RV Acquisition Co., which was formed by a group of eight investors, most of whom are local and come from diverse professional backgrounds, has purchased the assets of RVs Northwest Inc., located in the Spokane Valley at 18919 E. Broadway.

General Manager Jason Tofte, who is one of the eight owners, says the company bought the recreational dealership from Ron and Tina Little, who ran the business for 16 years. The new company took over Nov. 1, and plans to continue using the RVs Northwest name, he says. The transaction included the business assets and inventory, but not the dealership property, which is leased.

RVs Northwest occupies just over five acres at the Broadway Avenue address and employs close to 50 people there. It sells mobile homes ranging in size from hard-sided, pop-up tent trailers up to 32-foot long pull trailers.

The company’s inventory includes primarily trailers manufactured in the Pacific Northwest, including the brands Forest River, Northwood and Outdoors, Tofte says. A 17-foot, 3,000-pound trailer with air conditioning, which can be pulled by a small SUV, starts at $12,995, while a 32-foot long trailer carries a sales price in the mid- to upper-$40,000 range.

Tofte, who wasn’t employed by RVs Northwest prior to the purchase, declines to identify the other investors involved in the purchase of the dealership.

“They are all very successful entrepreneurs who have previously been in business ventures together and saw the RV industry as a great opportunity to continue working together. We have a wealth of experience in customer service and business experience,” says Tofte, who has 20 years of experience in the automotive industry.

“They come from retail, wholesale distribution, the automotive industry. There’s a physician, and at least two members of the group are affiliated with the gaming industry in Nevada,” Tofte says.

The new owners promptly closed two other store locations in North Spokane and Coeur d’Alene after purchasing RVs Northwest.

The company currently is preparing for the Inland Northwest RV Show & Sale that will be held Jan. 21 -24 at the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center.

“We were able to more effectively pool our product lines, which will allow us to be better able to serve our customers,” Tofte says referring to the reason for the consolidation. 

Shuttering the two stores resulted in “a few layoffs,” Tofte says, and the company was able to move most staff from those locations to the Spokane Valley dealership property, just off Barker Road south of Interstate 90.

Tofte says the recreational vehicle industry is anticipating growth in sales this year, and RVs Northwest hopes to take advantage of it.

The Recreational Vehicle Industry Association says it expects more than 375,000 RV units to be sold in the U.S. this year, a 1.6 percent increase compared with 2015 projections of 369,000 sold. The organization is still tabulating actual sales for 2015.

The RVIA has tracked annual sales across the country since 1974. The all-time record for RV sales since then was in 2006 when almost 391,000 RV units sold, it says.

Tofte says the company has made a concerted effort to improve customer service, something for which the RV industry doesn’t have a good reputation.

“There’s an unusually high number of unsatisfied customers in the RV industry,” Tofte says. “Quite frankly, customer service has not been very important to the industry. For our part, we want to change it. People with RVs are going to camp. And when people camp, they talk. If people like us and the experience they had with us, they’ll be more inclined to talk about us and come back to us.”