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A Conversation About Business Philosophy
by Don Magary
Coachmen Industries, Inc., over the years has been one of the RV industry's most successful companies. And when you track the health and well being of Coachmen, you see that it pretty much reflects the health and well being of the RV industry. For a company to have survived for 32 years in this volatile marketplace with its vulnerability to world politics, the economy, and competition from a growing cadre of choices for customers to spend their discretionary dollars is remarkable by itself, but Coachmen not only survived, it has thrived. And if you had to select one reason for Coachmen's success, you could sum it up in two words - Coachmen Management. Tom Corson, chairman and CEO, has been at the helm of Coachmen from the day it was launched more than 11,600 days ago and has guided the company through its growth, its crisises, its victories, its ups and downs. Along the way, Corson has been and remains a businessman first, but also a good citizen of the industry, his community and the world. No matter what demands have been placed on him in the corporate office, he has never been too busy to make sure that Coachmen was giving back to the industries and the communities in which it operates. Over the last several years, Coachmen has been redefining itself as a company, and Corson believes the company is stronger today that it has ever been. A few days ago, RV News visited Corson at Coachmen's corporate headquarters in Elkhart, IN, to talk about today's Coachmen. Corson said, "The company is a more focused company today than it was several years ago. We have disposed of some of the entities that really weren't related to the recreation vehicle or modular housing businesses, which are our two core business segments. Of our $515 million of sales last year, 86 percent were RVs and 14 percent were modular housing." Coachmen Industries, Inc., has eight companies under its umbrella: Coachmen Recreational Vehicle Co., Coachmen Vans, The Lux Company, Shasta Industries, Viking Formed Products, Viking Recreation Vehicles, All American Homes, Inc., and the recently acquired Georgie Boy Manufacturing Co. The vast majority of Coachmen's business is RVs with a small part of that being two companies that produce component parts for the RV and van conversion industries - The Lux Company and Viking Formed Products. Viking Formed Products, a plastics and fiberglass company, sells about 75 percent of products to companies other than Coachmen. Corson said, "We produce about 50 percent of all the raised roofs used in the van conversion industry. The Lux Company does a lot of soft goods for the industry such as seating components. But then in addition to that, Lux has a very significant business in office furniture, particularly office executive chairs; secretarial chairs; office seating and conference room chairs. All these are ergonomically designed with a lot of adjustments on them. That business was an offshoot of the motorhome seating where you need these adjustments to make a driver comfortable. There are good opportunities in both of those companies, but when you take those out of the picture, about 77-79 percent of our business is pure RV."
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