Big year for Cub Campers

Not only has Cub Campers celebrated the significant milestone of 50 years continuous manufacturing this year, the long-standing Sydney business is also popping the bubbly after enjoying a big uplift in sales, year-on-year, for 2018.

“We’re tracking about 20 per cent growth this year, it’s been our highest growth year for some time,” Cub Campers’ CEO Simon McMillan told caravancampingsales during a tour of the iconic brand’s 3500sq.m North Rocks production facility in mid-December.

“We’re up (in sales) fairly significantly this year, and we’ve restructured the production line this year in order to meet the demand that we’ve been experiencing,” he said.

While not divulging exact production numbers, McMillan admitted that apart from industry leader Jayco, “we’re largely at a greater volume than most of the other Australian RV manufacturers”.

In response to the upward trend, Cub's Managing Director Shane Fagan said the aim was to ramp up production, “to three or four (campers) a day… and the restructure of the production line should make it easier for us to achieve those targets next year”.

McMillan pointed to a number of reasons for the surge in Cub Camper sales, including the recent release of a shiny new range of hard-floor campers including the brand’s first forward fold model, the family-friendly Frontier.

“We released seven new models this year, which was timely and what the market was looking for. Reducing the number of models from 14 to seven also made the choice a bit easier for buyers," he said.

Despite fewer Australian built campers available on the market, McMillan believes there’s still demand for an affordable camper that’s fully built in Australia, not one fully imported or assembled locally using a combination of local and imported components.

Cub currently has around 60 employees at its Sydney manufacturing facility, where most of the camper parts are built in-house, including chassis, suspension, body panels, furniture and canvas tents and awnings.

“We’ve had a lot of growth this year and I think it’s largely people being made aware of the value of buying a locally-made product,” McMillan said.

“We’re seeing that more and more this year, people are becoming increasingly aware of the variation in quality of the (locally-built and imported) trailers; it’s the old adage you get what you pay for.

"We’re finding that people are prepared to pay a little bit more for a camper that will last them five or 10 years easily, rather than one that maybe after five years is not worth too much,” he said.

Introduced around late--2016, the forward-fold Frontier is now the brand’s biggest seller, accounting for around 20 per cent of all Cub sales.

Other changes this year have been to the dealer network, with Cub closing down factory-owned outlets in Melbourne and Brisbane and replacing them with new Victorian dealer Outback HQ and now Apollo-owned Kratzmann Caravans in Queensland.

A new in-house paint shop, which has provided the option of a variety of shiny exterior colours, has helped raise Cub's profile at shows, although most buyers are sticking with the more conservative grey body/blue canvas combination.

“Everyone loves the yellow camper at the show, but very few order it,” he said.

Quick to react to market demands, Cub dropped the re-branded soft-floor Coolibah range after only six months on the market, and is no longer offering the automatic-folding option due to poor take-up.

Any further changes in the near future are likely to be “evolutionary rather than revolutionary”, with 2019-model updates confined to improvements of slide-out kitchens and addition of practical features like mains pressure water connections on some models.

“Any new designs will be something the customer really wants, not a gimmick,” McMillan said.

“However, we're always looking at new styles and have some new models coming out in the next 12 to 24 months. Watch this space."

However, with more than 20,000 campers of varying types built over a half-century, and a further 10,000 multi-purpose trailers, don't be surprised at some stage to see a Cub-badged off-road caravan, slide-out camper, new horse trailer or even a Cub camper specifically designed for the fast-growing rental market.

“We’re looking at all avenues, but especially at those that allow us to leverage the skills we already have in the factory and in design,” he said.