The July Made In America Issue of RV News magazine

Celebrating the Women Of the RV Industry

In my 20 years of being a writer, editor and publisher covering this amazing industry, I am particularly proud of two magazine editions.

The first was many years ago when I worked at a different RV magazine. It was a special issue dedicated to men and women who had served in the U.S. military prior to their RV industry careers. It was produced at a time shortly after that dark day?of September 11th. Nothing like the magazine had ever been done before.

This July issue of RV News is the second shining achievement of my journalistic career. Like the military issue, nothing like it has ever been created. It celebrates and highlights individuals who others, at first glance, might?consider just a group of ordinary people. Some might even consider their lives unremarkable.

I can't disagree more.

This group of people impacts every single person in the RV industry. All of us owe our jobs, our career successes and our financial livelihoods to them.

Some of them help build the very vehicles our industry is known for. They craft the parts and pieces used to manufacture vehicles in the RV industry. Some of them make the aftermarket parts/accessories that transform the RV consumers' experience.

This workforce of hidden heroes are the women who power the RV industry. I assure you, without them, our industry would be in shambles, or it might not exist at all.

I hope this issue will mean as much to you as it does to me. I am proud of the women we featured. I am proud of my staff and the work they did. I am proud?of the companies out there that embraced this vision and helped bring this very special magazine to fruition.

To put in perspective how special this issue is:

1. This single magazine, with more than 700 women featured, celebrates and highlights more RV industry women than what all RV industry trade magazines combined have included in their publications (combined) during the last 10 years. Think on that... this issue features and celebrate more women in a single magazine than an estimated 360 other magazines. A single month has done more to make industry women front and center than has collectively been done by all publications spanning an entire decade.
2. RV News dedicated an estimated 15 percent of it's annual net profit on promoting, celebrating and recognizing the important role women, both collectively and individually make to the RV industry.
3. Work on the project spanned nearly 3 months, equating to 1/4 of a year, to as comprehensively as possible show how the RV industry is filled with an amazing, group of capable women who not only contribute, but significantly drive the success of the $140 billion RV industry.

A project like this takes many hands to do well. So many companies contributed time and ingenuity to ensure their employees were celebrated. Thank you! Thank you! Thank You!

Some companies even decided to advertise to financially make the magazine possible. A select few sponsored the whole "RV Made-In America" project.

I have one ask for my LinkedIn friends. Pay close attention to the companies who participated in any of these ways in our annual "Made In America" special issue. When you make purchases, show these companies a little love. After all, they regularly step up to do great things in our industry... and they are our RV family.??

Click here?to access the webpage where you can click on the front cover to flip through the RV News Made-in America special issue.?

Dana Nelsen

Very Proud Owner of RV News magazine