Used RVs feel like new

When, on a whim, C.H. "Buzz" Roman bought a struggling marina on the Texas coast in the late '90s, his aim was to boost its occupancy to 95 percent in five years.

To his amazement, he hit that goal in four months.

Roman felt a familiar tingle of excitement. Once again, the baby boomers wanted something he had.

The generation born between 1946 and 1964 has been very good to Roman. He's engineered a string of business successes since the 1970s by anticipating — sometimes unwittingly — the needs of boomers.

Roman and former partner Jesse Hellums owned the first Wendy's franchise in Texas, starting with one restaurant and ending up with 25 stretching from San Antonio to Del Rio and Uvalde. They also founded Alamo Café, Rooty's and Aunt Julies Kitchen before selling most of those properties in the mid '80s.

Now Roman — with his wife, Hazel, and partner John Pratt — is ready to tap into the needs of free-spending boomers once more by opening Roman Holiday Motor Homes on Interstate 35 in New Braunfels.

He's one of the few RV sellers in Texas who deals exclusively with used coaches.
Before launching the business in March 2004, Roman had been searching "for what I could do to serve the wave of baby boomers," he said. "It wasn't until about 1998 that I realized that Wendy's wasn't a restaurant play in the classic sense — it was a baby-boomer play."

Roman, 60, began to focus on selling used RVs when he bought a used coach at wholesale and was surprised at how quickly it sold on the Internet. Roman was also looking for something to do. A genial and energetic man, he wasn't enjoying retirement. "My mother didn't call me 'Slug' for a reason," he said.

Visits to new RV dealers further sparked his enthusiasm. "For the new RV dealers, used seemed to be an afterthought," he said. "I'd ask to see used and they'd point to the back of the lot."

On many lots, "the used coaches were dirty and their batteries were dead. They really didn't want to deal with you, even if you were looking at a $200,000 motor home." Also, few dealers displayed a price and even fewer listed a price with an RV's features.

Roman thought he could do it better and bounced his ideas off Pratt, who had been an executive in the RV industry for 20 years.

Pratt was enthusiastic and joined the Romans to open Roman Holiday with a $3.5 million investment. The money "is mostly borrowed," Roman said. "We have a banker who likes us."

Sales are strong. The business sold 46 units totaling $3.2 million in the nine months it was open in 2004, while this year it has sold 80 coaches for a total of $5.3 million.

Roman isn't worried about sales getting hit by the recent rise in gas prices.

Competitor Diana LeBlanc, general manager of PPL Motor Homes in Houston, the state's biggest seller of used RVs, agrees. "You'll see some people back off," LeBlanc said, "but most will still want to go on vacation, no matter what."

Clark McEwen, executive director of the Texas Recreational Vehicle Association, said gas prices are always a concern. Yet he sees "substantial growth for our industry for the next eight to 10 years. The average age of an RV buyer in the U.S. is 49. It's great for us, because they'll continue to buy up."

Roman said his clients, though affluent, "tell me they understand RV depreciation."
A new RV, Roman said, depreciates more quickly than a new car, "because it's a thinner market." RVs can depreciate 30 to 35 percent in the first few months.

A used 2002 Foretravel coach now on Roman's lot had a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $480,000, "and the guy who bought new probably paid $450,000." Roman is asking $239,900.

" So it cost the guy about $210,000 to put just 40,000 miles on it," Roman said.
To build their used inventory, Roman and Pratt look for clean, late-model RVs. They do a makeover on each one to make it look and smell new.

" We clean every vent, shampoo the carpets, the furniture, and redo cabinets if we need to," Pratt said.

Roman's wife, Hazel, handles marketing, while their daughter, Lee, works with décor, updating RVs with new curtains, bedspreads or even furniture, while a make-ready man and a mechanic ensure that the coach is in good working order.

So far, Roman Holiday has sold almost half of its RVs through the Internet and about a third of its inventory to buyers outside the region.

Recently, an Australian purchased a Roman Holiday RV after seeing it on the Internet. Roman Holiday drove the RV to San Diego, where the buyer paid to have it shipped overseas.

Roman's optimistic that the market will only get better as the first wave of baby boomers reaches retirement age in 2008.

" It's just fascinating what's going on with the boomers," Roman said. "That's what I'm trying to get ready for."