Outdoorsy’s CEO On The Company’s Success And Carving Its Spot In The RV Industry

Peer-to-peer RV rental platforms like Outdoorsy are not here to disrupt the industry, Co-Founder & CEO Jeff Cavins told Modern Campground. If anything, these companies introduced RVing to a market that’s now driving demand for recreation vehicles: the millennials.

“We’re a powerful ally to the industry,” Cavins said.

“We expose the industry to a generation that would have never even known about it because we create access—because […] the hurdle of ownership can be steep, but we make access super easy,” he added.

Cavins said that RV rental platforms paved the way for people to see a product that they may have never used before. Today, millennials are buying RVs in large numbers, with many aiming to rent the vehicles out, said Outdoorsy’s CEO.

Numbers in the 2021 Go RVing RV Owner Demographic Profile agree. According to the study, 18 to 34-year-olds now make up 22% of the market. Millennials and Gen Zers who currently own an RV also plan to buy another RV in the next five years, with 78% looking into getting a new model.

Looking back, the RV industry was not always receptive to the idea of peer-to-peer RV rental platforms, Cavins said as he recalled the early days of the company he co-founded with Jen Young. Most original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) initially did not particularly welcome Outdoorsy with open arms.

But the goal was never to slow down the growth of the industry, said the Outdoorsy executive. Despite the negative reaction, the peer-to-peer RV rental company continued, holding on to its mission to make RVs accessible while helping RV owners monetize their assets.

Cavins took inspiration from a conversation he had with Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs who said that consumers will always want more and never less.

“And so that informed a lot of our thinking about how we built Outdoorsy, which is: the consumer wants to access RVs. They want to use these to go out and engage with mother nature and outdoor travel. But there’s no channel for them to do it,” Cavins told Modern Campground. 

Read the full article from Modern Campground here.