Vol. 4 # 4 - Tiffin Motorhomes

Family ManagementGrowth, Transition, Changeby Bob Tiffin with Tim TiffinDean Dixon PhotographyTiffin Motorhomes has always been a family affair. My father, Alex Tiffin,started Tiffin Supply in 1940. As I grew up in the 1950s, I thought of hiscompany almost as an extension of our family. It was just a part of my brotherDavid’s and my upbringing and training as we grew from boys, to teenagers,to young men. Daddy taught us the value of time, how to treat peoplewith respect, and how to run a business that was built on service. After we gotour on-the-job training in whatever area of the business he had placed us, henever tried to micro-manage. Yes, he kept an eye on how we were doing andcoached us a little, but he always wanted us to take responsibility and growinto being managers of our assignments. His method built confidence andat 24 he put me in charge of running the company’s cotton ginning businessduring the fall. During the rest of the year along with other responsibilities,I managed the material sales and collections to three RV manufacturers justover the state line in Mississippi. At the first of each month when I went tocollect, I watched them build the motorhomes and got a pretty good idea ofhow the building process should operate for a small company.In early 1972 we built a new cotton warehouse in preparation for the fallginning season. The cotton crop failed that year. Coincidentally, the threeRV companies all decided to close. That’s when I wrote a proposal andsimple business plan to start Tiffin Motorhomes. The production processwas already in place thanks to quite a few key employees from Commodore,Sunliner, and Safari who decided to join our new company. I didn’t seeanything essentially wrong with their system— I think they failed because ofpoor business management and quality issues. I wanted Tiffin Motorhomesto start small and grow.There are so many people to whom our success should be credited. Fromthe beginning I found key management people, knowledgeable sales managers,capable supervisors, well organized office managers, and conscientiousproduction employees. Red Bay is a small town. We knew the people we hired,and their daddies and granddaddies. Since 1940 when Tiffin Supply started,we had been trading with just about everybody in western Franklin Countyand the northeastern counties of Mississippi. We capitalized on the good workRoughing It SmoothlyFamily Management