Ultimate Campers in trouble?

Aussie Swag closed up shop and sold their stuff off earlier this year. Seem to have seen the way things were going.

Johnnos have gone as well.

The KK debacle started with a messy divorce. Then kept going with a new owner who was a shonk.
The bloke who "nearly" took it all on had a good idea......cut the slower selling stuff (just happened to be the dearer big vans) and stick to the core.....which was camper trailers.
There is always a market for good quality expensive gear, but you obviously need to sell enough to make a profit.

Michael, they are made in Australia not china and fifty people worked at the factory.
Thats fifty thousand dollars week in wages ?????

Probably all true, but that still doesn't give me $55k to buy their base model. I was theorizing if they would have sold twice as many $25k models. Well built, quality brand with less features or lower spec inclusions. Only selling top of the range is cutting out a hell of a lot of customers because the people can't afford it. A lot of previously high quality brands now have budget versions.
Many manufacturers have woken up to not producing products that last too long.You go broke selling unbreakable products, you have to make them last just long enough to not cheese people off, but make them buy another one within a reasonable time frame that suits your production requirements. I don't think Toyota's are unbreakable anymore.

Jayco don't seem to have any problems and I'm sure they turn over way more than 50k per week.

I'll cetainly be buying another one, very happy with ours the last 3 years.

Cheers

The only trouble Nutta, an Ultimate will get you there and back, and places that you would only dream of going in your Jayco.

They are two very different type of campers and the only limiting factor with an Ultimate, is the vehicle towing it, and not the camper.


Cheers


Stephen

I was more comparing companies going broke than where the van can go but Jayco could go broke to at any time! Cheers.

Sad to see Ultimate and Kimberly go, lets hope demand for other Aussie manufacturers can keep them profitable.

Maybe that’s why jayco are launching the jtrak.
Chassis suspension tent and interior made here with body panels imported.
Seems reasonable at 24k for the obx model. Have to see how they sell.

https://marketplacer.imgix.net/n0/oTnAd-mjBDW3vQvO-51TO85fc.pdf?s=f5468e53a7bd13552c80fd67614fe882

We are looking at a cub off roader but will have a look at the jayco when the Adelaide dealer gets stock.

Cheers
Mike

It looks pretty good, their chassis's seem pretty solid too.

Apparently they never recovered from the Nautilus fiasco that cost them millions of dollars & a lot of credibility from the owners.

Agreed Michael.

Some campers are $70K or more now. You can get an off road caravan for that.

I think the camper manufacturers got ahead of themselves a year or 2 ago when there was a boom and just got rediculas. The Nautilis was never going to be a great seller.


If people buy the chinese campers, you can't blame the chinese manufacturers, unless they are crap quality of course. It's the buyers who make the decisions. The same people who complain they have no jobs anymore.

Our motor vehicle industry failed to recognise the threat from the Korean invasion & suffered the consequences, the caravan & camper industry are at a real risk of falling into the same trap. They have been complacent & treating us with contempt by providing sub-standard, ill equipped & non-compliant products.

Shaker, the local stuff may be dearer than the imported stuff, but your comments about sub standard, ill equipped and non compliant are really strange. Like to tell us which manufacturer does any of those things you said ??

As someone mentioned above, it's not just the manufacturers. OHS has become the new unionism in Australia. I think you would have to be insane to open a business in Austalia

No I wouldn’t in respect of the site owners, but things like chains bolted to the draw bar with mild steel bolts & washers, poor welding & paintwork, overweight campers, incorrectly placed lighting etc.
I looked at an off-road van with a tare of 1800kg & ATM of 2100kg, when I mentioned that by the time I fill it with water & gas it would be almost to the limit they said I could get an ATM upgrade ... at my cost. In 2006 I bought a well known brand of camper trailer that weighed 461kg over its stated tare weight, the suspension was overloaded ex factory, trailer was returned after VCAT hearing.
Why are we paying $100,000 plus for campers with archaic braking systems, none of us would buy a vehicle with drum brakes.
I could go on!

Plenty of utes with drum brakes at the rear.

Cheers
Jim

I should have said none of us would buy a new vehicle with drum brakes as the primary method of stopping safely!
Also Ute rear drums don’t rely on a magnet dragging on the face of the drum operating what is little more than a handbrake linkage. When we did rely on drum brakes the front brakes were ‘two leading shoe’, not single.

But they are also made in Thailand where they get a tax concession to make utes with leaf springs and drum brakes. It doesn't make it the best or most elegant solution.

Gerard, I wonder what you post means.

Appointing a voluntary administrator means the company is in trouble and the future needs to be decided quickly. The Administrator said they have not had time to understand the situation and there will be a creditors meeting.

Is there something you know that none of the above know?

I think the biggest surprises, when companies go into VA, are usually the surprises to the poor old trade creditors - who are often unaware how deep in the manure, the company has been - and for how long.

The general trend by sharp administrators is to make the long-suffering trade creditors take a major share of the current companys losses - while the administrators "resurrect" the company in a new corporate structure, that owes nothing to creditors of the old company structure.

The administrators then offer a huge carrot to the trade creditors to take the financial kick in the goolies - on the basis that they'll be able to make up their losses, by supplying and trading with the new company structure.

9 times out of 10, the new company structure is dependent on huge outside financial contributions and support - but those contributions and support usually come with all kinds of caveats - including making the new financial contributor a preferred creditor above anyone else, if the new company structure fails, as it often does.

The simple problems with most businesses that fall into administration, is the inability to manage costs, the inability to see and manage for downturns in the market - and the inability of the owners to reduce their millionaire lifestyle expenditures, when economic downturns do occur.

The cheap Chinese import problem will always be with us, a wise manufacturer goes to great lengths to explain the folly of buying cheap.

"Buy Cheap - Buy Twice", always used to be a good explanation of that point - which point, many people seem to have forgotten about.

Cheers, Ron.

That used to be the Australian Motor Industry’s mantra in regard to Hyundai, now look at them!

I heard a story about how the CEO of Hyundai went down the production line in the late 1990's and asked the managers, "why are we producing cheap crap? We have penetrated the market now, we no longer need to be producing cheap crap! Toyota is our main competition, so we need to raise quality levels to match Toyota!"

So, the story goes that Hyundai rejigged their build quality from, "cheapest cars you can buy", to the outlook of one that matched Toyotas, "unparalleled quality and reliability".

It was extremely beneficial to Hyundai, that right at the time they boosted build quality, Toyota dropped the ball on build quality, and went for maximum production numbers, to try and knock GM off the perch as the producer of the most vehicles built annually.

Toyota spent a number of years in build quality purgatory, before they arrested the decline around 2010, with a whole new Warranty and Claims Dept, specifically to fix the problems they'd created with their lack of attention to quality in the early-to-mid 2000's.

The RV industry has peaked, just as the housing price increases have peaked.
The RV industry has been growing at 10% plus per year since the late 1990's, this is unsustainable for the long term, and the natural order of things is that quite a number of local caravan and camper manufacturers will fall by the wayside shortly, and in the near-term.

Cheers, Ron.

Well there's a coincidence. A company calls in an administrator just after it gets $3/4Million of government funds.

3/4of a million is 750k

Ah, sorry, my mistake. Misread the ¾ thing.

Cheers
Jim

Hi Greg

I just wish I photographed the number of cheap campers that were in dry dock at stations and caravan parks throughout our recent Cape trip.

Broken suspension, broken axels, wheels missing.....yet the true Aussie made campers did it with ease



Cheers



Stephen

Just goes to show.

A few years ago I saw a very reputable, expensive Australian camper trailer at Innamincka on its maiden trip with broken suspension.

Interestingly I recently read a review on AusRV off-road vans, which is the Australian manufacturing arm of MDC Campers, the reviewer said that the $90k plus van that he tested was not as good as the MDC imported Chinese van at less than half the price.

Not sure what having a stereo or usb ports in a camper has to do with people "really camping?.....plenty of people like to listen to music in thier down time, streamed from thier phone or what not whilst cooking a meal or sitting around a fire, now done without having to have thier tow vehicles doors open and it's stereo going (sadly some have that music much to loud at times, but that's a very different situation in my view). We regularly charge our phones and tablets via USB ports in the camper at night because they are what we take our photos on these days, my daughter took 1000 photos on her phone on our last 2 week trip away for example. We don't bother using our DSLR camera all that often anymore due to the camera quality on our phones and tablets, and we use those very same devices to research places to camp on our trip as well as places to visit...many people also use same devices for navigation as well. It's not 1980 anymore, no reason not to take advantage of technology's available, and doesn't make it not "real camping" because you choose to not do that.