Since I am not on the "inside" I have no clue what is going on. But as an outsider watching the developments over the past year or two I see a company imploding.

When Featherlite was sold recently it was alleged the new owners of Featherlite paid to get rid of Vantare. Then recently it was reported Vantare was dumping inventory. That sure seemed true when they were advertising new conversions for less than $1,000,000. Imagine how that affected customers that had just purchased a new coach.

Now it appears they are dumping real estate, and painting that as a wonderful expansion of customer service. I'll just bet Liberty is quaking in their boots.

As Vantare is one of the larger converters there will be a ripple effect. Current owners will see their coach values depreciate even more than coaches normally do. I would presume service will suffer because I can't envision Camping World ever developing the expertise to tackle some of the more complex problems, and I would guess the survival of Vantare for the long term would be questionable.

This has got to be a tough business, and over the years I have seen a lot of converters go away. Among them just from memory are Executive, Angola, American, Pacific, Legendary, Thompson(?), Vogue (Featherlite owned), and Royale. It wasn't that these converters made a bad product, it is a difficult thing to make a good product, sell that product and then support that product as the customers have come to expect. The Marathons and Libertys of the conversion business work hard to succeed and for anybody to stand alongside of them they really have to have their act together. It is my guess that the formula Marathon and Liberty use, which is to have a well engineered, standardized product that is supported to the highest degree possible makes survival in this business a very tough challenge.

These are only my opinions so I will just sit back and watch.