It's 1975. You're family owns a 25-year-old Chrysler automobile business and a
small recreation vehicle operation. The nation is reeling from the realities of lessons learned
by dependency on foreign oil, and your profit and loss statement reflects what long lines at
gas pumps mean to the luxury automobile and RV markets. Then one day a young man
walks in and offers to sell you his used mini-motorhome. What do you do?
If you're Bob Beaudry in Tucson, AZ, you buy the motorhome, hire the young man
and let him help you build one of the most successful RV dealerships in the nation. Bob
Beaudry must have known at that time there was something unique about Bob Burden. And
when RV News visited Burden, president RV division of Beaudry RV, a few weeks ago we
also recognized that there is something different about him. He is definitely a trendsetter, not
a follower. He's entrepreneurial, yet not reckless. He has a commitment to Beaudry's, its
owners, its employees and its customers. And he has a passion for the competitiveness of the
RV business.
Case in point -- a lot of dealers might have come unnerved when La Mesa RV
opened a new location within a block of Beaudry's headquarters. When we asked Burden
about this, he casually said, "I think it brought us more traffic. You can see our sign from
their lot so someone shopping for an RV will naturally want to compare what we have to
offer as well."
But let's go back. How did Burden end up in Beaudry RV talking to Bob Beaudry -- a day that certainly changed the course of Burden's life?
A native of New Hampshire, Burden had been in business there, but sold the
business, bought a Volkswagen pop-up camper van and traveled west across Canada toward
Alaska. Then he meandered back down the coast to Washington where he traded the van for
a mini-motorhome.
Burden recalled, "I continued traveling in the mini-motor home down through
California on into Mexico. I traveled around Mexico about 8 months. That was 1973 and
right at that time is when the gas embargo hit which shortened the trip because overnight the
price of gas doubled in Mexico. We decided to shorten our trip and come back to the U.S.
We re-entered the states through Nogales, and that's how we ended-up here in Tucson.
When I got to Tucson there were in fact gas lines. I decided it was time to sell the
motorhome. That's how I got into the RV business. I stopped at an RV dealer here and tried
to sell him the motorhome. He didn't want it.
"Over the next several weeks we talked from time to time, and he kept offering me a
job. Finally I accepted because he said I could consign my unit there and sell it myself. I
thought that was a good idea. After I went to work, the manager suggested that I take the
motorhome down the street to Beaudry; and possibly he would buy it. That's how I met
Bobby Beaudry and sold him my motorhome.
"As a result, he kept calling me to come work there. He was just getting into the RV
business and like a lot of other car dealers had a few motorhomes on the lot and was trying
to get something going in the business. About a year later, in 1975, I went to work for him.
I have been here ever since."
Not long after that Beaudry promoted Burden to manager and let him run the RV
operation. Burden recalled, "I hired a few sales people and we developed it from that point.
We bought a little gas station in 1979; and separated the RV business from the car store.
That's when it started taking off."
An historic note of interest is that Beaudry RV is Fleetwood's oldest existing
motorhome dealer. Beaudry's added Pace Arrow in 1973 and has been a Fleetwood dealer
ever since.
From the beginning Burden seemed to have a vision of what the business could and
should be. He started making decisions that would lay the foundations for what has become
an RV industry success story. He said, "I think I recognized in the 70's where this business
might be going; and I also realized that we had to align ourselves with a major manufacturer
if we were going to succeed. I didn't know whether it was Winnebago, Fleetwood or
Coachman. The philosophy of most dealers in those days was to try this and then try that.
"The sales people were not really committed to any product line. I personally felt
uncomfortable going out and telling someone that this is the best product for them, and then
find out that there was an objection that I couldn't overcome - and then ten minutes later, be
telling them some other product was the best product for them.
"That's when we decided to go with one particular manufacturer. And fortunately, it
was Fleetwood. I credit circumstance rather than genius for this choice -- Beaudry had been
a Pace Arrow dealer so it evolved from there."
Even though Fleetwood is the most extensive product line offered, Beaudry RV is
not exclusively Fleetwood. "No," Burden said, "we have other product lines. We're a
Country Coach dealer for example. And that's going real well. The other product line we
have in motorhomes is the National Dolphin. In trailers we have NuWa and Alpha Leisure,
and of course all the other Fleetwood product lines. We're the only dealer in the country to
represent every Fleetwood RV product they manufacture, including their Coleman tent
trailer."
Step by step Burden started putting the pieces together: product lines, sales and
service.
Marty Holman, Beaudry RV vice president of operations, came to Tucson from
Oklahoma in 1981, went to work for Beaudry's three days after he arrived and has been
there since. Holman said, "My background had been dealerships and body shops since I was
a kid; that's what my father did, that's what my grandfather's did. There were probably 15
- 20 employees here at that time."
