Story by IPB Industrial
May 18, 2023
A family-owned company in the Dayton region recently secured a brick-and-mortar location in the northern part of the Miami Valley. The move is the result of rapid growth and the need to expand operations.
Keplinger Campers, a camper rental business previously based out of St. Paris, has relocated its operations to a warehouse facility at 317 Windham Way in Piqua.
With the relocation to a larger facility, Keplinger Campers will be able to offer 45 units for customers to rent out, as well as in-house repairs on RVs. Rentals are for a three-night minimum and start at $600, going up depending on how long a customer needs to rent a unit.
In addition to this, Keplinger Campers will travel directly to the customer to repair any RVs if they are unable to bring their rental into the shop. Previously, owner TJ Keplinger was running the rental portion of the business on a single-acre lot in St. Paris and did camper prepping and repairs out of his house.
“We had to get the business out of my house to keep my wife sane and me sane,” Keplinger said. “Forty units going in and out of my driveway — it’s kind of nerve-wracking. Now everything is in one location, which feels amazing.”
Keplinger initially got into the RV and camper rental business, as he expresses it, by accident. He and his wife had wanted to go camping and purchased a camper that they ended up not using as often as they had originally planned. Keplinger found out about camping rentals in 2018, listed his camper on Outdoorsy, and was booked out four weeks with countless messages from potential renters within the first week.
“I got to thinking, what if I went out and bought another one,” Keplinger said. “I talked my wife into it, and that one booked like crazy—it snowballed from there.”
Kepligner’s brother hopped on board in 2019, and from there, they looked into consignment—people allowing them to rent their unit for them—and split profits 50/50. Consignment helped Keplinger build the business to what it is today, with only seven units owned by him personally and the rest provided by other camper and RV owners.
The Piqua location was ideal for Keplinger’s relocation because of the large garage doors ranging from 18 feet to 27 feet, allowing space for units to be pulled in and worked on. Additionally, the 18,500-square-foot facility offers plenty of room for the business to operate, and the security of having a fenced-in property was appealing for Keplinger.
Keplinger is currently in the process of moving stock and operations to the location and plans to hold an open house on May 21. The business currently has four employees, and plans to hire more employees as business kicks up at the new location.
Tim Echemann, principle of Piqua-based Industrial Property Brokers, brokered the lease.
“It is great to see family-owned businesses taking advantage of the increasing supply of available industrial space in the Upper Miami Valley market,” Echemann said. “I believe it was a smart decision for the Keplingers to scale their business to take advantage of the increased boom in the RV industry.”
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