Mr Lifted Vehicles

First, I own no stock in FOXF. I was a paid consultant by the company FOX hired to research the new lifted truck market before their 2017 partial acquisition of the truck upfitter Tuscany. They should have consulted with me before they acquired the Kinderhook upfitter company package purchase for $312M. Being a lifted upfitter for new trucks and having a bailment program with the manufacturers, they are shipped new trucks from the factory to install their packages. It is a fantastic privately owned business but horrible as a publicly traded company segment. The business ebbs and flows with the new lifted truck market. There are still privately held "branded" new lifted truck upfitter companies, i.e., Waldoch, American Luxury Coach, or Sherrod. A previous conversation with the owner of a branded truck upfitter company told me, "We adjust to conditions; if things are cranking, we are running at 100 percent; if things slow down, we may close a building an...

There's clearly an awareness problem with the lifted truck market, and especially with the New Lifted Truck market.  What's tied in with that, and is probably the most challenging thing to change or improve is the consumers perception of lifted trucks.  Ask anyone outside the auto market what comes to mind when you say lifted trucks, and they will probably answer "Big Foot" or something along the lines of a big monster truck.  I've already tested this out on many people, and that's the overall consensus.  In order for the lifted truck market, in particular the New Lifted Truck market to grow, we not only have to increase consumer awareness, but change the consumer's perception of these vehicles.          If you're a dealer that stocks lifted trucks, I'm going to show you proof of the current lifted truck situation.  As with our previous blog post focused on the New Lifted Truck market, this is encompassing of both. ...

For years I've been saying that the biggest problem with the New Lifted Truck market is the awareness problem.  Consumers are not aware that these products exist in the marketplace.  Now, I am going to show you the facts that support my position.  With Google being the number one search engine.  I am going to let them tell me what the numbers are.  Most people don't realize that Google will tell you exactly what the volume of searches are done per month over the course of a year for any word or phrase.  If consumers aren't searching Google for your company by name or product, they don't know you or your product exists!  I will add, it doesn't matter how long you've been in business! So lets see the numbers... Before we get into brands, lets just start with the lifted truck market as a whole.  Consumers do not differentiate between new or used lifted trucks.  That is due to the lack of awareness of there being new lifted trucks.  Co...

We are answering some of the questions consumers are asking about the new lifted truck market.  Before we get into the questions, there's a couple of terms that we will use.  Here's the terms, and the definition of them: Upfitter - A company that takes a new vehicle and mechanically/cosmetically alters it from it's original factory configuration.  The vehicles that they modify have not been titled, come from franchise dealers, or directly from the vehicle manufacturers production factory. Aftermarket Service Provider - A company that mechanically/cosmetically alters vehicles from their original factory configuration post titling/used. Bailment - A truck manufacture ships new vehicles directly from the factory to the upfitter.  This allows the upfitter to have ongoing physical inventory of trucks on hand for dealer orders. To the questions... What is a Rocky Ridge Package? Rocky Ridge is a vehicle upfitter that offers multiple product packages for new v...

New lifted trucks have been around for over 10 years.  The majority of them have been manufactured by authorized manufacture upfitters who for decades have been manufacturing conversion vans.  Due to the massive decline of the conversion van market, some of the established conversion van manufactures have switched focus to the conversion truck market. The Conversion Van Market Before I get into the new lifted truck market, lets briefly look at the conversion van market.  Again, all the current conversion truck upfitters started their companies focused on the conversion vans.  The conversion van market at one point had over 100 manufacturers producing conversion vans.  Now, there's less than 10 manufacturers in the market.  Which is pretty much consistent with the decline of the sales of conversion vans.  1993 was the last big year for conversion van sales with 192,000 sold that year.  Think about that number for a second, that's a lot of vans...

When we search online for something, the majority of the time we use the manufacture or product name, and then the generic term.  For example, Chevy Cars, Colgate Toothpaste, Duracell Batteries, Dell Computers, etc.  In the last year I've been focusing and following the conversion truck market.  One of the problems that I noticed working for a dealership that carried a conversion truck product line.  Was that, the vast majority of inquiries had never heard of the conversion company before.  It is what sparked my solution to the problem of building a platform where these products could be listed, and pushing it to the public.  For those who aren't aware, pretty much all of the main upfitters in the market are owned by families.  They don't have the billion dollar ad budgets that the large manufactures have, i.e. Ford, Chevy.  So they rely on their marketing efforts at shows, and their individual dealers marketing their products.  Most of these...

I see it all the time, especially in viewing dealers websites from when I first started my research to now.  The dealer used to carry a specialty vehicle line, or I've seen instances where they've switched products.  I spoke to an Internet Manager a couple weeks ago that told me that they weren't ordering anymore of the product they carried.  I asked if they were switching products, and he said no, they were just dropping it.  He was clearly bummed about it, and I asked if he knew why they decided to drop the line?  His answer was one that I clearly related to, "cause management said so".  I thought what a shame, here's a sales guy who obviously likes the product, and is bummed about dumping it.  What I didn't tell him was that I knew why they were dropping it.  The number one reason a dealer drops/switches a specialty product line is simple...They aren't selling them!  The question is why?  I've worked for dealers as an Internet Manager...