Camping World President Matthew Wagner and Chairman and CEO Marcus Lemonis said 2025’s first month produced strong sales.
Last weekend, the company nearly broke records.
The pair cited poor weather in February for creating pent-up demand among consumers.
“Once the weather broke,” Wagner said, “we were very pleased. This past weekend was one of the best sales weekends in our history, regardless of the month.”
Lemonis said from Thursday through Sunday, sales traffic was gangbusters. By Monday morning, he said team members were high fiving each other.
“While the weather was not great everywhere, it was not zero or 3 degrees with snow in Pensacola, Florida,” he said. “The playbook that we are executing for 2025 looks very sound. I think what is showing up in March already is giving us fuel to know that we will have a very solid quarter.”
Camping World finished 2024 reporting record market share in new and used RV sales. The dealer chain said its overall market share was 11.2% and is expected to grow to 12% by the end of 2025. Lemonis said he had two goals for the company this year.
“It is very simple,” he said. “Sell more RVs and make more money.”
Camping World executives’ outlook is driven by multiple factors, Lemonis said, including outperforming its competitors and growing market share, along with the belief that 2025 will be a much better year for the industry.
In measuring consumer sentiment, Lemonis said the dealer chain looks to used RV marketplace values as a determining factor. He said when Camping World buys used RVs for less, he becomes concerned that RVers are looking to exit the lifestyle. To start 2025, he said the results have been the opposite.
“Which is giving us comfort that the RVer is excited again,” he said. “We are seeing people in our stores again. We are seeing leads again, and people are paying for units without thinking they are just going to buy some distressed assets.”
With the 2026 model year changeover slated for June, Wagner said tariffs and inflation could lead to prices rising 3% to 5% compared with 2025 model year RVs. Although OEMs’ decontenting plans for the 2026 model year are unclear, Lemonis said Camping World could benefit from another year in which OEMs scale down offerings within their RVs.
“Our retail business continues to do well when manufacturers decontent, and then we want to accessorize and put different things inside of units,” he said. “If you go back and you look at the history of Camping World, it did the best when manufacturers did not add every single thing to the unit. When we see manufacturers either have tariff issues or content issues or pricing issues, Camping World retail ends up being a little bit of a benefactor in that regard.”
On a national dealer scale, Lemonis said stocking levels appear low. He said Camping World believed dealers needed inventory on the ground to be able to sell, leading Camping World to be “more prepared than most” in inventory heading into March.
He also said the 204-store chain can weather economic challenges better than its competitors.
“Most people assume that we are all operating on a level playing field and that tariffs are applied to everybody consistently,” he said. “Our company does not operate on a level playing field. We do not buy RVs for the same price as everybody else. We have more cash than everybody else, and it is not a fair fight. If tariffs continue to be a problem, they are a problem for everybody. We tend to enjoy a different level of pricing than everybody else and we will always maintain a competitive advantage over everybody else based on the volume that we do, based on the contract manufacturing (and) on our ability to buy used RVs more than anybody else.”
