Unfortunately, the immediate future of the RV Industry is not looking bright. I am afraid there will still be a few more RV Manufacturers going out of business.  Once the dust settles, the RV Industry will start to slowly grow once again and yes, people will start to buy RVs again.

I am going to use the example of the Dot Com Bubble burst of 2000 and 2001 to try to explain what has happened to and what is going to happen to the RV Industry.  You are probably asking yourself “What the heck does the Dot Com Bubble Burst have to do with the RV Industry?” stick with me here it will all make sense at the end (I hope).

In the late 90s more and more people were getting on the internet.  Some retailers and entrepreneurs saw the internet as an opportunity to start selling tons of merchandise.  So they started up a bunch of websites selling everything from pet supplies to music CDs.  The philosophy of some of these dot-coms was “If we build a website people will come and buy all of our stuff”.  So the dot-coms starting borrowing millions of dollars from the banks and went public with their stock so they could build their websites.  The stocks kept soaring and the dot-coms kept borrowing more and more money to add on to their websites and advertise them.  There was only one problem; a lot of these dot-coms were making no money at all.

In fact there became a glut of dot-coms on the internet all spending millions on their websites to sell their stuff.  These dot-coms knew they couldn’t fail, after all it was the internet and everybody was making millions of dollars on the internet weren’t they?

Well, all the sales didn’t come in as expected, in fact some of these dot-coms never made a profit the whole time that they were in business.  Now the banks were getting worried about some of these dot-coms, because loan payments were not being made on a timely basis and some of the banks started to call-in some of the loans.  Now the shareholders were getting worried because of lack of sales and profits, defaulted loans, bad business practices, etc and they started selling off their stock like crazy and stock prices plummeted and lot of the dot-coms went belly up (out of business).

Here are just a few of the dot-coms that went out of business, Beyond.com, Boo.com, Pets.com, KOZMO.com, eToys.com, eXcite.com and so on and so on.  But wait if you search the internet you can still find some of these websites, “What’s up with that?”  Well, some of the other dot-coms that did not go out of business bought their names and are using them.

Now there were some survivors of the Dot-Com Bubble Burst such as eBay.com, Amazon.com, Travelocity.com and Yahoo.com to name a few.  It took these survivors awhile to get back on track, but they are now flourishing.

So what went wrong?  Rather than trying to figure out what the consumer really wanted, the dot-coms adopted the philosophy of “if we build it they will come” and “if they don’t come, we will just borrow more money and make our website bigger and advertise more until they do come”.  It never dawned on the dot-coms that not all of the internet visitors were ready to buy stuff on-line, because they were not sure how secure their transactions would be (there was no consumer confidence). 

These dot-coms also ignored the fact that were lots of other websites that were selling the same stuff they were and that these other websites actually understood what the internet consumer wanted.  These other websites were doing a better job at customer service, etc.  These big dot-coms just ignored the fact that there were too many websites selling the same stuff and ended up going out of business.

Does any of the above sound familiar?  During the 90s and into the 2000s many of the RV manufactures increased production and opened new factories as a result of strong RV Sales.  Of course a lot of the manufacturers had to get loans to continue their expansions.  According to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association RV sales peaked in 2006 at about 390,000 vehicles.  Some of the RV Manufacturers were caught by surprise when RV sales started to decline in 2007.

Then came the volatile fuel prices which caused a lot of potential RV buyers to steer clear of buying “fuel-guzzling” RVs.  To be honest, there really has not been a major improvement in fuel mileage in the motorized RV category for the past two decades.  Now, if the fuel prices were not enough to hurt the RV Industry, the housing loan debacle sure was.  Lending institutions were being hit hard by subprime loan defaults.  So their reaction was to tighten up the loan market making it harder for someone to buy a “luxury item” such as an RV.

Then to put the final nail in the coffin of the RV Industry the stock market decided to make a “major price correction” in other words the stock market plummeted.  This price correction affected a lot of “baby boomers” financially.  Since baby boomers are the major buyers of RVs it also affected the RV Industry.  Because the RV industry was too slow to react to the economic downturn, they produced too many RVs that were not selling, creating the new RV glut that we have now.  So the RV Industry has gone from “feast to famine” in 2 1/2 years.

So, as you see there are quite a few similarities between the Dot-Com Bubble Burst of 2000 and 2001 and the RV Bubble Burst of 2008 and 2009.  Just like the Dot-Com Bubble Burst there will be survivors of the RV Bubble Burst.  The number of RV Manufacturers that survive is yet to be determined as we are in the middle of the RV Bubble Burst.  But there will be survivors.

What will happen to the RV Industry in the future is going to be in the hands of the surviving RV Manufacturers.  All of the surviving RV Manufacturers by default will have larger market shares of RV sales then they had prior to the bubble burst. Some will come back quicker than others.  Some may even start to look at the future and build some innovative motorized RVs that are far more fuel efficient, while still providing the luxuries that RVers expect.  Hopefully all of them will have learned from this experience; that they need to keep their ears to the ground and have contingency plans in place on how to react quickly to changes in the RV marketplace.

What can RV consumers expect?  Once the glut of RVs is sold off, you can expect fewer RVs to choose from.  You will not have a selection of unlimited floor plans to choose from.  Depending on the type of RV you are looking at you may find that there are only two or three companies making them.  You may also find some very innovative RVs to choose from made by either existing RV Manufacturers or brand new RV Manufacturers who are trying to make a name for themselves.  Either way, the RV Industry will still be around, hopefully a little bit wiser from their experience over the past couple of years.

RVing is not dead; it is just trying to catch its breath.  The long term future of RVing will be bright as long as the same mistakes are not repeated.

Image taken on 2009-03-08 19:21:21 by geowelch.

AMAZING AMPHIBIOUS VEHICLE…available who knows when?!…now IF they will only keep the price “reasonably affordable”, perhaps……Please, I want one, Santa!! Check out their website: www.aquada.com

Taiwan GPS Receiver Market

In Taiwan, GPS suppliers besides taking over most international companies’ orders, also successfully develop GPS watches for hiking, golfing and cycling.  GPS receiver navigation devices have developed rapidly in recent years and are now much more than talking maps. Auto electronics, consumer electronics, home appliances, information and communications technology (ICT), and telecoms companies have worked together to give them a much more diverse range of functions including use in those of MP3 players, digital photo albums, movie players, and real-time road-condition receivers. They now provide information on navigation, recreation, and entertainment, all in a single unit.

Taiwan’s GPS industry started to take off in 2007. After MiTAC bought Navman, they’ve become the second biggest GPS company in Europe. Also, their sales of 800 million of PND has made them become the third largest GPS supplier in the world. At the same time, TomTom and Garmin have expended their ordering to Taiwan OEM’s from components to fabrication products. The global leader in satellite navigation, Garmin Ltd. and its subsidiaries have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold navigation, communication and information devices and applications since 1989 – most of which are enabled byGPS technology. One of their principal subsidiaries is located in Taiwan. Including Japanese and European orders, Taiwan’s GPS sales were around NT$171 billion. The total growth rate was 70%, which makes its growth very noticeable compared to the 2007 ICT industry growth rate of 4.6%, or 730 billion dollars.

Even though this year, European and U.S. consumer electronic product sales are still being effected by the current economy situation, IEK is still very pretty positive about the GPS market in Taiwan. The Taiwan GPS industry market will grow strongly once the market moves from Europe and the, U.S. to the newly developed countries.

GPS for Hiking

What’s a suitable GPS for cycling? Color mapping, long life battery or replaceable batteries, topo, street/road, & bike trail mapping, text-to-speech (gives me the street name), prefer selectable car vs bicycle mode, a way to pick future routes, possibly software that would use steet & topo to avoid large hilly areas on long distance biking, large SD card, fairly waterproof, screen can be seen in sunlight. One of the Taiwan GPS receiver suppliers announced their product as an all-in-one GPS receiver.

Dedicated massive-correlator signal parameter search engine within the baseband enables rapid search of all the available satellites and acquisition of very weak signal. An advanced track engine allows weak signal tracking and positioning in harsh environments such as urban canyons and under deep foliage.

With very fast signal acquisition speed, it has very low average power consumption for locate on demand type of applications.

GPS for Golfing

Golf GPS systems are rapidly evolving from only player enhancement to complete course management systems. The primary goal of a golf GPS system is to provide players with distances to all kind of features on the course and especially to the green they are playing. Some courses are better fit to use the capabilities of GPS than others. In order to obtain a satisfactory accuracy the GPS receiver must have a non-obstructed view of the sky. This makes that courses with lots of trees are less suitable for golf GPS.

Golf GPS system should contain the following:

Provides you with GPS distances from “any” location on the hole to the 200, 150, 100 yard / meter markers, to the front, centre, and back of the Green.

Record the GPS distance, club used and landing position for every stroke you make.

Stroke length Statistics: tells you the average and longest distance you hit each club in your bag. You know exactly how far you drive the ball.

Club Selector! Suggest which club to use for your next stroke based on the historical stroke data already stored from previous scorecards!

Taiwan GPS suppliers, Mobile Action Technology Inc and Polar have released their new GSP products for sport.

GPS for Cycling

Whether you are a road biker or a mountain biker, there’s a GPS that will work well for you, and it can mount right on your handlebars. All of them have high-sensitivity chipsets for superior satellite reception in urban canyons and under canopy. While they are excellent cyclometers, they aren’t all that great as navigation devices. If you are primarily wanting to track your performance though, Taiwan suppliers who make sporting GPS receivers would be your excellent choice. They are suitable for whoever wants data acquisition and a dashboard lap timer.

To get a complete report on Taiwan GPS, please go to http://gps-receiver.ready-online.com/index.html

It takes more then just a fancy motorcycle to be motorcycle babes. Just having a motorcycle does not turn girls with motorcycles into motorcycle babes. So what does?

1. Love of Motorcycles

Motorcycle babes do not have motorcycles just to be noticed. They are not doing for the attention they get from it nor are they doing it because it is the “cool” thing to do. If you are a woman with a motorcycle and you are just doing it because it looks good and because you get noticed, you have not reached the status of motorcycle babes. True motorcycle babes would ride a motorcycle even if there was no one around to notice them. motorcycle babes are the ones that know the difference between a liquid cooled engine and an air cooled engine. Motorcycle babes could change a tire, customize their handlebars, and add a backrest without blinking an eye.

2. Confidence

Motorcycle babes exude confidence. They do not need someone standing there staring and gawking at them to feel beautiful and alive and full of energy and enthusiasm. Unlike so many photos and stereo types, motorcycle babes can be more then just the supermodel standing in front of the Kawasaki in daisy dukes and a tight tank top bending over pretending to inspect the tire. They can also be more then the other image of the butch woman who is more manly then the bikers she rides with. Motorcycle babes can be short, tall, thin, full figured, young or old. Motorcycle babes is the whole package, not just what you see. Motorcycle babes feel comfortable in both jeans and dresses. They can go out with their hair in a ponytail with no make up and not care who sees them.

3. Self Worth

Motorcycle babes know that they are worth more then a compromising position in front or on that Honda motorcycle. Real motorcycle babes have children and jobs that don’t involve skimpy clothes. That is not to say that those models who pose half naked in front of the motorcycles can’t be real motorcycle babes, if they know there is more to who they are then guys gawking at them drooling half at them and half at the motorcycles that accompany them. Motorcycle babes know that even without the motorcycle they are someone. Motorcycle babes know that even though they don’t need the bike to be noticed, they deserve the bike.

4. Thrill seekers

Real motorcycle babes are thrill seekers. They love the feel of the motorcycle under them riding down the highway. They aren’t afraid of spreading their wings. When motorcycle babes are going down the highway they can feel the wind flapping all around them, they feel like they are flying. There is nothing better then knowing that you have complete control over this machine that has more power then any one person should possess. The vibrations from the motor and the curves in the road go through your entire body. Motorcycle babes feel alive.