Pampering Campers

Around the factories and Forest City, Iowa, offices of Winnebago Industries, a maker of vehicles for the growing army of U.S. campers, bulletin boards list hourly quotations on the company's stock for the benefit of the many officers and employees who are shareholders. Lately, the boards have been flashing a mystery story. Though the company's sales and profits are rising swiftly, the stock price fell from an adjusted June high of $48.25 to an August low of $32.13; last week it closed at $38.50. One result has been to diminish on paper the fortune of Winnebago's ruling Hanson family. In 1958, present Chairman John K. Hanson, then a furniture dealer, bought most of the company's assets for $12,000. By mid-1972, he had seen that investment grow into family stock holdings worth $773 million; now the value is $617 million.

The slide is all the more galling to Winnebago people because they believe that it has been caused largely by stock-market confusion. President John V. Hanson, son of the founder, claims that investors have been worried by reports of disappointing shipments in the "mobile home" industry, and have got that mixed up with Winnebago's "motor home" business. The name is about the only similarity. Mobile homes, despite the term, are usually towed to one spot and left there to serve as a family's permanent dwelling. Motor homes, also called recreational vehicles and sometimes "fun machines," are designed to whisk campers to national parks in the summer and ski resorts in the winter with some of the comforts of home.

When the elder Hanson took over the company, he foresaw that campers would want to be pampered and gradually switched the product line from spartan travel trailers and portable dwellings mounted on pickup trucks to more luxurious box-shaped, selfpropelled vehicles. Winnebago now crams its 13 models with such gadgets as eye-level ovens, built-in vacuum cleaners, showers, color TVs and sleeping quarters for as many as eight campers.

The vehicles enable campers to travel in comfort and yet avoid the rising costs of motel rooms and restaurant meals. Recreational vehicles range from ingenious $350 pop-up tent trailers to deluxe $4,000 travel trailers pulled by automobiles and $20,000 self-propelled motor homes. Buyers tend to be about 45 years old, earn at least $12,000 a year and spend an average of 34 days a year traveling.

As longer vacations, more three-day weekends and earlier retirements have permitted more Americans to indulge their love of the open road, sales of recreational vehicles spurted to $ 1.6 billion last year, from a mere $87 million in 1961. Within the next six years, sales are expected to top $3 billion. Today, more than 800 companies, many clustered around Elkhart, Ind., now make recreational vehicles. Most are still run by their founders, a group of entrepreneurs who have made millions merely by buying the necessary parts and assembling campers and trailers. Some of the nation's largest corporations, however, are also getting into the business. Boise Cascade, W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods have bought existing companies. Apeco Corp. this month began selling the first travel trailer designed to be towed by a compact car, and General Motors next year will begin making and selling its own recreational vehicles.

About the only cloud over the industry's growth is the prospect of federal safety regulation. Last week the Department of Transportation issued rules that beginning on Jan. 1, will require both pickup-truck and camper manufacturers to print in their owner's manuals pictures showing what size units can be safely fitted to truck beds. In the past, oversized campers mounted on pickup trucks have caused handling and braking problems. The department is expected to issue other safety standards in the next few years. Forcing recreational vehicle makers to add new safety equipment would increase production costs. That possibility, plus the fact that Winnebago is the industry's leader and is one of the few companies whose shares are traded publicly, seems to be another reason for the drop in its stock. Actually, though federal safety rules would hurt the smaller companies, Winnebago now claims to be ahead of prospective federal standards.

The Hansons, at least, remain highly optimistic, and are backing their opinion with money. Winnebago is now spending $10 million to double production capacity to 1,000 vehicles a week, and may even begin to make its own appliances. The company has long cut costs by making almost everything else going into its machines; for example, it makes at a cost of $1.60 each the sun visor that it once bought from an outside supplier for $16. It also is beginning to rent recreational vehicles to people who like the machines but have no place to park or garage them between vacations. But the Hansons do admit that Winnebago's growth is likely to slow; they only expect sales to double every two years. In fiscal 1972, which ended Feb. 26, sales almost doubled in a single year to $133 million and profits nearly tripled to $ 13.6 million.

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