PROUD TO BE TIFFIN
With the Tiffin name on every Tiffin motorhome, building a superior product isn’t just an occupation but a matter of personal pride for the family, a pursuit that it is committed to perfecting.
From the very outset, Bob was adamant that the Tiffin name had to be present on every motorhome produced by the company, to be as transparent as possible with customers and ensure products were produced that the family could be proud to have its name on.
“When we first started, we decided that people needed to know who they were buying their motorhomes from and where they were built,” Bob recalls.
“We’ve got those two things on each and every one of our motorhomes – built by Tiffin – so that everybody knows who built them and where they came from. We don’t have anything to hide, so we put it right on the outside.
“The hardest thing when we started was that no one knew who we were. We didn’t have any brand recognition, so when you’re starting a brand-new company like we did, and no one knows who you are, it’s pretty tough to break into the market,” he admits.
Echoing the steadfast stance of his grandfather, it means that little bit more to the likes of Leigh to come into work every day and see the family name on the company’s products.
From his perspective, it’s important that the Tiffin brand continues to stand tall and that customers value the business.
“Having a good, strong reputation is imperative because it’s part of who I am as an individual,” Leigh states proudly.
Over the course of 50 years, Tiffin has earned the strong reputation that Leigh refers to by having the best products and customer service in the industry.
Bob acknowledges first and foremost that manufacturing products of the highest quality is the basis for establishing such a reputation.
“If you don’t, then it’s pretty much over, but if you have a decent product that people can use without too much trouble, and if you service it to the hilt, then customers are going to come back and stay with you for the long term,” Bob says.
As a family-run motorhome company, Tiffin naturally understands the wants and needs of other families who own, or would like to own, an RV.
For Tiffin, it’s not just about the destination, but the high-quality experience that owners and families take from the journey in their motorhome.
“It’s a big deal for a family to own a motorhome. It’s the closest that they can be together as a group, and if they begin RVing when their family is young, that creates another complete generation for us to sell motorhomes to in the future,” observes Bob.
THINKING DIFFERENTLY AT TIFFIN MOTORHOMES
To this day, Tiffin remains headquartered in Red Bay, where Bob originally founded the company and most of the 2,100 employees go to work every day.
The Tiffin family has always called Red Bay home, so it made sense to build the company in this small, unassuming town.
There is no other place with a greater concentration of Tiffin RV owners congregated in one spot than Red Bay, which also receives visitors all year round from across the country as the home of Tiffin motorhome production and skilled service technicians.
As well as being a family-operated manufacturer, Tiffin’s location is another substantial differentiating factor for the company, as it is situated outside the RV industrial hotbed of Elkhart, Indiana.
It has forced Tiffin to think and behave differently, but Leigh believes this has been advantageous to the company over time, ultimately manifested in its unique, distinctive products and the way it does business.
“Elkhart is the epicenter of the industry – all the same RV suppliers and manufacturers are clustered together in one area. They do a very nice job, but I do think it creates some groupthink,” Leigh notes.
“At Tiffin, we’re sort of isolated from the RV beltway, and that has forced us to be much more vertically integrated than a lot of our competitors and to do more ourselves. I think it gives our products a distinctive look; one of the reasons why people think Tiffin products have a unique appearance, is because they do!”
Class A motorhomes, including the Open Road Allegro, Allegro RED, Allegro Bus, Allegro Breeze, Phaeton, and Zephyr, are built by Tiffin in Red Bay, as well as the company’s first Super C model, the Allegro Bay.
“We operate our own state of the art paint facility in Belmont, Mississippi, where we paint all of our Class A, Super C, and fifth-wheel models,” Leigh informs us.
Tiffin manufactures its three luxury fifth-wheel models, the Vilano, Beacon, and Ambition, in Burnsville, Mississippi under the Vanleigh RV badge.
“We also have an in-house fiberglass composites manufacturing company, Waterway, in Iuka, Mississippi where we build all of our open mold parts, front caps, rear caps, and engine covers. We’ve produced some really neat composite floors and very advanced technology there.”
Supplying RVs throughout the US and Canada, Tiffin is known for the luxury, innovation, and quality of its motorhomes.
“We have really put our stake in the ground around building beautiful, luxury RVs, particularly Class A motorhomes and Class A diesel pushers, which is what we are known for,” Leigh tells us.
