As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise."
RV mega dealer Dan Gamel officially announced this week that at least one of his "closed" stores in California will remain open. The Record-Searchlight in Redding, Calif., reported that his spokesperson confirmed the store would remain open.
Gamel's competitors were telling me earlier this summer that his original announcement that he was getting out of the RV business was an elaborate hoax by a master marketer. Less than a month after his original announcement, Dan himself e-mailed me July 29 to say that he was going to keep four stores open: Fresno, Modesto, Sacramento and Redding. I'm told the stunt even caught the attention of California investigators who went sniffing around his dealerships this summer when it appeared he wasn't going out of business after all. They were concerned about charges that Gamel was engaging in false advertising, but no charges were ever filed and he didn't even get a warning letter, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
I am sure people will debate Gamel's intentions and try to discern his motive for the rollercoaster ride he gave his staff and the communities in which he does business as one of their largest sources of tax revenue.
However, one thing is indisputable. While his competitors were left scratching their heads and wondering what they were going to do to survive the downturn, Gamel turned up the heat with a "liquidation" sale that brought consumers onto his sales lots from all over California. Now his competitors are ripping out their hair.
As some dealers were struggling to sell RVs at cost just to maintain cash flow, Gamel was entertaining offers from OEMs to unload yard inventory as his sales skyrocketed.
Dan Gamel has been in this business for a long time. He knows all about the cyclical activity of the RV industry. I suspect he rolled the dice and gambled that the industry would bounce back next year, but this summer he needed to do something to attract attention and bring buyers onto his lots. It's a bluff he could play just once.
I also suspect that is move was a genuine gamble, with no guaranteed outcome. For if he didn't do everything he could to move inventory this summer, Dan Gamel RV Centers may have had to shut down -- for real. In a dog-eat-dog economy, survival of the fittest is a genuine concern.