In 2019, a former teacher and an ex-New York City hedge fund employee teamed up to start a campervan conversion company in the mountains of Colorado.
A few years, a pandemic that skyrocketed interest in "van life," and 350 sold vans later, Dave Ramsay and Matt Felser are scaling up operations at Dave and Matt Vans with the goal of producing 1,600 vehicles in the next three years.
Dave and Matt Vans builds and sells campervans to Colorado’s outdoor community out of the Vail Valley. The duo started slow, with Felser flipping his own van that he built in the Vail Mountain School parking lot as the company’s first sale.
“We sold one, built two, sold two vans, built four,” Felser said in a recent interview. “Obviously there were a lot of trials and tribulations in between but here we are 350 vans and three years later.”
The former college friends entered the van life movement from two very different paths. Felser, a former teacher, was looking for an opportunity to access the outdoors during his time off in the summer. Campervans checked all of the boxes he was looking for.
Ramsay, formerly involved in the hedge fund world, bought a van as a place to live after he left New York City.
Despite their differing journeys, the duo immediately saw an opportunity to tap into the then-fledgling campervan space three years ago. Originally, it was just the two of them building and selling vans, with Felser recalling that his original van garnered 24 emails in 24 hours when they posted it.
Now, the operation has grown significantly, and so has the interest.
At its peak this past summer, Felser said Dave and Matt Vans was receiving over 100 outside inquiries per day and the company was producing six vans per week. In total, they delivered 180 new vans in 2021. The company converts Ram Promaster vans in three different sizes, with prices ranging from $65,000 to nearly $90,000, depending on customizations.
With customer interest at a fever pitch, Dave and Matt Vans has purchased a new 39,000 square foot production facility in Rifle, where it will house its van-building operation. The company has also purchased its current facility in Gypsum that it had been leasing since 2019. That space will now become the company’s headquarters for sales, service and rental operations.
The 26-person company will also be growing its rental business with the new space. In 2021, Dave and Matt Vans did over 100 rentals and Felser expects the company to grow that business by 500 percent by 2024.
“It gives people a chance to try out van life before making the leap into a purchase,” he said.
The only thing slowing the company’s meteoric rise is the supply-chain issues plaguing much of the automobile industry. Felser said the company first started feeling the effects of the chassis and chip shortage this winter and he is hopeful it won’t last for long as they look to meet record demand.
The RV industry as a whole experienced a 40% increase in units produced and shipped in 2021 and expects that momentum to continue through 2022. Felser is excited to contribute to that growing interest with Dave and Matt Vans.
“We see this trend continuing for the foreseeable future and we want to be a big part of it,” he said.
