The Dream Becomes Reality...

Don Wallace founded Lazydays^®, the largest single site RV dealership in North America. A Tennessee native, Don moved to Florida as a teenager and finished school in Tampa before returning to Tennessee to farm for nearly nine years. Don, who had taken up RVing as a family pastime, then returned to Tampa to start a landscape business, but fate intervened.

Partly through selling his own RV, Don began to view recreational vehicles as a growth industry. He approached his father, H.K., and brother Ron with the idea of starting an RV dealership. The original business plan was to sell two trailers a month.

Don states, "we were lucky in picking the right market area. We had no idea that Tampa was such a great place to start a business. We didn't realize that so many people came down here in the winter and that the local market had never been touched. We just knew that if we worked hard, we would be successful."

Original Location
The original Lazydays dealership opened its doors in 1976 and consisted of a mobile home nestled on a 1.75-acre site, two travel trailers in inventory and $500 in capital. At the end of their first year in business, they purchased the lot they had been leasing and the business continued to grow. Obviously, they had sold more than two trailers a month that first year. Lazydays stayed with travel trailers and mini-motor homes until 1981 when they ventured out into Class As. In 1981 they took on Fleetwood's Pace Arrow product line and that is when the dealership really started to grow. Lazydays went from $13 million in sales in 1980 to $50 million in 1983. The business steadily expanded to encompass 13 acres, but quickly outgrew the dealership boundaries with approximately 160 employees, 44 service bays and hundreds of display units. As the company grew, the dream emerged.

The Dream... Lazydays RV SuperCenter^®
The move to the new SuperCenter took place over Memorial Day weekend 1996 and was accomplished without affecting daily business. On Tuesday morning, May 28, 1996, the Florida Avenue facility was officially closed.

Lazydays RV SuperCenter has now become a representative of 18 manufacturers with 110 models available at the 126-acre central-Florida facility with over 700 employees 273 service bays and over 1,200 RVs displayed in a flowered, park-like setting. This RV SuperCenter concept was a dream of Don Wallace's for over 10 years and today his dream has become the standard for all RV dealerships of the future. The new Lazydays RV SuperCenter features an on-site Cracker Barrel restaurant, a 300-site RV Park, RVIA/RVDA certified RV technicians, Flying J RV Travel Plaza and a 40,000-s.f. on-site Camping World for the RV and camping enthusiast.

Don Wallace worked hard in creating "Florida's Newest Tourist Attraction" and attributes the company's continued success to unsurpassed customer service and satisfaction.