This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain some errors.

Jarod Lippert [00:00:00]:

We have to double down on innovation as we’re in this industry. And I say industry, all of our industries for that matter. It’s not just the RV industry. It’s marine, it’s automotive, it’s everything. We have to keep innovating. Not just products, like I’ve said before, but processes getting more efficient. We have to be the leading innovator in the industries we serve.

 

Kyler Mason [00:00:22]:

Whether you’re going to market through dealers, distributors, or some other partner channel. The mediated sale is complex. We call it B2B2X.

 

John Gough [00:00:30]:

But the leaders in the industry are the ones who are making it look simple. I’m John Gough.

 

Kyler Mason [00:00:35]:

And I’m Kyler Mason. And this is Why You Win. Presented by Element Three on today’s episode, we’re.

 

John Gough [00:00:41]:

Talking to Jared Lippert, the CMO of Lippert. We talked to Jared about the last 20 years and how his role has changed. The difference in how marketing mattered when the organization was primarily B2B focused versus the change that happened when they had to go and enter the consumer environment. And the way that he is helping his team make sure that they are focusing on the things that matter most in their business. It’s a great episode. I hope you enjoy it. Jarod, we’re excited to have you today. Thanks for coming on.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:01:09]:

Thank you. Appreciate it.

 

John Gough [00:01:11]:

Yeah. So just to get started, can you tell the audience a little bit about your role at Lippert?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:01:17]:

Yeah. So I’m the chief marketing Officer of Lippert and all of its affiliated brands. There’s. There’s a lot of brands in our Leopard. We’re just not a RV company. So we’re in marine and automotive and some other stuff. Pretty much what Chief Marketing Officer sounds like. I’m.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:01:31]:

Got a. I lead a really great team and lead a lot of initiatives and stuff like that for. For all of our marketing needs around the organization.

 

Kyler Mason [00:01:40]:

You went out of your way to say you’re not just an RV company. Why’d you do that?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:01:45]:

And that’s the. That’s the Brandy guy in me.

 

Kyler Mason [00:01:47]:

Yeah. What’s that about?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:01:49]:

Yeah, I mean, we. We’ve been primarily thought of as an RV company for the last 25 years, and rightfully so. Right. We’ve. We went from. Founded in 1956 as a supplier in the manufactured housing industry, of all things. That’s where my grandfather started this thing all the way up to my father in 1977 when he took over. It was in our.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:02:09]:

It was a manufactured housing company until really 1997 is when we got into the RV space. My brother took the company over in 2003 and we went from basically in 97, call it the turn of the century 2000. We went from 20% RV, 80% manufactured housing, and just in a few short years flipped it to 80% RV, 20% manufactured housing. So it was like they happened fast. And you know, for a 50 year old company, that was a big shock really turning one product to the other. So. But then the great recession happened and we really learned fast that we better diversify this company out of RVs and go into other stuff routes. It’s going to be a painful journey.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:02:55]:

So kudos to everyone on the team here. We’ve done a really good job of diversifying over the last decade or so, maybe a little bit longer. We’re in other industries now, the aftermarkets of those industries. And we’ve done a good job of not being just so cemented in the RV industry. But it still is our bread butter. I’m not going to mince words about that. I mean our RVs are still our number one product.

 

John Gough [00:03:22]:

8020 shift in just a couple of years is basically like flipping a light switch for a company. What was the signal to you guys that made that make sense, really?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:03:32]:

It was the changing the guard. Right. My father had run the company as a manufactured housing company his entire career, his entire child, I mean, grew up in the company just like I did. Jason CEO My brother was working out in Pennsylvania and I’m helping write a history book about the company right now. So all this stuff is fresh in my mind. So I know the story. But he saw a couple RV frames being towed out there in Pennsylvania. He said, well, why the heck can’t we do this? This looks just like what we’re doing now.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:03:59]:

And he went to my dad and said, hey, can I get some seed money to start a RV line? We can build these chassis. And my dad said, sure, let’s go for it. And, and really, you know, my dad was towards the end of his career so he knew that the future wide with Jason and his executive management team. And we got a customer out in Pennsylvania and Jason moved back to Indiana, started getting some more customers here, where obviously the heart and soul of the industry is in Indiana and kind of the rest is history. We just went on from there, just kind of took off.

 

Kyler Mason [00:04:33]:

That’s cool. So you’re writing a history book right now. What, what led to that?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:04:38]:

We, we hired a company to do it. I’m editing it basically. So I, I feel like I’m writing a lot of it right now, but it’s, it’s kind of done actually. We’re just getting the last few edits done. We should have, we should have something soon. So it’s been fun.

 

Kyler Mason [00:04:52]:

You’ve been a part of the company for 20 plus years.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:04:56]:

November will be 23 years.

 

Kyler Mason [00:04:58]:

So we don’t need to go through your, your whole resume. But like, tell me about some of the early jobs you had.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:05:03]:

Yeah, I mean, I actually started off, I have a minor in accounting, so I was a systems guy, I was a data guy. So I basically spent my first, you know, eight years learning the business from the data side, writing all the reporting for sales and really trying to assimilate all the data that we had in the company into one master database. Because we, you know, there’s 50 plans, 50 different systems. You know, that was part of what I did, was try to get everybody on the same system so that we’re all speaking the same language. And the opportunity came around 10 years in to help out with some marketing stuff. And because I had dealt with all the product data, I knew the products better than anybody that was available. So I started creating some basic brochures and catalogs and stuff like that. And it just took off in 2012 when we entered the aftermarket.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:06:00]:

And it’s a big, big change from trying to market to, you know, when I try to explain to people the difference between the oem, original equipment manufacturing side of our business and the aftermarket is the OEM in this industry especially, there’s really three customers left. There’s more. Right. But there’s three big customers. Forest River, Thor and Winnebago. All right? And for the most part, all those customers live within a 20 mile radius of our headquarters here in Elkhart. So you’ve got very little touch points that you have to make. And it’s very relationship based from the marketing standpoint.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:06:42]:

You know, as long as you have those relationships and you can talk to those people regularly, you know what you’re supposed to be doing on the aftermarket side. You’re talking to not only the 2000 plus dealers, the 20 plus distributors, but the millions of end users, consumers that are buying this product. Right. So that was a big shift of thinking for us. And that required what we found out a lot more marketing resources to do that. So that’s kind of when the, our marketing department got bigger and started expanding to just support all those initiatives across all those markets. And then we get into marine and then we get into automotive and a lot of other businesses. So it just kept adding and adding and adding more fun stuff for us to do.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:07:28]:

So it’s been fun.

 

John Gough [00:07:29]:

One of the things that we think about a lot in this environment, and you just said a few different angles on this, is this like B2B2B or B2B2C kind of journey that businesses are operating in? They say journey model that they’re operating in. And the way you describe that with these RV manufacturers is actually like way more just a B2B experience. And in ways that I think that we have talked about off the mic, your product in those environments, especially in the OE side, is like almost invisible to the end user. You don’t really have like a lot of brand recognition on that OE side. But your comment just about the aftermarket a second ago is a complete opposite. Opposite. Right. Your brand matters a lot in there.

 

John Gough [00:08:14]:

Can you talk about that a lot?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:08:17]:

Yeah. I mean, we make the thing that goes into the thing that people want to buy, right? That people are out there shopping for. And a lot of our things are underneath the coach. They’re part of the suspension, they’re part of the chassis. And you don’t even know we made it. And when you buy a car, how many people know who made the transmission in their car? Not many. You know who made the chassis? Not many. If anybody.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:08:48]:

Once in a while you see a Bosch radio or a Harman Kardon audio system that they call out in the car. But that’s about it in an rv. It’s. It’s a myriad of different vendors that have products inside these RVs. But at the end of the day, the end, the end user, the person actually buying the rv, they don’t really care. So it’s really hard to get that message across to the end consumer, which we spent the last 12 months really hammering that to try to get an end user, end consumer retail customer recognition on some of our really high end, highly noticeable products. And so that’s been a journey. I put one of my directors on that this last year to really, really tie that recognition and with some of these OE products.

 

Kyler Mason [00:09:40]:

Can you tell us why that’s important?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:09:42]:

Well, it’s important because we know our customers aren’t going to advertise those products for the most part for us. So we kind of took it upon ourselves to, hey, we really got to get the retail customer aware that these products exist. Because probably every marketing person in the RV industry will agree with. What I’m saying is that we make the sale to the OEM The OEM sales crew has to make that sell to the dealer, right? And then the dealer has to make that sale to the retail customer. It’s like that game where, you know, you sit in a circle and you, you whisper a word into someone’s ear or a phrase, and by the time it gets around the circle, well, telephone, telephone. It’s like a game of telephone. By the time it gets to the retail customer, do they really know the truth? The benefits of what’s in that coach? We, we found out the answer is a lot of times no. Sometimes.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:10:35]:

Sometimes yes. But I, I told you guys a story the other day. We, to prove the point, I sent a couple salespeople out to some retail shows. So I say retail shows all, all winter long and spring. There’s, you know, the Indianapolis RV show and the Grand Rapids boat show and the Novi RV show. Sent a few people out there just to, without Lippert shirts on, just to ask questions to the, to the dealer reps that were on the floor. And in one particular instance, guy went up to one of the dealers selling pontoon boats that had our product on it and he said, hey, did you know that the front of this Bimini, which is a shade for a boat, had this extension on it? And he unzipped the, he unzipped the Bimini and pulled the extension out and set it up, which gave the boat another eight feet of shade. And the dealer just sat there in amazement, said, I had no idea it did that.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:11:27]:

And so that’s just one of probably a hundred different stories that happen in this industry where we’ve really got to focus on getting that end consumer to know why these products that we sell, that we put on these coaches are game changers in some cases and will make the camping experience better and the boating experience better.

 

Kyler Mason [00:11:49]:

Why is it important they know the brand? You just described a feature benefit of that example, experience. Help me understand why the brand component is a big deal.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:11:59]:

We’ve got a lot of brands, right? Lippert being the flagship brand. The brand’s important from my standpoint because we have so many products that tie in with each other. So we have brands by, we’ll say product groups. So we have a furion brand, right, that integrates everything from appliances to H Vac. And as you build upon that furion brand and you start introducing really, really cool, innovative products to that brand, we start to build a story over what that brand needs. And so as we introduce a new furion product, the hope is like, hey, I’ve got the New Furion Chill Cube, which is a really awesome AC 18K air conditioner unit that is really one of our best received products that we ever launched. The hope is right, like when that next fury on product comes along, they’re like, wow, the 18k AC I have is unbelievable. I can’t wait to see, you know, what, what the next product is.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:13:07]:

And ROEM is actually, you know, they, they’ll tout that brand when it really makes a difference in selling that, that product. But again, getting that consumer recognition for what even a 18k furion chills called the Chill Cube, that’s hard to do because again, they’re looking to buy an rv. They’re not really necessarily looking at what’s going into that rv. So it takes a lot of influencers and sponsorships, promotions, advertising, and we do a ton of all that stuff. I think more than what most RV companies are doing, we got a pretty sophisticated advertising and promotional strategy. We had a really good strategy there. So we hit everybody, we hit dealers, we hit retail customers, we’re everywhere out there to try to really push these products. So I always ask the question, when’s the last time anybody watched was watching tv.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:14:06]:

And yeah, I’m one of those guys that watches the 6:00 local news just because I like to know what’s going on in my little slice of the world. But when’s the last time you saw a commercial on television for an RV company? I can’t say that I’ve ever seen one. Now you might see a dealer, a dealership commercial around retail showtime. Like hey, come up to the Grand Rapids RV show. We’re having a special on this fun for the whole family, you know, one of those deals. But you don’t see a commercial for a, for an actual RV brand. And so again that, that really makes our job challenging in this company to try to get out and advertise probably the 500 different products that we have. It’s a massive undertaking.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:14:52]:

So what do we focus on this week? Is it the air conditioners? Is it the new suspension system? That’s the biggest challenge is where do we focus our efforts on today.

 

John Gough [00:15:04]:

So Lipper has grown a lot over the last several years through acquisition. And some of the brands that you acquire, say brands, I mean companies, but I kind of mean brands are like CURT, for example, a really well known towing brand. And then there are other brands like some of the ones that you mentioned that are like basically invisible even though they are operating in a retail environment. What is the decision making process that you have to go through as CMO to decide how excited you are, how you’re going to invest, where you’re going to make your moves or your bets. When one of those kind of falls into your lap and you’re like, all right, well, time to market this one, is it going to be easy or hard?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:15:43]:

It’s a great question. I mean, when we go through the M and A process, that’s the first question I ask, is, hey, what are we doing with this brand? It’s funny when I don’t think I’ve ever been through an acquisition. We’ve really never done a merger, so just say acquisitions. I never been through an acquisition where the owner of that company did not feel that their brand was the best brand on the face of this planet, that it’s special. It means something. You don’t understand it. It means so much to our customers. Let’s be honest, if it’s not a very big brand, I’m having the honest conversation with that person saying, you know what? In a year, no one’s going to care, right? Because in the grand scheme of things, this is not a.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:16:26]:

Coke’s a brand, you know, Nike’s a brand like this. This is just going to get built into the mothership. No one’s ever going to know the difference. Maybe a few people in the industry. But now, Kurt, that’s easy because I would say Kurt is absolutely the most recognizable, biggest brand that we’ve ever acquired. So, you know, when, when you see a Curt come across the board, you, you start getting really excited because you’re like, okay, here’s, here’s a big time consumer brand that, you know is outside of. It’s in the RV industry. But I, I basically explain, anybody that owns a truck can own a Curt product.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:17:03]:

Anybody owns a car can own a Curt product. We make hitches for Teslas, right? I mean, people put hitches on Teslas. People put hitches on all sorts of vehicles and that that’s what we make in the accessories and things that go into those hitches. So Kurt was, I would say, a really easy decision, but I’d say from an acquisition standpoint, we were really intent on buying brands like real brands. I’ve heard my boss state that time and time again that we want to focus on acquiring real consumer recognized brands, ranch hands and other good, good example of a great brand that we bought. You know, we’re up here in Indiana. Maybe ranch hand doesn’t mean a lot, but when you go to Texas, ranch hand is a big deal. If you have a ranch hand on the front of your truck.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:17:53]:

That is a status symbol. It’s a really big deal. And I was, I didn’t know much about ranch hand before we bought it, but when I tell people that own a truck that we own ranch hand, their eyes get really big, like, no way.

 

Kyler Mason [00:18:06]:

So how do you, you know, with the mothership, how do you leverage the brand equity you’re describing and the consumer preference, brand preference that exists with Kurt and with ranch hand and tie that back to the fact that they’re Lipper owned?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:18:24]:

I guess the easiest way for me to answer that question is where it makes sense, we leverage it. On the RV side, does it make sense to leverage ranch hand? Not so much on Kurt. We have, we’ve worked with Curt Engineering to come up with some really cool new RV products that if you walk up to one of the new RVs that were just shown at open house a couple weeks ago, you’ll see some Curt products in there. So where it makes sense, the new pin box, which connects the fifth wheel to the Beta pickup truck, that’s a curb branded pin box, because that makes sense. Kurt’s towing company. So that’s kind of how we leverage it. Where it makes sense, we’ll leverage those brands to RV products and vice versa. Really only what makes sense.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:19:10]:

I would say I’m very protective of brand integrity. Call me the brand police. That’s part of my job. I think what every marketing manager’s job is brand integrity. Because I just don’t want to, I don’t want to dilute it. That’s my biggest fear. Don’t just slap the name on anything that you can because consumers aren’t dumb. They’re going to figure it out and put an orange sticker on a regular old Leopard product.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:19:36]:

I want, I don’t, I don’t have the interest in doing that.

 

John Gough [00:19:38]:

So I think the way that you’re describing acquiring and then extending brand value is really important. And that feels like kind of the most basic version of what you, what you’re talking about. Acquire a company with a great strong brand and then make it make sense within the portfolio and extend it into the places where consumers will recognize it and care about it and be enthusiastic about it. And that story that it already owns gets to grow because of the choices that you’ve made rather than just like grabbing an asset and then declaring it now the same as everything else or all the other stuff is good because I have this now.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:20:19]:

I think that worked 20 years ago, maybe 30 years ago. But I mean, there’s so much information, you guys know, there’s so much information out there between social media and everything else that people are smarter than that now. They see right through it. You know, that’s what I’ve learned over the last just couple years really. You know, when as TikTok and everything else has blown up, there’s just mountains of information out there from consumers, just regular old people reviewing things. And if you watch that one TikTok, the algorithm catches on. All of a sudden you got 30 different people saying the same thing about the same product. It’s, you gotta be really careful about what you’re doing because anybody can be a reviewer now on social media and you know, work can get out really fast, right? So you gotta treat your customers like they’re as smart as you are.

 

John Gough [00:21:16]:

Well, frankly, challenging to embed yourself into a subculture like that. Like, if you wanted to care about truck accessories, you had to go find some people who cared about truck accessories. And now, now it’s, it’s in your pocket, right? You’re going to get on truck talk and see what, see what people care about, see what the right hitch is.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:21:36]:

When we started a ranch hand TikTok I, we had like over 30,000 followers in a month. I mean it was just crazy how like, oh, like you’re here. This is great because I want to show everyone, I want to show everyone my truck. This is amazing.

 

Kyler Mason [00:21:50]:

How do you fuel that content? How do you manage that channel?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:21:53]:

A lot of the Ranch Chan content is user sourced. People want to show off their truck and they, they do some beautiful things with these, with these trucks and every single one of them has a beautiful GRD on it and it’s, it’s really not hard to, to get content from, for, for ranch hand.

 

John Gough [00:22:09]:

Jared, what do you drive?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:22:12]:

I drive a BMW X7.

 

John Gough [00:22:16]:

What does that look like? With a grill guard on it. Is that weird?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:22:20]:

I knew you were going to ask that probably would weigh the front of the vehicle down. A lot of guys put them on for show, right? But I mean they are really designed to take an impact, right. So we’ve get the other stories we get outside of the vanity kind of photos is, hey, I, we’ve hit bears, we’ve hit pigs, we’ve hit deer, we’ve hit cows. Cows not doing so great, but the front of the truck’s just fine. Those are the kind of stories we get from social where they’ll send a picture of their truck and yeah, the ranch hand got banged up pretty good. But Front of the truck’s doing okay. He walked away. So that’s really what it was created for.

 

John Gough [00:23:03]:

I’m imagining the ad now. It’s just a list of things we’ve hit.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:23:07]:

Yeah, I know. Yeah, the bear story was really interesting. A guy hit a bear.

 

Kyler Mason [00:23:14]:

That’s crazy.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:23:15]:

Texas. There’s a lot of. A lot of crazy things in Texas. So that’s.

 

John Gough [00:23:19]:

That’s the whole sentence. Texas.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:23:21]:

Actually, no, the bear was Florida. The bear. The bear happened in Florida.

 

John Gough [00:23:25]:

Surprising to everybody involved, I’m sure.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:23:27]:

Yeah.

 

Kyler Mason [00:23:28]:

You’re operating in the CMOC in a. In a pretty complex, diverse business. How do you prioritize all of the things that you’re expected to manage, move forward, et cetera?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:23:41]:

Yeah. So five years ago, even two years ago, it was, let’s just. Let’s try to do as much as we can, as many as we can. Let’s. Let’s just go, go, go, go, go, go. And really, only in the last year, I kind of told you a story earlier about how I put a person on the specific market and said, hey, let’s focus on five things. Let’s focus on five of the biggest things that are going to move the needle for this company. And surprisingly or not surprisingly, why did we knock it out of the park in this calendar year focusing on those five things now? It’s not like we ignored all the other hundred things that we sell into this market, but when you focus on just a couple things and do it really, really well, that has paid dividends.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:24:37]:

And that’s kind of what I’m challenging the team. My team is broken up by market, so I have OEM people, I have aftermarket people, Marine, rv, automotive. That’s kind of my challenge to the team as we’re going through strat planning this year, is if you could pick five to 10 things to just focus 90% of your time on and do it really, really well, what would you do? And of course, they talk to sales leaders and operations leaders. Hey, what do you. What’s your most important thing? All right, cool. And so we’re getting those lists together, and I have a feeling that while we don’t ignore all this stuff and we’re still doing, you know, what we need to do to get by to make sure that all the boxes are checked, you know, all the photos are taken, all the videos are done, what are we really going to excel at when we focus on those five to 10 things? And I’m really excited to see what happens because we kind of tested in just one market we’re gonna. I’m gonna really kind of put it across all the markets this year because I think we found we really excel when we can just focus. And I think that’s.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:25:43]:

Every company has those challenges right now is they’re just, you know, they’re trying to do so much. Was probably not as many resources they had two years ago. That’s. That’s kind of where we’re at right post Covid, the RV industry was blew up. We ship. I again, I don’t have the numbers. A lot of units right after Covid. And it’s been regressing over the last two years, not surprisingly.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:26:09]:

Right. We weren’t going to keep that pace up. And so we’ve had to figure out how to do more or less. And I think a lot of companies are doing that right now. And I think a lot of companies are faced with the same kind of challenges. How are we going to focus on all these things and do it really well? And I think the answer is you’re not. You’re probably not. I had to go through a lot of failures to come to that recognition of, hey, you can do everything awesome.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:26:36]:

You can do a couple of things really awesome. And when. And when those things hit, you just kind of know what’s going to impact the business the most. And so that’s what we’re really doing right now is trying to figure out what. What those projects are and really excel at them.

 

Kyler Mason [00:26:52]:

You talked about some failures or some learnings. Where’d you scrape your knee along the way? That kind of helped you to. You’ve developed a strong opinion about the direction you’re talking about. So where did this come from?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:27:08]:

I think one of the things we’ve stumbled on a little bit here is there’s been a few sneaker product launches, and some of those things did not pan out well. And we put a lot of resources towards them. I’m not going to name the specific products, but there’s. I could name a lot. And I think when you look down to it, it’s like, did we really assess the markets and the customer and the potential sales outlets before we. We launched these products? While I think we did everything that we could to make it a successful launch, you know, there’s always that. That thing, you know, way back in your brain that says, I don’t know about this, like, is this really going to work? So you got to learn to trust your gut. But the problem is with this company is not a problem.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:28:02]:

It’s a good thing we are not Afraid to throw something against the wall and see if it sticks. I mean, that’s how we’ve grown to where we are today is we really pushed the envelope with some new product and innovation stuff. And hey, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but more times than not it works. So, you know, we’re going to keep taking those chances. We always have. And that’s just kind of the built in DNA that we have here. So, you know, I can say, oh, we shouldn’t have done that. Like, well, it’s worked in the past, so it’s kind of hard to argue with past successes.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:28:34]:

Right, but how do you get the.

 

Kyler Mason [00:28:35]:

Guts to do that as a, as a company? I mean, you’ve been close to it for a long, long time. Is this a cultural thing?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:28:43]:

It’s cultural in its processes and it’s really instituting a little bit more communication and feedback before we go super deep into product development. And so that culture is changing right now. I see it, I see it moving in a different direction, better direction, and really what it comes down to is, hey, the last thing we want to do is waste a bunch of people’s time if something’s really not going to be successful. So I think we’re on the right path there. It has been a cultural shift. It’s changing right now. So I’m excited to see kind of how the future goes there because again, it’s about focus. If we can focus on, and it goes beyond marketing, it’s the product and engineering teams too, right? If those guys can focus on five big things and do them really, really well, could we really move the needle on some new products? And that’s really what’s happened in the last couple of years is we’ve had some really big product launches this last calendar year that products have finally hit and they’ve been really, really successful.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:29:50]:

Analog brake system is a really good example on the OE side. And you know, analog brakes are nothing new. They’ve been around. They’ve been mandated by the automotive industry for decades, but didn’t exist for RVs. And so what do we do? We said that we want to develop one. All right, well, we’re going to hire a team, former automotive engineers that understand ABS. And we set out in over two years, just focused on that, developed an ABS system and guess what? Now it’s on probably 10 different brands and we have people talking about analog brakes in the RV industry that never even would have thought about that a couple years ago. And now it’s, it’s becoming More and more prevalent.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:30:32]:

So that’s, that’s a success story that we’ve had on the product side where we, when we did focus on it, we were successful and I mean, obsessively focus on it. Just a core group of people that just all they did was figure this product out, test it, and it really worked.

 

John Gough [00:30:46]:

Well, you’re talking about strategic choices that that organization, parts of the organization are making.

 

Kyler Mason [00:30:53]:

Right?

 

John Gough [00:30:54]:

So marketing is going to make some choices about its focus. Product is going to make some choices about its focus. What I’m wondering about is a company that started, like most do, family owned, kind of small, grew up, and then you all made a choice that many organizations never get the option to. To become publicly traded. How did that affect your ability to make these kind of strategic choices? Or do you feel any pressure or, I don’t know, other hand guiding you to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:31:29]:

Not really. I mean, look, but my last name’s on the building, right? So there is a.

 

Kyler Mason [00:31:37]:

No pressure.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:31:38]:

There is a pressure, you know, to make this company as absolutely as great as it possibly can be. And that’s something I’ve always felt. You know, it’s a lot of pressure to have the last name. I have two brothers that work in the company. I’m sure they have the same pressure. So I’d say as time goes on, you start thinking a lot, a lot about legacy and where are you going to leave the company for the future generations. And I think we could walk away right now saying, hey, this thing started as a $200 million company when I started, and we’ve gotten it to 3, 4, $5 billion. And I think that’s something to be really proud of.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:32:21]:

But we can always do better. So that’s kind of what everyone’s really focused on right now. I think in the organization, we went through this really crazy high Covid. We’ve come down a little bit since then because things just normalized. And I think a lot of companies and industries have faced the same kind of problems. And now we’re thinking about again, where are we going to go from here? How are we going to get this thing back to where it was? And that’s more diversity, that’s more innovation. We lead our company with, I would say we have five pillars that when we talk about the company, we talk about how we’re going to improve these five pillars. Innovation is one.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:33:08]:

Innovation is going to lead efficiencies and efficiencies, lead new products and sales quality. Same, same deal. There we’re obsessive about quality. We want to improve all of that. Not just product quality, but just the quality of the plants and processes and things like that. When you get into kind of some of the other things that make us a little different, and that’s the culture side. So, yeah, it’s nice to make a bunch of products and sell those products and make a profit off that product. But at the end of the day, there’s, I think, 11,500 people that come to work here every day.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:33:48]:

And what are we doing about those people’s lives? Are we making those lives better? And that’s really the other side of the coin, right, that we take very seriously, you know, to be responsible for that many people and those. That many families. So I think we’re one of the only companies in this industry, and in the area, for that matter, that have an actual culture and leadership team that goes out and actually coaches leaders how to be leaders. Because how many people actually get thrown into a management position that have been taught how to lead people? Right. And not many. We really obsess about that. We’re big into engagement surveys and just making sure that that’s our way to kind of gauge the temperature of where the company is going and how people are feeling. And I would say it’s really shifted the way that the company thinks over the last decade of just having that pillar and that team and that mindset in place, really trying to develop people into better leaders and better people.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:34:56]:

Because if you hear Jason speak, he says this all the time. If you treat people better at work, nine times out of 10, they’re more likely to go home, treat their family better because they feel better at work, they feel better at home. Those dominoes fall and peak society better makes everything better. So people spend more time at work than they do at home. Right. That’s. In the end of the day, that’s really the sad reality of the whole thing itself.

 

John Gough [00:35:23]:

Of capitalism.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:35:25]:

Of capitalism. Yeah.

 

Kyler Mason [00:35:28]:

Bummer.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:35:31]:

Yeah.

 

Kyler Mason [00:35:32]:

That’s good stuff. I want to know, I guess, as much as you can share, what bets are in sort of your future. The show is about, like, why you win. There’s a lot that you’ve talked about around culture and, like, principles and pillars and really some of the commitments you’ve made, but what’s going to keep you all moving in the right direction and how are you thinking about that, you.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:35:54]:

Know, going back to culture and leadership? We. We have to double down on our culture. We have to be. We have to be the employer choice in this area because most people, if you’re not familiar with the Elkhart and the RV industry, everybody’s here. And we’re all fighting for the same finite amount of people that, that work in this county. Okay, yeah, we can maybe grab some people over the border of Michigan, and we might get some people to come from South Bend and Fort Wayne, but for the most part, Elkhart County, St. Joseph county, that’s what we’re locked in. And so we’re, we’re all fighting over the same people.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:36:32]:

We have to be the employer choice. There’s that, you know, we have to retain as many people as we possibly can. All that does is when we have good attrition and good retention, people stay longer. Quality gets better, safety gets better, all the, all the metrics get better. Right? Efficiency is everything. And then innovation, we have to double down on innovation as we’re in this industry. And I say industry, all of our industries for that matter. It’s not just the RV industry.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:37:02]:

It’s marine, it’s automotive, it’s everything. We have to keep innovating. Not just products, like I’ve said before, but we processes getting more efficient. We have to be the leading innovator in the industries we serve. And I think people kind of look at, I know in the RV industry, people look at us that way, hey, what are you guys working on? What’s next? Open house was just a couple weeks ago. And if you guys don’t know what that is, it’s essentially the RV industry doesn’t have a national trade show anymore. That went away about eight years ago. And so now what happens is every September, the OEMs fly the dealers in for a couple days and they show off all the new units, all the new stuff.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:37:45]:

Dealers hopefully place orders and the whole cycle starts over again. There’s a lot of stuff in that open house a couple weeks ago that I was very proud. I mean, a lot of innovative new things that we put out there that were all on our customers. Units that, hey, that Lippert’s name all over it. So we gotta continue doing that too. Those are two of the biggest things. Diversification. We’re still looking to, you know, where our core competencies.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:38:17]:

When I say core competencies, our core manufacturing competencies lie. We need to figure out how to make products that might go into different industries. Right? And we’ve done that really, really well in the past. We, we process a lot of glass. We process and manufacture over 23,000 thousand windows a day. That just didn’t happen overnight. I Mean, we made tons and tons of glass for RVs and boats and other vehicles. We were approached.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:38:50]:

This was a long time ago now, but over a decade ago, we were approached by a school bus company. Like, hey, can you want to bid on school bus windows? And we can make school bus windows. And now we’re the largest supplier of school bus windows in the country. You know, just would never have thought that. Right. So, Tris, trying to take those core competencies of ours and taking them to industries that make sense, we don’t want to go too far off road, but industries that we have relationships in and we have some similarities in that we can get into and easily get into and manufacture the stuff that we were really, really good at. So glass, fabricated metal, plastics, things like that. If we can do it, we’ll diversify.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:39:38]:

Yeah.

 

Kyler Mason [00:39:39]:

And of course, more acquisitions.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:39:41]:

And more acquisitions. Yeah, yeah. And that’s always fun. It’s been a little slow the last couple years. We haven’t made really, really big acquisitions. But to me, that just tells me that we’re being more choosy. I like that, actually being more choosy on the M and A front. We want to write really good companies with really good leadership teams, really good cultures that have really differentiated products that make a difference.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:40:09]:

That’s kind of what we’re looking at.

 

Kyler Mason [00:40:10]:

Yeah.

 

John Gough [00:40:11]:

That makes your life a lot easier.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:40:12]:

Makes my life a whole lot easier, yeah.

 

Kyler Mason [00:40:15]:

For someone that finds themselves in a leadership position in an acquisition environment, you’ve been a part of this a lot of times now, is there a playbook to doing that? Well, to ingesting a company? Do you. Have you learned things over time that you would say, hey, I’ve done this so many times. These are the three things I’d look for and what I’d do about them. I’m kind of making that up. But to get your brain going, what advice do you have on that front?

 

Jarod Lippert [00:40:40]:

I say this tongue in cheek to a lot of people that ask about acquisitions. I might never really come across an acquisition because the seller was selling because they, they were all in on their company. Typically, if they’re really 100% all in on their company, they’re not selling. There’s always a reason. Right. So first of all, what’s the reason could be really aged out technology. A lot of the times the family just doesn’t want anymore. Right.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:41:10]:

And so now you’re dealing with a family owned business that how are you going to take that over and integrate? Sometimes the family doesn’t even want to be part of the business anymore. They just want out. Right. So to answer your question is when I’ve gone in and looked at the people and the operations and how it all works at a potential acquisition, it is very clear, very fast who’s really running the place, right? Like, you know who the key people are right away. Because a lot of the times you’ll ask like, who does this? And it’s typically like person points at the same person every single time. It’s like, okay, so basically if that guy leaves, we’re all screwed. And really make sure that those key people are well taken care of. But honestly, you know, one of the things that we do right off the bat is we integrate the cultural stuff into the, into the acquisition day one.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:42:08]:

And hats off to our human resources and leadership teams that our boots on the ground first day, because it’s a shock, right? There’s a couple people upstairs that know this is happening, but 95% of the people in the company, they have no idea. They literally walk into work that day and find out that they’re no longer. That they’re owned by another company. Right. So that’s a shot. And so our teams do a really awesome job at going in there and just saying, hey, look, we’re going to take care of you. Here’s your new benefits. They are really great at day one stuff on these acquisitions.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:42:41]:

And I can say hats off to them because that’s. There’s a lot of tough conversations that have to be had and God bless them for doing all that. So. But installing the culture and that’s really worked is, you know, some of these companies. But what do people do when they want to sell their company? What’s the first thing they do? They start stripping out every last non essential thing that they possibly can to make that company look way more profitable than it really is. Right. So a lot of times these people have been dealing with just stripped down resources. Not enough people, not enough machines, not enough this, not enough that.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:43:20]:

And so, you know, day one, they’re kind of beaten down and when we, we come in and say, hey, this is, this is what we’re going to do. And we’re going to, we’re excited to own this company and excited to invest in the people and the, in the culture again that people get really excited.

 

Kyler Mason [00:43:35]:

Mm.

 

John Gough [00:43:36]:

It’s good stuff. I think, to your point about being an employer of choice and surprising people, you can’t help but surprise people in that environment. It’s part, it’s part of the, of the way these things go down for lots of good business reasons. But remembering that it’s people first and that this day one team is in place, I think it just like reinforces your culture in a really important way.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:43:59]:

Yeah, we got a really good playbook and really good people who have been through this so much that thankfully they know how to do it really well.

 

John Gough [00:44:09]:

Jared, you and I have done some work together and we’ve talked about brand a lot and about brand architecture at Lippert. One of the stories that I always remember and carry around with me is the way that some of your sales guys are just full wild west with brand extensions and commitments that they’ll make to oe. So you’ve got these great, like, relatively well known marine brands and they’ll come in and the OE is going to say, I want my own version of this.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:44:38]:

Literally just happened last week. Not a marine guy, different, different industry. But look, at the end of the day, what I tell the sales guys is you’re going to do what you’re going to have to do to make a sale. I can’t prevent that from happening. But at the end of the day, especially with products that were, were advertising on the consumer side, there’s a lot of brand equity and product equity that we’re putting into this product through digital, through social, through every single marketing channel that we have it bequeaths them to. It might not mean anything right now because it’s a newer product, but the one that we’re marketing to the masses, there’s going to be a lot of equity behind this product and you’re going to want to use that name or that brand because that’s free marketing for you. We’re like, we’re not marketing the, whatever you decided to call it. Right? That’s your job now.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:45:37]:

So you can either partner with us and, and benefit off all the pushes that we’re doing for the product on our side, or you can call it whatever you want, I guess, and you’re losing that equity. So it’s. We’re, we’re behind the times. I mean, I know it’s been talked about it probably on other guys on the podcast that have, that are in the industry that have spoken about the same thing. But, you know, we’re very behind the times for a marketing standpoint in this industry. I think everybody will admit that the marine industry is even farther behind the times, believe it or not. And, but, but we are, we are learning, I think every single company. I mean, when I started the marketing department 12 years ago, I don’t know if there’s a single marketing person at any of our customers now.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:46:25]:

They all have teams. They’re getting more mature, they’re learning the importance and really, honestly, it’s kind of forced. Social media’s forced that hand. Right. And you have to be in control of your brand in those channels. You really do, because it can get out of control really, really fast. And so you need somebody to be the gatekeeper of all that. And it’s getting better, but we’re.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:46:48]:

There’s still a lot to. There’s still a long ways to go.

 

John Gough [00:46:52]:

So you’re gonna have to keep your brand police badge and nicely polished till.

 

Kyler Mason [00:46:57]:

You hang it up.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:46:59]:

Yeah, yeah, it’s. It’s funny, the emails. The email comes across, the call comes in and I, I know the exact moment that I’m gonna have to put that badge on. It’s like, oh, this is gonna be a. It’s gonna be a tough conversation.

 

John Gough [00:47:12]:

There you go. Saddle up.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:47:14]:

You had the wrong people doing the wrong things and hire the wrong people and you learn real quick. Then you realize like, hey, there’s a special specific person temperament that you need to. That you can trust. Right. So I guess you live and learn on that kind of stuff. And I’m proud to say that I think I’ve got a fantastic team and a great bunch of leaders that honestly make my job really easy every single day because I have them in charge of their areas of expertise and they’re really awesome at doing it. And I sleep pretty easy at night, let’s just say that.

 

Kyler Mason [00:47:56]:

All right, do your thing.

 

John Gough [00:47:56]:

Jarod, thanks for coming on. This has been an awesome conversation. We so appreciate it.

 

Jarod Lippert [00:48:01]:

Thanks, John. Appreciate it. It was fun.

 

John Gough [00:48:03]:

Why You Win is presented by Element Three, a marketing firm focused on modernizing go to market strategies for manufacturers that through complex distribution channels, we help leaders solve problems across demand generation, sales channel support, and brand development.

 

Kyler Mason [00:48:19]:

If you’d like more from myself or John, connect with us on LinkedIn. And for more from Element Three, visit elementthree.com that’s elementthree.com