Doug Karr of Northwood Manufacturing |
| Angela White | Sunday, 13 December, 2009 | |||
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Doug Karr sold his first RV when he was five years old and never looked back. Today he’s the go-to Arctic Fox sales guy at Northwood Manufacturing. ...  When it comes down to it, there are only handful of people in the industry who really live and breathe truck campers and the truck camping culture. At Northwood Manufacturing, Doug Karr is that guy. Doug knows Arctic Fox truck campers inside and out and can answer just about any truck camper question you can think of. Doug also has more stories about truck campers than anyone we’ve ever met. Speaking of stories, Doug’s very first RV story is perhaps his best. We start with that amazing story and then delve into Northwood’s 2010 campers, their research and development process, and how Northwood has weathered the economy.
TCM: You sold your very first RV at a very young age. Tell us about that. Doug: My dad sold Security and Aloha trailers from his RV dealership. The Aloha trailers had iceboxes, a porta potti, and a furnace, if you were lucky. March of every year we went to the Seattle Center for the RV show. I can remember when I was three years old being there. Security built me a little trailer just like a big one. When I was five years old, I was at the Seattle Center RV show and Dad was in a camper with door closed. He told me I couldn’t go into the campers when the door was closed because that meant he was selling a camper. While dad was in the camper with the door closed, a guy came up to me and said, “Do you work here?”. I was wearing a suit and tie and was part of the show. He started asking me questions like, “How big is the propane tank?”. I knew it took 4.8 gallons. He then asked me, “How much is the total cost on the trailer?”. Well, I could see the tag in the window and it said $895, so I told him what it cost. Then, he asked me what it would cost with tags and license. I didn’t know what that meant, so I went over and asked this sales guy and he wrote it down on a card for me. I took that card over to the guy and showed it to him. He said, “I want to buy it.” We sat down in the trailer and he wrote me a check. Then he said, “Do I get a receipt?” And I said, “What the heck is that?” It took all the guts I had to knock on Dad’s trailer. I knocked and he saw it was me and closed the door. Then I knocked again. I showed him the check and dad was the happiest guy in the world. Dad gave me ten bucks for selling that camper. TCM: That’s a fantastic story. What’s the story behind your father’s RV lot? Doug: I basically grew up on Dad’s RV lot. It was called, Karrs Korral. Dad originally opened up a car lot. Then one day a representative came by from Aloha. He was towing a trailer and said, “You ought to sell RVs”. Dad said, “That’s not going to happen”. So the guy said, “I’m going to leave a trailer here for the weekend and see what happens”. We sold it! So, the cars went away and had 5.5 acres of RV's for 32 years. TCM: Did your dad put you to work at the dealership? Doug: When I got off the school bus, I would help out. I would drop the garbage, help the shop guys, make coffee, vacuum, and things like that. I was twelve years old when I got my first paycheck. The year was 1972 and I made $4,200. I remember asking my dad what all this Social Security stuff was. Two years later I was running my dad’s rental department. I worked my way up to the parts department and then to service and trailers. TCM: Did your family go RVing? Doug: Very rarely. We were at the shop seven days a week. Dad would say, “Go get a motorhome PDI,” and we’d go out. Mainly we weren’t camping. We went to private camping clubs and we would sell trailers like crazy. It was a business for him. TCM: Was there ever anything else you considered doing? Doug: I’ve never done anything else. TCM: Tell us about working at Apache Camping Center. Doug: 1983 was a bad year for my family. My older sister died of leukemia and my older brother was killed in an accident. Dad was going to turn over the business to my brother. At that point, I was only twenty-three years old and I did not have the knowledge to run a dealership. So dad sold the business and I worked for Everett RV. Then I was at Apache Camping Center for fourteen and a half years before I went to work for Ron Nash at Northwood. At Apache, I first started working in the service department with trailers and truck campers. They had a little camper called Pastime and lots of others. The lot got busy one day, so the owner asked if I could work in sales department. We sold Caveman Campers, Security Campers, Kit Campers, Dreamer Campers, and Conestoga Campers. We also sold Western Wilderness which turned into Alpenlite. For a short time we sold a brand called Tilden Hilton which were so bad I called them Leaky Tikis. We were the top selling truck camper dealership in the United States for twelve years straight. TCM: How did you come to work for Northwood Manufacturing? Doug: Ron Nash, the President of Northwood, called me up in 1998 and said, “I want to build a truck camper and if I do it, will you help me sell it?” I said to him, “If you want to be unique, then I’ll help.” At the time, truck campers had all the same floor plans and holding tanks. So Ron had designed some campers and sent them to the dealership. They needed some improvement and I made some recommendations. As things progressed, I was getting tired of the retail market. So I went to Northwood to be a sales representative for them. I left Apache selling 80-100 truck campers a year, plus other types RVs. They had good products. We handled several brands of truck campers, plus with me living here all my life, I had a good base and I knew a lot of people. Later, Ron, along with Bob Mehrer of Snowriver, came up with idea of putting a slide-out on a truck camper. Bob and Nash were working together on that. TCM: Tell us about what you do at Northwood. Doug: Sales. Most reps have a territory. Mine is where Ron wants me to go. Campers are my specialty. If dealers have questions on weights or trucks, I can tell them the answer. Ron has sent me all over the United States and Canada. It’s all about where they need me to go. I love working RV shows. I like the excitement; the fast pace of it. With the knowledge I have, it’s easy to train sales people. There’s not too many things I don’t know about truck campers. I’m called the show guy. TCM: How are new Arctic Fox campers developed? Doug: I helped design the 811. Mick Pickler, our production foreman, is a genius. He has a lot of experience with campers. With the 811, I went to Ron and told him I had a design. He said, “Will it work?” and I said, “Yes”. He said, “Build it.” With our campers, we do a prototype at the plant. We refine it and put it all together. It takes us approximately sixty days to do a prototype. Mick has to keep an eye on other stuff down the line. For the 811, we took the sixty-four inch dinette and made it into seventy inches. We also made the bathroom thirty percent larger. TCM: What’s your top selling truck camper and why? Doug: The 990 is our top seller followed by the 811. The 990 now only comes with a wet bath. Recently we started building the 865 because some people refuse to buy a camper with a slide. We wanted to have a non-slide unit. When I debuted the 865 at the Spokane show, it was well received. TCM: When we were at Northwood, it was clear that Northwood was always looking at new materials and production processes to improve the campers. Any recent material or process changes? Doug: We are always looking to refine our campers. We went with a new interior this year. We have gone to bigger battery and LP compartments. We also have larger holding tanks because of our new truss system in our floors. The 990 now has 55 gallons fresh, 53 gallons grey, and 51 gallons black. We upgrade all the time. There has been no change in the camper frame or integrity. If there was something out there that would be better for the frame or integrity, we’d do that, but there isn’t. TCM: Northwood has always been focused on structural integrity versus weight. Has there been any change in that focus? Doug: To build a light weight RV with quality is hard to do. You could build it with airplane materials, but it would cost a lot. I always ask people, “Could you take 1,000 pounds out of your truck and tell me how it’s now made better?” With our campers, pretty much every option is standard. A big problem is that other manufacturers make everything an option including the nightshades, Fantastic Vent, jacks, LP tanks, water tanks, etc. So, the published weight in their brochures is going to show a 1,000 pounds less weight. Is that the right approach? If you took our 990 and opened up the pantry, there is a panel where you can get to the kitchen plumbing. With other campers you have to pull the whole floor out to access the plumbing. With our designs, you can get to things easier. We’ve built a lot of service into our campers. I have serviced them and I know what people need. All of the things I learned over the years, I integrate into our campers. TCM: Any new campers or camper changes for 2010? Doug: We have new additions for 2010 like our cherry wood finish and the interior lighting. We are always upgrading like our recent additions of going to roller drawers, a bigger battery compartment, and propane tank compartment. Speaking of the side-by-side propane tank, it was too tight for our customers to get out. So, I went to Jim Persinger and got the plastic mold for that compartment and asked him if it could be an inch taller. He adapted it and now we can get propane tanks out real simple. TCM: How has Northwood navigated the economy? Doug: Through the downturn, the campers have been going crazy. Ron Nash knows how to run a business. He maintains a low overhead and is able to move quickly using his own capital. TCM: What’s your vision for the future of Arctic Fox campers? Doug: In my own opinion, I’d like to see the camper line get expanded. TCM: Is there anything we didn’t ask that you want included? Doug: Working for Ron Nash is fantastic! He’s very credible and his company is very stable. Northwood is going to continue to grow and improve, and be the best in the right ways. We take our years of experience and build the best campers out there. Nash’s philosophy is that if there is ever anything wrong with a Northwood product, we’re going to fix it. We stand behind our products. We tell that to people straight up. You should also call my mom, Joan Boothy, and ask her about the early days with the family dealership. She could tell you some stories. TCM: We’ll give her a call. Thanks Doug. We followed up with Doug’s mom a few days later and sure enough she had some fun stories about Doug growing up at the dealership. TCM: Tell me about the Doug’s early years growing up in the RV business. Joan: You could say Doug was born into the business. He had a crib in the back room at our RV dealership when he was two weeks old. Then he had a pretend desk and a toy telephone where he would pretend to be writing and talking on the phone. He really did sell his first trailer when he was five. An older couple came in when the salesmen were busy. He knew a lot about the trailers and talked to the couple. He sold them the trailer but, at five years old, he couldn’t write it up. So he took the older couple by the hand and introduced them to a salesmen. The older couple said to tell the little guy that they had bought the trailer because he was so nice. He didn’t want to go to school and would ask me, “Why do I have to go to school?” I told him that the salesmen were sick and tired of writing up his deals. When he came home from school the first day, he told me school was, “Okay”. The next day he said it was, “Okay”. On the third day he finally told he that he thought the teacher was dumb. When I asked him why he thought that he said, “Because she doesn’t know how to write a deal either”. Every spare minute he wasn’t in school he wanted to be on the RV lot learning from his father. He learned everything from sweeping the floors to going to refrigeration school. It’s all he’s ever wanted to do. Most people don’t believe him when he says he’s been in the business his whole life, but he has. TCM: Thanks Joan. Those are some fun stories. Joan: You’re welcome. To learn more about Arctic Fox truck campers, visit www.northwoodmfg.com/campers. |
