s regression into a failed policy is going to cost dealers and R-Vision sales.

Now it seems to us that an RV manufacturer should be promoting policies that help dealers sell products rather than going to idiotic lengths to restrict their ability to show and sell this line of products. The underlying issue is, in our opinion, does an RV dealer have the right to sell products and services to anyone that solicits them.

To understand this, you need to understand what the dealer’s web site is and what it is not. An RV dealer’s web site is an extension of his or her business, a virtual store, if you will. When any company develops a web site, that business invites passersby to drop in and take a look at the products and services it offers, much like the brick and mortar store.

And since the dealer’s virtual store is not limited by time and space, anyone with access to the Internet anywhere in the world can drop by and see what the store has to offer. So then the question becomes can the proprietor of that store sell their products and services to the visitor even though they might not physically live in the proprietor’s "franchised" territory?

To answer that, we need to look how it is handled at the physical store. If a resident of Colorado walks into a store in Wisconsin and puts down cash to buy a product, should that dealer tell the buyer, "I’m sorry, you cannot buy my products because I can only sell to customers that live in my marketing area – you’ll have to go back to Denver to buy the product." It’ll never happen. And trying to impose that kind of ridiculous scenario on businesses that have web sites is just as absurd.

The dealer’s web site is not just an advertising medium, such as the Yellowpages, magazines, radio and television; although, there are spin offs in that area. Here’s the difference: you cannot make a purchase while viewing a telephone book, a magazine, listening to the radio or watching a television program, but you can make a purchase from a web site. And RV dealers that recognize the difference are having great success with the Internet, and those that see their web sites as strictly an advertising medium are not reaping the benefits that their web sites offer.

The RV manufacturers’ real power is in selecting the companies that will sell their products to the buying public, but that power does not, in our opinion, allow the manufacturer to dictate where and how that dealer chooses to promote and sell the product.

Bailey seems bent on establishing a new economic theory. The "Bailey Theory of Economics" starts with the premise that if you take out of play the most cost effective way for RV dealers to market and sell their products and services for R-Vision’s products, it follows that the consumer will be paying top dollar at dealerships.

Now don’t get us wrong – we do not believe that Bailey is an idiot. He was an innovator when it came to getting the Bantam trailer line of products with foldouts to market and almost overnight become the leader in that product category. But that same acumen hasn’t seemed to manifest itself in RVision’s new Internet policy..

What we have here is a classic case (forgive the cliché) of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Many R-Vision dealers are using their Internet sites to effectively market ALL the products they offer; they are not gouging buyers and they are not advertising low-ball prices.

Bailey’s policy punishes the so-called "evil-doers" as well as the hard working dealers that believe their web sites are an important and integral part of their businesses and contributes to their overall success. It’s our opinion that if Bailey has dealers that are not playing the sales and marketing game up to the standards R-Vision expects then simply dump the offending dealers, don’t punish the entire dealer body by restricting their ability to market and sell these products.

Jayco, another manufacturer that seems to be addressing the same issue, also issued a memo to its dealers in May. The Jayco policy; however, has a lot more common sense than R-Vision’s edict. Jayco has asked dealers not to publish prices on currently model year products except for the MSRP.

It seems to us that Bailey should take a page from Jayco’s playbook instead of pursuing a policy long ago tried and failed. But that might be difficult to do as well since R-Vision doesn’t have an MSRP either.

RV News predicts that Bailey’s Internet policy will fail, but in the meantime R-Vision dealers will make fewer sales because consumers looking on the Internet for products like RVision’s will find a competitor’s line and buy that. That will result in lower sales for R-Vision as well. And the consumer will lose because the lack of competitiveness of R-Vision products will make the product more expensive.