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nüCamp as seen from the Columbus (Ohio) Business Journal

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Here's a video (not super proud of) from the Columbus Business Journal:

https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2018/04/20/get-a-look-inside-ohio-teardrop-camper.html

See the attached picture for the "Headline" and below for the entire article.  It is subscription based, so we can't get a full copy online.

 

 

​ SUGARCREEK, Ohio – The desire to downsize can be a big business.

In real estate, tiny houses and micro-living apartments are trendy domiciles. In the auto industry, manufacturers simultaneously shrank bulky sport-utility vehicles and pack them more efficiency and features, displacing the classic family sedan as the go-to wheels. These trends are a testament to consumers seeking more bang for the buck, more returns per square foot.

 

Another example is being built in Ohio’s Amish Country. NuCamp RV began in 2010 in the town of Sugarcreek in a 3,000-square-foot uninsulated barn with eight employees and a plan to build 9-foot-long “teardrop” trailers. The company built a couple hundred that first year. Eight years later, the business has 215 employees, with 75 percent of them Amish or Mennonite, hand-building and assembling more than 4,000 trailers a year.  While the products are still tiny, the business – with $55 million in sales last year – is not. “Look at the market, the infatuation with tiny homes, for example,” CEO Scott Hubble said. “With RVs, you have these big, huge rectangles and gradually things have gotten smaller and smaller.” And NuCamp has gotten bigger and bigger. It moved into its current home in 2014 with about 50 employees.

 

By 2015 it had 100. It added an additional 80 in the following two years and crossed 200 in 2017. The 63,000-square-foot building from 2014 was expanded to 150,000 square feet in January 2017. “It’s been a market over in Europe,” said Kevin Haydocy, general manager of Haydocy Airstream & RV on Columbus’ west side. “Everything is getting smaller these days. Families are smaller. Cars are smaller.” He said teardrops make up about one-third of Haydocy’s annual RV and camper sales, or roughly 170 units.

 

NuCamp is not the first iteration of the teardrop business for founder Joe Mullet. He was building patio furniture in the early 2000s when he and a business partner turned their attention to tiny trailers after having seen one made in Oregon. Pleasant Valley Teardrop Trailers didn’t survive the recession, but Hubble, who was with a distributor at the time, saw potential and reached out to Mullett. The doors to the business reopened in 2010 and what is now NuCamp began its second life. NuCamp (then still going by Pleasant Valley) started with a camper trailer that was 5 feet wide and 8 feet long. Its big break came after Elkhart, Indiana-based Dutchman dropped its line of T@B campers (“tab” is short for Tabbert, the Danish company credited with first designing the teardrop style) and NuCamp stepped in, acquiring the rights and giving it a second product. “That really helped catapult us,” Hubble said. “The customer base was rabid for this product and the lifestyle.

 

There was an automatic 10,000-person fan base and half of them were ready for new.” T@B campers were larger than the first trailers – customers could stand up in them, for example. “It still wasn’t monstrous,” he said. “It was the next logical step.” It’s the backbone of the company today with annual sales of more than 1,600. The smaller trailer was redesigned and renamed T@G. NuCamp went larger last year with the bigger, more fully furnished T@B 400.

 

The company also added truck campers, a natural extension of the work already being done and a product that, in NuCamp’s eyes, was ready for a refresh. “What’s old is new again,” he said. “Let’s get creative. They all don’t have to be white and tan and boxy.” Though teardrops are a trendy part of the market, the RV industry is booming overall with a record 504,599 vehicles shipped from manufacturers to dealers last year, up 17.2 percent from 2016. There are now more than a record 9 million households with RVs, up 16 percent since 2001 and 64 percent since the early 1980s “Before the recession, manufacturers were building to sell,” said Kevin Broom, spokesman for the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association. “Now, they’re building to order. Its new products, better designs.

 

There’s the right mix of size, amenities and price.” Another illustration of the booming industry is in Elkhart, which is home to a number of RV manufacturers, including Dutchman, Jayco and Heartland. According to a recent profile on the northern Indiana region and its economy by the Wall Street Journal, the RV industry employs 12 percent of the area’s workers and average annual salaries rose 17 percent as high demand for products is driving demand for employees. “At one point, it was just a bed on wheels with a 12-volt outlet,” Hubble said of teardrops. “Then you start to ask, ‘Can we put a sink in? Can we put a stove in?’ The biggest innovation by far was adding a bathroom.

 

“That dropped the wall,” Hubble said. “Now it wasn’t just a bigger, hard-sided tent.”

 

Nine of 10 T@Bs sold today include a bathroom. Though the production is all American, much of the ideation comes from Europe, where manufacturers are well used to working with smaller canvases, so to speak. The Europe-sourced air conditioning and heating system pumps warm liquid through the camper walls. The floor is a water-proof composite originally used on boats.

 

NuCamp cuts and crafts all the wood cabinets and features in house. Though the assembly is done in one shift at the plant, the wood shop runs three shifts a day.

 

"Beyond boomers”

 It isn’t just an improved portfolio of products driving sales, but also a population eager to explore. Although baby boomers remain a big component of growth, they aren’t the only buyers.

 

“You have people retiring and traveling, going out there, ready to hit the road and see the country, sure,” Haydocy said. “What’s surprised us is you’re not seeing a lot of families. We’re getting more young couples who don’t want to sleep on the ground any more. They’re outdoor enthusiasts. They go biking and kayaking.”

 

That’s especially true of the teardrop trailers.

 

“That ease of use is important,” Haydocy said. “You don’t need a giant truck to haul it. A small SUV or van will do. It isn’t a $200,000 investment plus upkeep.”

 

There’s a value component as well. The cost per square foot might be high relative to other products in the industry, but that isn’t deterring buyers.

 

“These are high quality and they hold their value,” Haydocy said. “It’s around $20,000, which can feel like a lot, but it can resell at close to the same price. We’ve had some people keep their camper for two years, then come in and trade for a newer model and still get close to original value.”

 

Amy Gillespie saw that affinity for teardrops and a more elevated outdoor experience when she launched Campfire Experience in Columbus in 2015, with a plan to rent the trailers and higher-end tents and other accoutrements to urbanites who want to flee the city for a weekend.

 

While her business has evolved into more of an experiential marketing company that puts on outdoor events for large companies, the rental business is still operating.

 

“The love of the teardrop is alive and well,” she said. “But for us, it’s because there is as special occasion, a birthday, an anniversary. It’s a meaningful moment, but it’s become a gift. We have repeat customers for that because we’re helping create that memory.”

 

End of the road?

 

Sales and production are still growing, though the pace is slowing both overall and at NuCamp.

 

Broom said the association forecasts 540,000 deliveries to dealers this year.

“The fundamentals, that deep-seeded desire to enjoy the lifestyle is still there,” he said. “That’s a strength that doesn’t go away even if the economy turns bad.”

 

Although industry players and observers are keeping an eye on tariffs and other concerns, cautious optimism remains.

 

“From a business standpoint, we’re looking at where there could be a market correction or other opportunities,” Hubble said. “If we’re innovating, we won’t have to stick our finger in the air to test the wind and adjust on the fly. We know where the holes in the market are. We see where we can introduce quality.”

 

Most of the competition in the teardrop space is other mom-and-pop builders.

 

“You have some operations that’ll build 40 or 50 a year and sell them direct,” he said. “There are also kits where you can build your own.”

 

Bigger builders are seeing the opportunity with small and are moving in that direction.

 

For example, Jackson Center-based Airstream Inc. recently launched the Nest, which is the smallest trailer in its lineup.

 


NuCamp can’t get much smaller, so it’s considering going bigger.

 

“We’re not going to be building 39-foot, fifth-wheel campers,” Hubble said.

“Our longest current product is 18 feet. It’ll be a logical progression from that.”

Verna, Columbus, IN
2021 T@B 320S  Boondock “The T@B”
Towed by a white 2019 Ford F-150 4x4 Supercab, 3.5L V6 Ecoboost “The Truck”
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