Dick Aker, President

RV buyers love to come to Elkhart, Indiana, the heart of the RV industry, to pick up their new recreation vehicles. Visiting the factory, seeing how their coach was built, and meeting the people who personally helped build their RV adds a dimension to their purchase that they normally can’t experience when making other kinds of purchases. This migration to Northern Indiana has helped create a thriving, yet competitive, market. Dealers in the Elkhart-area have become the factory outlet stores — in spirit, if not in fact — for the many RV manufacturing companies concentrated in the region.

Dick Aker owns and operates one of these dealerships, Hart City RV Sales, located on the west side of Elkhart. Hart City is made up of two sales lots located directly across the street from each other. On the west sales lot is Aker’s "Super Saver" lot and carries Sun-Lite, Newmar’s American Star line, and Forest River’s Cardinal line. The east lot is more for high-line brands — Newmar and Carriage.

Hart City’s customer base is both national and local. And Hart City finds itself, like other Elkhart-area dealers, caught up in the debate of whether a customer should buy his unit from a local dealer or from one near the factory.

Aker is acutely aware that there are a lot of dealers who consider dealers in the Elkhart area their enemies

Aker told RV News, "Hart City is unique from a lot of dealers because we are based in a community that has a lot of strong dealers, and also in a community where a lot of the products are being manufactured.

"I know a lot of dealers are threatened by having customers come to Elkhart. That does happen and I couldn’t survive unless that happened. But the other side of that coin is that we educate a lot of people about products that will be bought elsewhere. We have the opportunity here to see and talk with a lot of customers who we will never stand the chance of selling anything to because they live a great distance away and want to buy where they have a local dealer.

"We don’t want to be considered the enemy to other dealers. Whether it is a Newmar dealer, a Jayco dealer or a Travel Supreme dealer, I think we should all be working together for the good of the customer. We don’t look at them as our enemies; we really look at it as we are here to bring the customer into the RV family."

And even though a substantial part of Hart City’s sales are from outside of Indiana, Akers believes building a local customer base is one of the keys to his success.

Aker said, "Yes, a large part of our customer base is out-of-state. But according to national surveys, we are the third largest dealer in Indiana. So it means that we are building a good, solid local base too. I am very pleased to see that because three or four years ago that wasn’t the case. I think the products that we offer here on this lot (east) particularly is drawing people from across the country — the Newmar and Carriage products. The product that we have in our Super Saver lot across the street is more for the local traffic. And then of course, our used business is divided between the two lots. The Super Saver lot and our used inventory is what is helping us build the local market." Continued