Russ Anderson, the patriarch of Americana, was first introduced to RVs in the early 1950s when his father bought a camper for his pickup truck (since then, Russ's dad has put hundreds of thousands of miles on various types of RVs throughout the U.S., Canada, Alaska, and Mexico). Russ began working in the industry in 1970. Over the years, he has been involved in every aspect of this business, from designing, engineering, manufacturing, and selling very expensive and luxurious custom motorhomes and fifth wheels, to marketing mass produced trailers, fifth wheels, and motorhomes. He has seen tremendous changes in the industry, and has actually caused some of those changes himself with innovative designs and concepts (He developed the first full basement model fifth wheel and was the number one marketer of Skyline products and number two marketer of Holiday Rambler products in the country by dollar amount). All of his experience in creating RVs and meeting with customers taught him that the needs of the toughest customer in the business, the experienced RVer, weren't being met as well as they could have been, and so he set out to do just that. The result has succeeded beyond his original expections, and he has been flabbergasted, but overjoyed, by the response that he has received! |