Where was Heartland?

I went to the Sports and Travel Show in Omaha Nebraska today and of the 60+ campers there, not one Heartland. Another reason I'm disappointed in the local Heartland dealer. They also sell boats. And they had at least 20 boats and other boat accessories there.
And the local Camping World was not represented there either. They started selling Heartlands last year.
I bought my North Trail at the same show last year. I would have never seen a NT if they had not been there. I have never seen any advertising about Heartland in the Omaha area. Could be the reason I never see any Heartland campers in the area.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

Seems like a good question to ask the local Heartland dealers....

Don't know about the Omaha area but here in Chicagoland it costs our dealer roughly $35,000 to display at the Rosemont show. There were noticably fewer dealers at the show last week. There were also fewer attendees. FWIW.

I don't know the cost to display but the other dealers in town were out in force. Its hard to sell anything if you don't get your product out there for people to see. I'm sure they would of sold a few. I quit counting at 20 the number of sold signs I saw on other units. I had a few friends that were going to check out the new North Trails at the show but they ended up looking at others because they were able to go back and forth to compare models.

K & C in Colo is a huge Heartland dealer. Did not see any of their product at the last big RV show I atttended. A friend of mine that is a buyer there said it is way too expensive to go now.

jmgratz said:

Seems like a good question to ask the local Heartland dealers....

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Found out why my local dealer wasn't at the show. When Camping World across town started selling Heartlands, they commited to 300 campers. Heartland apparently wanted my dealer to do the same but they just couldn't commit to that many, so Heartland pulled their campers from them. My dealer started selling other manufacturers trailers. And due to the other bigger dealers in town making a strong presence at the show, they didn't feel it was worth the trouble.
I wish Camping World could have been there, though.

Heartland Dealer

Just found out today that the closest dealer to me in northern Illinois is no longer going to sell Heartland products. He says, he can't get financing from the local banks. I wonder if this is happening elsewear?

Airmec said:

Just found out today that the closest dealer to me in northern Illinois is no longer going to sell Heartland products. He says, he can't get financing from the local banks. I wonder if this is happening elsewear?

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Dealer floorplan financing is rough right now for some. It will turn around. The question is "when"? It's too bad that this industry has lost and will lose more decent manufacturers and dealers as well as suppliers - not to mention many thousands of factory jobs.

Okay - enough with my gloominess. What's the good news? Well, most of our dealers are surviving and Heartland is as well. We'll put up lower production numbers in 2009 but we will maintain profitability and come out of this on the other side, a stronger company!

Jim