All About Fun
It all started when their 150-pound Great Dane, Hoss, was not allowed to stay in a hotel room with them. So, because their pet was an important part of the family, and because they were determined to have him travel with them, Kevin and Nora Price bought a motor home.
And from that simple and unlikely beginning, the Prices have built Ramona’s All About Fun recreational vehicle sales, rental, consignment and service complex—one of the most comprehensive and trusted RV dealers in San Diego County, and maybe in Southern California.
“I still shake my head when I realize that all this happened in little ol’ Ramona,” said Kevin. “But it is the people of Ramona that made it happen. We told them from the beginning that, if it has anything to do with recreation and is on wheels, you don’t have to go down the hill for quality service—we’ve got it right here. They were willing to try us. We came through on our promise, and it has been a win-win for all of us ever since.”
But understanding the importance of good service is not new to the Prices, going right back to their bowling alley and nightclub days in downtown San Diego, to firefighting and first responder paramedic days high in the Rocky Mountains in the “small town” of Guffey. How small? It is described as a “community or populated place,” presently listed as having just 26 souls living there, and doing it without a Starbucks.
It was there, at more than 8,600 feet elevation, that All About Fun was born 13 years ago, with Kevin sliding their own motor home down a snow-covered mountainside to get it on to a flat spot in the road for a renter.
“It goes with the territory,” said Kevin. “If you are going to deal with the public, then the public has to know—not just feel, but absolutely know—that they can trust you. If a person gets burned just once, that person will not come back.”
Back in the 1970s, the family owned two bowling alleys in San Diego. There were lots of bowling alleys in San Diego then, and the thing that distinguished the popular ones was good service, said Kevin. “One burned down on the Pacific Coast Highway, and we were looking for a new investment when we found a bar for sale—Jose Murphy’s, a block from the ocean in Pacific Beach. That was a wild ride. Live rock ‘n’ roll seven nights a week. Wow!”
The family owned the bar at the outset in 1979, but two years later Kevin and Nora bought it to become sole owners.
“I didn’t play anything. We were the owners,” said Kevin.
That is a business where the owners have to be up with the latest trends and keep their fingers on the pulse of what the customer base is looking for, and make sure they get it, he said.
They had built a home on two acres in the Blossom Valley area of El Cajon, but by 1991, after 12 years in the bar business, “It was time to move on,” Kevin recalls. And they moved on from El Cajon to almost 9,000 feet up in the Rockies—from bustling Southern California to a town that is one block wide and two blocks long.
“But it is in the middle of some of the most beautiful country imaginable,” said Kevin. “We still have two homes up there on 70 acres.”
The Prices were free to follow whatever they wanted as income from the bar was still available.
“Never had any thought of motor homes, so I became at various times a surveyor, an assistant fire chief and a fully trained paramedic first responder,” said Kevin.
But fate was about to throw them one of those curve balls that often arrive totally unexpected, and, strangely, it was a curve ball that with the current economy has presented a new opportunity in their now successful business in Ramona.
The idea was consignment sales or leasing. It started when Hoss, who was a constant travelling companion, was repeatedly shown the door at hotels.
“Two things happened,” said Kevin. “We bought a motor home so that Hoss could always travel with us, and we started renting it out because I didn’t want it sitting in my driveway costing me money and rotting away.”
And then the Prices met other people who wanted to rent their RVs out, and a small business idea of consignment rentals was developed. But, as Kevin cautions, it’s an idea fraught with difficulties and some serious pitfalls.
“We’ve worked on removing those pitfalls,” he said. As a result, All About Fun has evolved considerably since their return to California, presenting new opportunities for both the company and for Ramonans.
They were back to renting their own motor home out of the driveway of their home in Ramona, but quickly grew to having as many as 40 vehicles at one time, operating from a lot at 2200 Main St., at the west end of town.
“We were strictly rental from 1996 to around 2000 when I got my dealer’s license and moved to include a few more sales,” said Kevin. “We were sending about $100,000 a year in service work down the hill, and clearly, I needed my own service and repair facility when Bill Fox decided to sell this repair facility at 499 Main St.”
“Now Bill is a great guy and a lot of fun, but flexible personal service was not high on his agenda, and he knew it. He had been in business for about 10 years, and during that time he knew that he had ticked off all of Ramona—not just half of Ramona or part of Ramona—all of Ramona, and the first thing he advised me to do was put up a big new name for the place and a big sign on the fence announcing that it was under new management,” chuckled Kevin. “We still have people who poke their head around the door and ask if that is truly true.”
The next thing was a top service manager and that was a no-brainer, said Kevin. “I went down the hill and persuaded Jeff Horne to come up here four years ago, and it has been a dream. He has to be the best service person anywhere around here. He keeps great technicians, and the insurance people love him because he knows exactly what he is doing and they know the customers will be pleased when they get their rigs back.”
All About Fun has another interesting service policy. “If someone comes in with a refrigerator that doesn’t work and says, ‘Oh by the way, could I get new tires,’ or maybe wants a tune-up, we do the refrigerator work, we take the vehicle down to a local tire or tune-up place and have the work done—we use Ramona businesses wherever possible—and the unit is washed and the outside detailed when we have finished. The owner pays us for the refrigerator work only. We don’t add a surcharge for taking it to get the tires or tune-up done, and the detailing is free—every time—it’s a matter of providing service.”
Such service has always been both a family and a personal thing for the Prices. Kevin and Nora get involved wherever they can, and their oldest son, Shane, had already become known as Mr. Customer Service around the sales and the service centers, before he died suddenly and tragically at age 25 on Dec. 26, 2004, of complications resulting from heart problems. Now, his younger brother, Chris, has stepped in and quickly proved himself to be a well-qualified head technician with a customer service flair.
But an expanding service that has the Prices REALLY excited is the growing field of consignment sales and renting, and even that is done in a top service-oriented way.
“There are lots of recreational vehicles sitting in peoples’ driveways that they would like to sell but don’t want the hassle—welcome to consignment sales, but with a difference,” said Kevin.
All About Fun does not take a percentage of the sales price, as is generally the case. “We let the seller set a price that he/she would be happy to get on the RV. Provided the price is within the industry guidelines for a rig of that make, year and condition, we will go with it. Our job is then to go out and use our expertise to sell it for more, and we will only take the difference. It’s a win for everyone: for the buyer, who has a reputable company to go to if anything goes wrong down the road, for the seller, who gets the price they want and don’t have to deal with future problems, and for us, because we have a new service customer,” said Kevin.
Similarly with rentals. “Many people would like to keep their RV but don’t want it to slowly deteriorate sitting alongside their home. They can add it to our rental fleet and we share the profit,” said Kevin. “We like to maintain a reputation for high quality, so we are usually looking for vehicles in the mid-2000s and up, with less than 30,000 miles on them.
“Some people buy a unit right here, and never take it off the lot. They immediately put it into our rental fleet to generate income when they are not using it— again, everybody wins.”
In these economically uncertain times, businesses have to be nimble, and the Prices clearly demonstrate that.
“When the economy was strong, we were moving toward having strictly our own fleet of very late model vehicles, but that can be a tremendous amount of debt sitting on the lot,” said Kevin. “So, it depends on how you look at the economy. Some people only look at 12 percent unemployment, but conversely that means the 88 percent are working and trying to go on vacations. Others are wondering if their investment in a RV was a good idea. We say why not develop a program that helps meet all their needs? Consignment is certainly one answer, and we think it is a good one.”
The 150-pound Great Dane is still a feature of the Prices’ life, but it is not Hoss, who has moved on. Now there is Bob, a 150-pound Great Dane that could be Hoss’ brother and is the official greeter at the 499 Main St. service center.
Bob is big. Bob is very gentle, but Bob likes to be petted, and if you ignore him, he might just gently lean against you. And when you have been gently leaned on by a 150-pound dog whose ears reach above your waist, you pet him.
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