| BusinessWorld | 59
August-September 2014
was just because, especially the last quarter
of 2008, first quarter of 2009, the credit
markets were frozen. You could not get a
loan. Period. That played a factor in it. We
saw a lot of pent-up demand – demand
building, where people were looking and
just not buying.
The two key things that really started to
turn the corner were when the mass layoffs
came to an end, and when credit markets
began to normalize, and normalize
meaning not going back to the breath-test
days, but back to lending criteria that made
sense. If someone came in and they had a
solid credit score, and 10 percent for a down
payment, they could get a loan.
BUSINESS WORLD:
Based on the fact
that you sawthatmuch interest, evenduring
the very down time, were you pretty
confident that as soon as this turns around,
we're going to be right back where we were,
because you had so many of those
indicators?
BROOM:
Wewere pretty confident of that
and then, we were pretty confident for a few
other reasons, like as you get with any sort of
economic calamity, like we had in the Great
Recession, people's values change a little bit
or pretty markedly in some cases. Where
before the recession there was a lot more
borrowing and a lot more spending, and
more of an atmosphere of extravagance, the
pendulum swung back, where savings,
frugality and simplicity became more of a
trend. More people were interested in
s a v i ng mon e y t ha n i n s p end i ng
extravagantly, and so, RVs are a way for
people to save on a vacation.
Even including the purchase price, it costs
far less than traveling in other ways, and you
use it over and over again in a period of
years. It ends up being a really good way to
save, especially when 90 percent of RV sales
are trailers with an average purchase price of
about $30,000 and you're financing that
over 10, 12, 15 years, writing off the interest
as a second home, and then when you're
traveling, you're not staying in hotels, you're
not eating in restaurants all the time, you're
