CEO and Owner, Holiday World of Houston
Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Michael Peay attended the University of New Mexico and received his Bachelors degree in finance from the Anderson School of Management. While attending school at UNM he sold and serviced Coleman fold-down camping trailers with his sister Cherilyn from a small dealership.
After graduating from school he joined the sales department in a larger dealership owned and operated by his father, Wayne Peay. Over the next five years Michael worked in every department, front to back, bottom to top. While working for the dealership he had the opportunity to meet and receive training from Bill Gorman, owner of Gorman Planning Company and Dealer Management Systems. He received training working in parts and service management, sales and sales management, finance and accounting.
In January 1989 Michael joined the consulting team at Gorman Planning Company and put on a consulting hat, offering training to growing RV and marine dealerships across the United States and Canada. This opportunity provided a vast amount of experience and education working with some of the leading RV dealers in the U.S. He and Bill Gorman worked together to form what is now call Focus Groups RV07 and RV09 consisting of 15 to 20 RV dealerships each, reporting accounting results, meeting quarterly, and creating an educational environment with the accountability of the consistent financial reporting.
Immersed in the learning of dealership operations, he found many dealers successfully operating dealerships with their individual personality differences. He learned best practices for daily operations, accounting, customer care and profit performance. He and Bill also worked with a small software company to help them understand and develop applications and financial reporting for the RV and Marine industries. Today IDS Astra is the preferred operation software in the RV industry partially because of Bill Gorman’s influence and promotion of their system to growing RV dealers interested in integrated software solutions.
After consulting with, and offering computer solutions to, Holiday World RV Centers – a group of 14 RV dealerships owned by Harley Davidson – Michael was offered the position of General Manager of their two Houston stores. These stores were small in size and volume, only two acres each and selling about 300 RV’s per year combined. He worked to implement processes and procedures to improve operations and grow the stores. In 1996 Harley Davidson decided to divest their investment in the RV industry providing Michael an opportunity to purchase the two stores in Houston.
Developing a purchase plan, Michael brought in partners, Leonard Martynowicz, former Director of the Holiday World stores, and Tom Daulton, another former UNM graduate and entrepreneur. Together they have grown the stores form two to six, 300 RV’s sold annually to over 4,000 RV’s sold annually, and annual sales of $10 million to over $220 million in sales.
Today Michael continues as the CEO of the Holiday World dealerships. He also serves as Chairman of RV07 Focus Group and Chairman of the Board of Priority RV Network, a cooperative of over 100 RV dealers nationwide. He is active with the non-profit organization Upbring, which operates the Krause Children’s Center in Katy, Texas. Krause provides living, education, medical and counseling facilities for abused young girls ages 13 to 18 and helps them to find supporting foster families and gives them a positive Christian-based perspective as they move forward in their lives.
