Month-by-Month: Opening a Camping Car And Caravan Store

Most first-time dealers underestimate how long dealer registration and manufacturer supply agreements take relative to fitting out a showroom. A realistic build sequence runs closer to six months than six weeks, and the licensing steps almost always sit on the critical path — not the physical premises.

• Months 1–2: Secure a site with A-road visibility, register the business entity, and open conversations with two or three manufacturers or importers about a supply agreement — most will want to see a lease or letter of intent before they'll commit stock.
• Month 2–3: File for your state dealer licence and surety bond (US) or begin National Caravan Council vetting and CRiS onboarding (UK). This step routinely takes longer than founders plan for, so start it in parallel with fit-out, not after.
• Month 3–4: Negotiate your floor-plan financing line with a lender or the manufacturer's captive finance arm. Lenders will want at least a one-year cash flow forecast and a personal guarantee from the owner at this stage.
• Month 4–5: Fit out the showroom, workshop bay and PDI (pre-delivery inspection) area; install dealer management software; hire a first sales lead and a technician if you plan to offer servicing from day one.
• Month 5–6: Take delivery of the first floor-planned units, complete CRiS/VIN registration or state title work on arrival, and open with a launch weekend timed to a regional caravan or camping show if one falls in your first quarter.
• Months 6–12: Track inventory turn weekly. Units sitting more than 90 days on a floor plan erode margin fast — this is the single most common reason first-year dealers underperform their own forecast.

The timeline compresses meaningfully for a consignment-only launch (see the funding section below), since there is no floor-plan negotiation or upfront inventory purchase to wait on — some founders open a consignment lot in as little as 8–10 weeks.

Startup Costs & Floor-Plan Financing

A small independent camping car and caravan store — a single lot with a modest new-and-used mix — typically needs $45,000 to $120,000 (£30,000–£85,000) of owner or investor capital before floor-plan financing is drawn down. Scaled up to a fuller-service dealership with a workshop and a larger stock float, total launch capital including floor-planned inventory can run to $415,000 (£250,000), a figure consistent with modelled RV-dealership launch budgets. Financial Models Lab, 2025

Cost Breakdown

• Lot/showroom lease deposit, paving & signage: $15,000–$120,000 (£10,000–£80,000)
• Initial inventory float (before floor-plan draw-down): $20,000–$180,000 (£15,000–£110,000)
• Dealer surety bond & licensing fees: $375–$3,500 bond premium (£500–£2,500 NCC/CRiS setup in the UK)
• Workshop tools, tow-bay & PDI equipment: $8,000–$45,000 (£6,000–£35,000)
• Motor trade / stock-in-trade insurance (annual): $4,000–$18,000 (£3,000–£14,000)
• Dealer management software, website & launch marketing: $3,000–$25,000 (£2,000–£18,000)
• Working capital (3 months, pre-floor-plan): $10,000–$60,000 (£8,000–£45,000)

Floor-Plan Financing — The Cost Most Templates Skip

Floor-plan financing is a revolving line secured against the inventory sitting on your lot: you draw against it to buy each unit and repay that specific draw when the unit sells. It matters more here than in almost any other retail category because a single Class A motorhome can cost $100,000 to $500,000, so even a modest 15–20-unit lot represents millions of dollars in tied-up capital. Moss Adams, 2022

Floor-plan interest typically runs 8–25% annualised depending on creditworthiness and lender. Concretely: on a unit with an $80,000 average cost, holding it 60 days longer than planned adds roughly $1,333 in carrying interest alone — before you account for depreciation on a unit that's aged past a model-year changeover. This is exactly why inventory turn (not just gross margin per unit) is the metric experienced dealers watch weekly, not monthly.

Funding Routes

In the US, SBA 7(a) loans (up to $5M) are the standard route for the premises and working-capital portion of the raise, while floor-plan lines are arranged separately with a specialty lender or the manufacturer's captive finance arm — SBA financing is not typically used to fund rolling inventory. In the UK, the Start Up Loans scheme (up to £25,000 at 6% fixed) covers early working capital, with commercial floor-plan facilities arranged once NCC approval is in place. Many first-time dealers blend personal savings, a Start Up Loan or SBA loan, and a manufacturer-backed floor-plan line rather than relying on any single source.

Where Caravan and RV Retail Actually Clusters

Camping car and caravan stores are unusually location-sensitive — footfall from passing A-road and motorway traffic drives a meaningful share of walk-in enquiries, which is why the industry clusters into a small number of recognised hubs rather than spreading evenly across a country.

The takeaway for a new entrant is not "move to Shropshire or Indiana" — it's that visibility, proximity to supply, and a stable local buyer base compound each other. A site that scores well on all three will consistently out-earn a cheaper site on only one.

Manufacturers & Suppliers You'll Actually Deal With

Your business plan is more credible to a lender if it names specific supply relationships rather than describing "manufacturer partnerships" in the abstract. The manufacturer landscape splits broadly into UK-based caravan and campervan builders, and the European and North American motorhome brands most independent dealers end up franchising for touring stock.

• Swift Group — the UK's largest caravan and motorhome manufacturer, based in Cottingham, East Yorkshire; a common first supply agreement for new UK dealers because of its dealer network scale
• Bailey of Bristol — long-established UK touring caravan and motorhome manufacturer known for its Alu-Tech composite body construction
• Elddis — part of the Explorer Group, a major UK touring caravan brand with a strong mid-market price position
• Coachman Caravans — UK manufacturer positioned toward the premium end of the touring caravan segment
• Adria and Hymer — Slovenian and German motorhome brands respectively, both widely franchised by UK dealers such as Southdowns Motorhome Centre
• Bürstner and Carado — German motorhome and campervan brands under the Erwin Hymer Group, popular for smaller panel-van conversions
• Auto-Trail — a UK-built motorhome manufacturer, part of the Trigano group, commonly stocked alongside imported European brands
• Thor Industries and Forest River — the two largest RV manufacturing groups in North America, each operating multiple sub-brands out of the Elkhart, Indiana manufacturing cluster

Beyond vehicle supply, most dealers also need a dealer management system (DMS) to run inventory, financing paperwork and service scheduling in one place — IDS-Astra is one of the more widely used RV-specific DMS platforms in North America, and its annual trends report is a useful free benchmark for inventory-aging data when you're building your own operations plan.

When you're negotiating a first supply agreement as a new dealer, expect manufacturers to ask for evidence of working capital, a lease or letter of intent on your premises, and — in the UK — NCC approval in progress before they'll commit an allocation. This is exactly why the licensing and supply-agreement steps need to run in parallel during your launch timeline, not sequentially.

Licensing, Registration & Compliance

This is the section generic business-plan templates handle worst, because caravan and RV retail sits under vehicle-dealer regulation rather than general retail rules — a distinction that changes almost every requirement below.

United States

• State motor vehicle/RV dealer licence — issued by the state DMV or equivalent; requirements vary by state but almost always include a physical business location and a background check
• Dealer surety bond — every state requires one, ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 depending on the state; premiums run 0.5–3% of the bond amount for good credit (e.g. Texas requires a 2-year $50,000 bond from around $375; Michigan a $25,000 bond from around $225/year) Ashton Agency, 2025
• Zoning/business location approval for a vehicle sales lot from the local planning authority
• Sales/use tax registration for vehicle transactions in your state
• Titling and registration compliance for every unit that changes hands

United Kingdom

• National Caravan Council (NCC) approval — the industry's own vetting scheme; holding the "NCC tick" signals to buyers and manufacturers that you meet UK and EU standards, and most manufacturers will only supply approved dealers
• CRiS registration for every new caravan sold — the dealer submits the 17-digit VIN to the Central Registration & Identification Scheme at point of sale, and buyers increasingly expect a CRiS check as standard due diligence CRiS, 2026
• FCA Limited Permission for consumer credit broking — required if you introduce buyers to finance, since providing credit is secondary to your primary activity of selling vehicles; a motor dealer cannot hold Limited Permission if directly authorised for general insurance instead FCA, 2026
• Companies House or sole trader registration, plus standard employer/public liability insurance if hiring
• Motor trade insurance covering stock-in-trade, road risk and premises

Australia

• State-issued motor dealer licence — caravans are explicitly captured under "motor vehicles" in most state dealer acts, including NSW's Motor Dealers and Repairers Act 2013 and equivalent Queensland and ACT legislation NSW Government, 2026
• Clean record requirement — no theft or dishonesty convictions in the past 10 years for licence eligibility
• Local council approval for the trading premises, alongside proof of adequate financial resources to run the business

Revenue Model, GPU & Profit Margins

The single biggest misconception new dealers bring into this business is that the vehicle sale is where the money is made. It isn't — vehicle sales are a thin-margin, high-ticket business, and the businesses that actually make money treat gross profit per unit (GPU), Finance & Insurance (F&I) attach, and service revenue as the real profit centres.

Gross Profit Per Unit (GPU)

Industry benchmarks put new-unit gross margin at roughly 15–18% and used-unit margin around 20.4%, with travel-trailer-class stock commonly carrying close to a 40% markup before overhead is deducted. RV and Playa, 2025 In dollar terms, healthy dealerships target a GPU above roughly $10,000–$12,500 on new units and around $7,000 on used units. RMA Retail Owner Institute benchmarks

Worked Example

Take a small independent lot stocking 12 new units at an $11,500 average GPU and 20 used units at a $6,800 average GPU: that's roughly $138,000 + $136,000 = $274,000 in vehicle gross profit for the year. Layer on a 55% Finance & Insurance attach rate across 32 annual deals at roughly $650 average F&I profit per deal, and F&I contributes a further ~$11,440 — a smaller absolute number, but one that arrives at close to 100% margin since it's built on paperwork and product attachment, not cost of goods. Add a service bay generating even modest recurring revenue from warranty work, habitation checks and winterisation, and the combined picture is why experienced operators describe vehicle sales as "the customer acquisition cost" for the F&I and service business behind it.

Additional Revenue Streams

Beyond new and used unit sales: consignment commissions (typically 8–15% of sale price, taken without ever owning the unit), habitation and safety-check servicing, accessory and parts sales, storage rental for customers between trips, and extended warranty or breakdown-cover attachment. These streams carry materially higher margins than the vehicle sale itself and are what separate a dealership's net margin from its headline vehicle gross margin.

Market Size & Who You're Competing With

The North America RV market was valued at $21.77 billion in 2025, forecast to reach $23.57 billion in 2026 and $35.03 billion by 2031 — a CAGR of roughly 8.25%. Mordor Intelligence, 2025 Globally, the recreational vehicle market was valued at $56.9 billion in 2025. The retail side specifically — the dealership layer this template is built for — generates an estimated $47.1 billion in annual US revenue across roughly 3,981 active dealer businesses (NAICS 441210), though IBISWorld notes that segment revenue has been contracting at around 3% annually with profit margins settling near 3.8% amid a post-pandemic inventory correction. IBISWorld, 2026 SICCODE NAICS directory, 2026

Who's Already Selling Near You

Competition splits into three distinct layers, and conflating them is a common planning mistake:

• National consolidators — Camping World (roughly 200 US locations and the country's largest RV retailer), Lazydays RV (its Tampa flagship widely cited as the world's largest single RV dealership) and General RV Center (the largest family-owned group) compete on selection, financing rates and brand trust, and have been actively acquiring smaller dealer groups — Camping World's acquisition of multiple Lazydays locations through 2024–2025 is a clear signal of ongoing consolidation.
• Established regional independents — in the UK, Brownhills Motorhomes (Newark, Nottinghamshire, the UK's largest single motorhome dealer with a 30-bay workshop), Marquis Leisure (12 branches, over 50 years trading), Southdowns Motorhome Centre (Hymer, Carthago, Bürstner, Carado and Malibu franchises) and Salop Leisure (trading as Salop Caravans since 1966) all compete primarily on trust built over decades and manufacturer franchise relationships.
• Private-sale and marketplace listings — private sale caravans typically transact 20–30% below dealer prices for comparable models, which is real competition for price-sensitive buyers but leaves an opening for dealers who compete on warranty, PDI checks and after-sales support instead of price alone.

A realistic plan for a new entrant doesn't try to out-discount the national consolidators — it wins on a specific franchise relationship, a specific geography, or specific after-sales service the bigger groups under-resource locally, and the plan should say explicitly which of those three it's betting on.

Quick Answers: What Buyers Search Before They Commit

These are the exact questions people researching this business type most often ask, answered in a paragraph rather than a full FAQ — see the fuller FAQ section further down for the detail behind each one.

• How do I open a profitable camping car and caravan store? Start with a supply agreement (new stock) or a consignment model (no stock purchase), secure dealer licensing before fitting out the site, and build F&I and service attach into your plan from day one rather than treating them as an afterthought.
• What's the fastest way in without a large capital raise? Consignment-only. You never own the inventory, so there's no floor-plan negotiation and no upfront stock purchase — some founders open in 8–10 weeks this way.
• Do new or used units make more money? Used units carry a slightly higher gross margin percentage (~20.4% vs 15–18%), but new units typically carry a higher absolute GPU ($10,000–$12,500 vs ~$7,000) — the right mix depends on your local trade-in supply.
• What single mistake costs first-year dealers the most? Over-ordering new inventory ahead of a soft season and getting caught by floor-plan interest on units that sit unsold — inventory turn discipline matters more than headline margin in year one.
• Is this a good time to enter the market? 2025 saw a temporary inventory oversupply across the industry as production capacity adjusted to softer demand — that's a buyer's market for negotiating supply terms, but it also means a new dealer needs a tighter stocking plan than they would in a tight-supply year.

Common First-Year Mistakes

These come up repeatedly in conversations with first-time dealers and in the industry commentary on the 2025 inventory correction. A plan that addresses them head-on reads as far more credible to a lender than one that only covers the upside case.

• Over-ordering new inventory during a manufacturer push. Manufacturers offer volume incentives that look attractive on the invoice but become a liability if units sit through a soft season — floor-plan interest accrues regardless of whether the unit is selling.
• Underpricing trade-ins and part-exchanges. A generous trade-in valuation wins the sale on the new unit but erodes used-unit GPU before that caravan even reaches the lot — model both sides of the transaction, not just the headline deal.
• Treating F&I and service as an afterthought. Dealers who build attach-rate targets into the sales process from day one consistently out-earn dealers who bolt F&I on later, because the sales team's habits are set in the first few months.
• Skipping NCC/CRiS registration steps until after a sale. Re-processing paperwork after a deal has already completed creates delivery delays that damage the exact trust-based reputation independent dealers rely on to compete with national chains.
• Choosing a low-visibility site to save on rent. Caravan and RV retail is unusually dependent on passing-trade footfall and A-road visibility — the rent saved on a hidden site is rarely worth the enquiry volume lost.

Staffing & Team Structure for Year One

A single-site independent lot can open with a leaner team than most first-time founders assume, but the roles you skip in year one tend to be the roles that cost you the most in lost F&I attach and service revenue. A realistic minimum team looks like this:

• Owner/general manager — typically running sales personally in year one while also handling supplier relationships and floor-plan compliance
• One sales lead — ideally with prior vehicle or high-ticket retail experience, since caravan sales cycles involve financing conversations and trade-in negotiation that differ meaningfully from low-ticket retail
• One qualified technician — for PDI checks on incoming stock, warranty work, and habitation servicing; even a part-time technician materially increases how much service revenue a small lot can capture
• Part-time admin/finance support — to manage CRiS or state title paperwork, F&I documentation, and dealer management software data entry, which otherwise falls on the owner and slows deal turnaround

Most independent dealers add a second sales role and a parts/accessories counter once monthly unit sales pass roughly 8–10 units, since that's typically the point where a single salesperson's enquiry-to-close pipeline becomes the bottleneck rather than available stock. Dealer management software — whether an RV-specific platform like IDS-Astra or a general automotive DMS — becomes worthwhile once you're tracking more than a handful of units and deals simultaneously; trying to run inventory, financing paperwork and service scheduling from spreadsheets past that point is a common source of the paperwork delays that damage customer trust.

Insurance & Risk Management

Lenders reviewing a caravan or RV dealership plan look specifically at how insurance and risk are covered, because stock-in-trade sitting on a lot represents a concentrated, high-value exposure that generic retail insurance doesn't adequately price. A complete plan should address the following, ideally with named providers or broker relationships once you've obtained quotes:

• Motor trade / stock-in-trade insurance — covers inventory on the lot against theft, fire and weather damage, and typically also covers road risk for staff moving units between the lot and workshop or delivery points
• Public and employer's liability — standard requirements once you have staff or customers on-site, but insurers will ask specific questions about lot security (fencing, lighting, CCTV) given the value of individual units
• Garage/workshop liability — a separate consideration if you're running PDI checks, warranty work or habitation servicing, since it covers work carried out on customer- or stock-owned vehicles
• Business interruption cover — worth quantifying explicitly in the plan, since a fire or flood event affecting a lot with $200,000+ of stock represents a materially larger single-event risk than most retail categories

Security investment — perimeter fencing, lighting and CCTV — directly affects your insurance premium in this trade more than in most retail categories, because insurers price stock-in-trade cover against the specific theft and vandalism risk of a given site. Building a modest security capital line item into your startup costs, rather than treating it as an optional extra, is one of the more overlooked ways a plan demonstrates operational maturity to a lender.

Sample Business Plan Preview

Here's an extract from the kind of camping car and caravan store business plan our team writes — structured for lenders and floor-plan providers, not generic enough to bounce back for revisions.

What's in the Template

Every Avvale business plan template includes these sections, pre-structured for your industry:

• Executive Summary — Your business at a glance, written to hook investors and floor-plan lenders in 60 seconds
• Company Overview — Legal structure, ownership, site, and manufacturer/franchise relationships
• Industry Analysis — Market size, growth trends, and dealer-specific regulatory landscape
• Customer Analysis — Buyer demographics, trade-in behaviour, and financing preferences
• Competitor Analysis — Local and national competitive mapping, and your differentiation strategy
• Marketing Plan — Channels, show/event calendar, and customer acquisition strategy
• Operations Plan — Inventory turn targets, staffing, PDI workflow, and floor-plan management
• Management Team — Founder bios, advisory relationships, and key hires planned

The optional Financial Forecast add-on (included in our $300/£250 and $1,000/£800 packages) provides a 5-year Excel model with income statement, cash flow, balance sheet, floor-plan interest schedule, GPU-by-unit-type breakdown, and startup capital requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions