Tilly: Welcome to another episode of Two Minutes With Tilly. Today, I’ve got the pleasure of Marcell joining me from Dometic. Marcell, thank you for joining us.
Marcell: No worries. Glad to be here.
Tilly: Mate, can you please introduce yourself to our viewers and tell us a little bit about where you’re from and where your name originates from. Because it’s, like myself, a very unique name for a male.
Marcell: Yeah, okay. So I’m originally from New Zealand. I moved to Australia about 12 years ago.
Tilly: Good choice.
Marcell: And confusingly enough, the name’s actually French.
Tilly: French?
Marcell: Yeah. Nothing to do with Kiwis whatsoever.
Tilly: Have you ever been to France?
Marcell: No. No. Recently went to Germany.
Tilly: Yeah, okay. For work or for pleasure?
Marcell: For work.
Tilly: Oh, beautiful. We’ll probably touch on that a little bit later on. Now, Marcell, you’re from Dometic, right?
Marcell: Correct.
Tilly: Now, what is it that you do at Dometic, of course. And whilst you’re at it, what do Dometic supply Retreat Caravans?
Marcell: Yeah, so Dometic is a manufacturer of caravan components, but more recently it’s actually much more than that. Dometic is a global platform business, so we supply product to the outdoor market to make that transition from a work to a home lifestyle to making it more friendly to go outdoors and live that lifestyle.
Tilly: Mobile living, right?
Marcell: Mobile living. And that was our slogan.
Tilly: Like how I threw that in?
Marcell: Mobile living made easy, was always the slogan. So we’re most known for manufacturing caravan components.
Tilly: And what do you supply Retreat as far as those caravan components go?
Marcell: Yeah, so we supply Retreat the air conditioner, the fridge, the windows, the awnings.
Tilly: Here’s a bit of a shout out, mate. Name the product. So we use the Dometic IBIS.
Marcell: So you use the Dometic IBIS 4. The RUC 6408 refrigerator, which is a compressor refrigerator. The Dometic awning, the rollout awing.
Tilly: Yes. The double glazed windows.
Marcell: Double-glazed windows for your caravans.
Tilly: And I think for our more lucrative caravans, our more off-grid caravans, we also use your DRS system.
Marcell: Yeah, that’s right.
Tilly: That’s not a cricketing umpiring tool, of course. Do you want to explain a little bit about the DRS?
Marcell: Yeah. So the DRS is a fairly unique product in the way that it functions. It is the only passive working dust reduction system on the market. So what it is, is it’s pressurising the internal living space of your caravan. Because when you’re towing your caravan, you’re actually creating a negative pressure and that’s sucking up all the dust in the air from outside the vehicle as you’re towing it. And hence, when you turn up to your destination, it’s full of dust, bugs, everything like that. So basically what the DRS is doing, it scoops in a bunch of air, it’s filtering it, and it’s pressurising the internal living space. So it’s actually pushing air out of all those vents.
Tilly: Very nice thing to have in your caravan.
Marcell: Absolutely.
Tilly: And did you know that comes standard in the Retreat Daydream?
Marcell: I’ve started to see the sales increase, which has been a really nice-
Tilly: Of the Daydream or the DRS?
Marcell: The DRS.
Tilly: Both actually.
Marcell: Both. So yeah, it’s been-
Tilly: Very good products. They complement each other, I guess. Now, Marcell, you mentioned that you went to Europe for work. What was that all about?
Marcell: So once a year, the largest caravan show within all of the regions, so America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Germany hosts the largest, which is the Dusseldorf RV Salon.
Tilly: Oh, you went to Dusseldorf?
Marcell: Yep, so that is where all the biggest brands of caravan component suppliers attend. There’s two very large halls.
Tilly: And I hear that it’s nowhere in comparison to the caravan shows that we have here in Australia.
Marcell: If you put it into a scope and scale, you would say that the two halls that they have in Dusseldorf are probably equivalent to the whole Melbourne RV Show, for instance. The scope of it and the amount of suppliers that go.
Tilly: Is it true they’ve got a waterpark or something like that at one of those shows?
Marcell: Not that I saw, but plenty of space.
Tilly: I believe anything that someone tells me, though. I did hear that about the Dusseldorf show, that they had actually a waterpark for the kids so the parents can go out and have a look at the product.
Marcell: Oh, no. Maybe there was, I mean, the scope of it’s so large.
Tilly: Rob Lucas, if you’re listening, maybe give us a waterpark.
Marcell: So yeah, the scale of it’s just so large, you would need two to three days to walk around. So maybe there was, but just didn’t-
Tilly: You just didn’t get around to it.
Marcell: … get around to it.
Tilly: Oh, I’d like to see you in the budgie smugglers.
Marcell: That’s all right, mate.
Tilly: Now Marcell, I’m going to ask you a question. I’ve asked everyone this question. If you could invite anyone for dinner, whether it’s past or present, who would you invite to dinner and why?
Marcell: I don’t know. I did see the question. Probably go with someone like Elon Musk.
Tilly: Elon Musk. I wonder why? But please tell us why.
Marcell: He’s an inquisitive fellow. It’s just the way he thinks. He’s probably one of the wealthiest people that actually invests in innovation and not just invests in his businesses to keep driving future revenue. He’s got an inquisitive mind. What he’s done with Tesla, SpaceX, it’s pretty cool.
Tilly: Absolutely. He doesn’t mind keeping people on their toes on social media as well. He’s buying Manchester United. He’s not buying Manchester United. He’s buying Twitter. He’s not buying Twitter. He’s buying Dometic. He’s not buy… Oh, you haven’t heard that one yet, have you?
Marcell: I haven’t heard that one yet.
Tilly: No, okay, fair enough. You could be calling him Boss and having dinner with him regularly.
Marcell: Wouldn’t be the worst.
Tilly: All right, so looking into the end of 2022 or in 2023, is Dometic bringing out any new products that you wish to talk about?
Marcell: There’s always development of products going on within Dometic. At this stage, it is relatively early to be talking about what’s in that pipeline.
Tilly: Is this confidential? Because on Two Minutes With Tilly, it is no holds barred. Confidentiality on Two Minutes With Tilly is key. Our listeners, our viewers, they don’t tell anyone anything that they hear on this. So you can be honest with me, mate.
Marcell: You’re a good salesman, but it’s too early. It’s too early. There’s always product in the pipeline. And I think if we’re looking into 2023 and all the future RV shows, we do plan to have a really strong showing of not only new product replacing what we already have, but product adding to our existing portfolio.
Tilly: Well, your RV show stands are very, very impressive. Just like myself. We’re both very presentable.
Marcell: Thank you. I’ll take it as a compliment.
Tilly: I’m not much of a comedian, mate, but I’ve got to ask some questions I guess. Now Marcell, if people want to find out more about Dometic, where should they go?
Marcell: The first place and the most obvious place is dometic.com.au. But you can find us on all the social media platforms. We do have a bunch of brand ambassadors plus influencers. So, hashtag Dometic. You’ll find the product on not only our website but across all those social media channels.
Tilly: Do you need any more influencers? Because I’m a great negative influencer. No? No deal? Well, how’s about this, mate? How about I make a deal with you? I’ll give you a present, you take a selfie with me. Deal?
Marcell: Deal.
Tilly: I got the deal done. Here you go, my friend. This is your very first issue, original not fake, Retreat Caravan’s Beanie. So, now all I need you to do-
Marcell: Is it signed by you?
Tilly: I could sign it if you like. It would actually decrease the value of it, but I could sign it. Mate, look that way, let’s take a selfie.
