3 Competitors Built 1 Product That Changed RV Travel Forever | Mark Fecker & Steven Loving

Three competitors walked into a room and built one product. That almost never happens. Companies in the same space are trained to watch each other, copy each other, and win at each other's expense. Collaboration between competitors is rare because the incentives point the other way.

Winnebago Connect is the exception. It is the same product I covered in the last episode, but this time I wanted to go deeper with the two people who actually built it together. Mark Fecker, CEO of Robo. Steven Loving from Core Wireless. Both of them sat down with me at Auto Tech 2025 in Novi, Michigan.

Here is what it is. Winnebago Connect is a connected platform built into Winnebago RVs that keeps families online on the road, tracks pets, handles security, and does the things RV owners have been asking for but nobody had put together in one place.

The pet piece is bigger than it sounds. Sixty to seventy percent of RV owners travel with pets. That is a massive audience and nobody was building for them specifically. Mark and Steven listened, and then they built.

That is the part that matters. They listened first. They sat in the customer's seat before they designed anything. Most product teams skip that step, assume they know the user, and then wonder why the thing lands flat.

Competitors collaborating is rare because it requires two things that are hard to fake. A clear shared customer, and enough humility on both sides to admit that neither of you can build the whole thing alone.

Mark talks about the Google and Nest footprint strategy. You do not need to own every inch of the market. You need to own the right inch and partner for the rest. That thinking is what made this product possible.

Steven talks about what happens when field testing fails. The deadline is still there. The customer is still waiting. You can hide the failure or you can name it in the room and let the team solve it together. Real partnerships survive the second option. Fake ones die on the first.

Why this conversation matters. If you are in a market where you think your only move is to beat the other players, this episode will make you rethink that. There are moments when the right move is to call the people you have been competing with and build something bigger than any of you could alone.

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