Open road
August 31, 2011
When Bad Waldsee-based Hymer celebrates its 50th birthday this year, the company will look back at a long, successful run in the business of building camping caravans.
The company's roots go back to 1956, when Erwin Hymer built his first caravan in the small repair workshop his father, Alfons, opened in 1923.
Mass production of the "Hymermobil" began in 1961, just in time for Germany's postwar recovery phase, nicknamed the "Wirtschaftswunder" or "economic miracle." Suddenly flush with disposable income, Germans started taking vacations in southern Europe - often in converted VW buses.
Repair parts
Most original Hymer caravans are still in the company's product lineup - albeit modernized and equipped with the latest technical advances. The hallmark features of the early designs are still present.
According to Hans-Herbert Haugg, the factory also produces 15,000 individual parts which are built into various caravan models daily. This in-house production department means that replacement parts for older caravans are always available.
"When I get an order for a replacement part for a vehicle that's now 20 years old, we can build it within 10 days," Haugg told Deutsche Welle. "It's a bit of a challenge, but we can do it."
2,500 pieces
The average Hymer caravan is 7 meters long and 2.5 meters wide. It is equipped with everything from a kitchen to sitting and sleeping areas, and consists of 2,500 individual pieces.
The company's Bad Waldsee factory is 24,000 square meters in size and houses four assembly lines. At the beginning of each line, little more than a caravan floor can be seen. As the platform moves further down the line, the interior configuration is mounted and the external panels are fitted.
Caravans designed to be towed by a vehicle are constructed in much the same way as those meant to be mounted on motorized chassis, Haugg says, adding that it takes about eight weeks to finish each caravan.
Competitive market
Hymer marketing director Hermann Pfaff says the company has invested 220 million euros over the past 10 years in an effort to stay ahead of its competition.
Selling camping caravans isn't easy, especially during a financial crisis, he says. After all, motorized caravans carry price tags between 39,000 and 300,000 euros, while a towed model costs 17,000 and 25,000 euros. Hymer and its 2,700 employees were hit hard by the last recession, and slowed production in favor of selling off existing inventory.
"That's why our sales made it through the crisis considerably better than our production levels indicate," Pfaff says. "Those numbers didn't collapse as drastically as our production numbers did."
Europe-wide sales
Hymer has some 450 distributors throughout Europe, and exports account for about 65 percent of its sales.
"Our market is Europe, but we have distributors in Asia and South Africa," Pfaff says. "But those are generally larger single deals."
Despite its far reach, Hymer shares one distinct quality with many other German companies: It's family-owned, with 77 percent of its stock belonging to 80-year-old Erwin Hymer and his family.
The company's head of human resources, Gerhard Melinz, says the company is also facing the typically German problem of a labor shortage as it struggles to find skilled craftsmen
"The shortage of qualified labor is definitely a significant topic, especially in the region we're located in," Melinz said. "It's something which will always be with us in the coming years."
Author: Monika Lohmüller / gps
Editor: Sam Edmonds