Origen RV Accessories LTD.

Kent Wilson

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Origen RV Accessories LTD. is a Canadian rv permanent jack pad company. The company was founded in 2015 by Kent Wilson and is based in Calgary.

Introducing RV SnapPad®, the permanent RV jackpad & leveler pad solution for motorhome & fifth wheels. Discover the ultimate RV jackpad for your leveling needs.

Company History

Kent Wilson details the beginnings of their company in their Starter Story interview: (source)

Q: How did you get started on Origen RV Accessories LTD.?

Origen RV Accessories is a five-year-old, family-run company whose story started more than 30 years ago. Gordon Wilson, founder, father, and president conceived of and launched an RV accessory in the early 1990s. Long before the days of e-commerce and direct-to-consumer businesses, Gord and his partner were forced to raise a large sum of money to get the product from a mere prototype to something industry distributors and dealerships would stock.

They did it. Their leveling product was picked up by major resellers and is still a staple in the industry today. Unfortunately, they were diluted out of a majority ownership position during the process of fundraising by an unscrupulous lawyer, turning their success into a kind of bitter failure. Both founders left the company shortly after the product was successfully launched and adopted.

In early 2015, Gord approached his three grown sons, myself (Kent), Devon, and Barrett about creating and launching a new RV product. This time the concept was a “permanent jack pad” - a kind of rubber “shoe” for luxury RVs that installs permanently to the metal jack “feet” which are common to modern RV leveling systems.

After a handful of prototypes and concepts that included rare earth magnets and industrial adhesives, we settled on a mechanically attached, tight-sealing “lip” engineered solution which allowed the pads to snap on through an easy installation process.

We found a US-based manufacturer who agreed to make and ship the product for us. We launched the company on September 29th, 2015, as a single-page e-commerce website. We had just three SKUs at the time - three different packages of the same base version of the pad. We received our first order the very next day (after we agreed to waive the shipping charge on the package). By December, we had grossed over $10,000.

To get off the ground, we raised less than $50,000 from friends and family. Devon and Gord worked on the company full time to start, but Kent (myself) and Barrett worked evenings and weekends around our existing full-time jobs (in digital marketing and SEO, respectively). The mixture of my father’s experience and relationships in the industry, Devon’s business degree and hustle, and some digital marketing / SEO expertise helped us go directly to the consumer, allowing us to prove the concept and generate sales.

Eventually, all the brothers joined the team full time. More and more RVers asked for SnapPads for their specific RV’s, allowing us to build out the catalog according to consumer demand.

Something that matters a lot is to have people on the team who are committed to persevering through uncertainty and willing to invest their time and effort when the payoff is completely uncertain.

Source (source)

Technology

Origen RV Accessories LTD. is built on Google Shopping, Google, and Shopify.

They use G Suite, Aircall, Omnisend, and Gmail for their email. Zendesk for their customer service. Streak and Hubspot for their crm.

They use Stamped.io for their reviews. Adobe Suite for their design. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, and LinkedIn for their social media.

References

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