Jayco becoming part of Thor.

[jimtoo]

Saw this today. Thor buys Jayco.

 

[kowAlski631]

Wow!!

 

[donr827]

In my opinion "sad".
Don

 

[jmgratz]

Looks like Thor is aiming to be the sole RV Manufacturer

 

[Kbvols]

Great payday for the Bontrager family $576 million.

It would be interesting to know Thor's strategic business plan related to it's acquisitions. While they have some product differentiation in the various companies I.e Airstream, Bison, Heartland....they also have a lot that are similar.


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[danemayer]

I'd guess that Thor sees an opportunity to reduce supplier costs by way of higher volumes shared across many brands. Instead of contracting for 40,000 of a widget, they can likely negotiate a better price for 250,000. They can also share best practices across the different companies. An executive who is successful in one of their companies can move to another one of the Thor companies to help make that company more successful.

It's also possible that they may be thinking about vertical integration of other parts of the value chain. At some point, if you have high enough share of the market, it's going to make sense to set up or acquire your own sub-assembly or appliance company and capture the profit from that part of the value chain.

There may also come a day where there are different dealer relationships and contracts. If you control 1/2 the market with your companies and brands, maybe one day the balance of power between dealers and manufacturers will shift toward the manufacturers. That might enable a shift to auto-dealer type of warranties; something I think we'd all like to see. Wouldn't it be nice to grade dealers on quality of service and require all of your dealers to provide timely warranty service, regardless of where you purchased your rig? That could come.

 

[dlw930]

There may also come a day where there are different dealer relationships and contracts. If you control 1/2 the market with your companies and brands, maybe one day the balance of power between dealers and manufacturers will shift toward the manufacturers. That might enable a shift to auto-dealer type of warranties; something I think we'd all like to see. Wouldn't it be nice to grade dealers on quality of service and require all of your dealers to provide timely warranty service, regardless of where you purchased your rig? That could come.

I like that line of thinking. I'd also like to see dealers offering quality and timely non-warranty service similar to auto dealerships. Maybe the industry will mature into manufacturer-based dealerships like GMC/Chevrolet, Ford/Lincoln/ Mercury, etc. Probably not in my time.


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[wino2]

Thor stock went up nearly 7% on Friday, and is up over 23% for the year. Hope some of you own it.

 

[sengli]

I had no idea they were for sale. I think it is sad to see the family business be taken over. I guess this is better than what happened to Evergreen, last week they folded up and closed with out warning. So no more bay hill ,or lifestyle fivers.

 

[SilverRhino]

Sad to hear this news! Jayco has been a quality company for many years, it will be interesting to see if that quality is maintained!

 

[Mattman]

I had my choices narrowed down to a jayco or Heartland. I liked the plywood sub floors and roofs on there trailers. Some days I wish I would have went that way. But the NT had some other features I like. That and the dealer ship gave me a good offer on my old TT.

 

[Bones]

I'd guess that Thor sees an opportunity to reduce supplier costs by way of higher volumes shared across many brands. Instead of contracting for 40,000 of a widget, they can likely negotiate a better price for 250,000. They can also share best practices across the different companies. An executive who is successful in one of their companies can move to another one of the Thor companies to help make that company more successful.

It's also possible that they may be thinking about vertical integration of other parts of the value chain. At some point, if you have high enough share of the market, it's going to make sense to set up or acquire your own sub-assembly or appliance company and capture the profit from that part of the value chain.

There may also come a day where there are different dealer relationships and contracts. If you control 1/2 the market with your companies and brands, maybe one day the balance of power between dealers and manufacturers will shift toward the manufacturers. That might enable a shift to auto-dealer type of warranties; something I think we'd all like to see. Wouldn't it be nice to grade dealers on quality of service and require all of your dealers to provide timely warranty service, regardless of where you purchased your rig? That could come.

It can have advantages as well as down sides. It could mean better quality control of parts but it could also mean lower diversity of variations but then that could lead to better quality control. To control cost the parent company would more than likely want each sub company to use the same part across all brands. which I think they do mostly now. Only Time will tell what the plans are.

 

[jayc]

I just read today that the Bontrager family has started a family foundation to share their wealth with the community. Sounds like a class act to me.