ELKHART, Ind. — Adam Smith’s and Jeff Wagner’s new venture, Alinea Sales Group, is now up and running at 223 S. Main St. in downtown Elkhart.
Founded by longtime RV industry executive Adam Smith, with former Keystone RV general manager Jeff Wagner recently joining as a partner, the Elkhart-based company is positioning itself as an outsourced sales team for independent suppliers that have manufacturing capabilities but may lack the time, personnel or industry relationships to pursue OEM business on their own.
Together, the partners have nearly 50 years of combined experience spanning RV sales, product development and general management. According to Smith, that breadth of experience gives Alinea Sales Group an advantage.
“A lot of smaller independent suppliers have not worked at any level, let alone at every level, for an OEM,” Smith said. “They’re really guessing as to what the pain points and the internal dialogues look like and the processes.”
Smith left Forest River at the beginning of 2025 after serving as a division general manager and subsequently launched Smith & Johnson Industries, which supplies solid-surface countertops, pressed countertops, and routed wood parts to RV manufacturers and adjacent markets. The experience of launching Smith & Johnson helped inspire Alinea’s creation.
He said Smith & Johnson Industries has grown from no revenue to several million dollars in sales in roughly 18 months, with business at Forest River and Thor operations as well as independent manufacturers including Modern Buggy.
“Our test market was very successful and kind of inspired us to see where we could help more people grow their businesslike we grew SJI,” Smith said.
Wagner’s background includes sales, product management and general management roles at both Keystone RV and Forest River.
For Alinea’s supplier clients, Smith said the pair’s OEM experience provides both established relationships and familiarity with the processes involved in getting a new component from an initial conversation through prototyping and ultimately into production.
The target customer is often a smaller manufacturer whose owner already handles much of the day-to-day operation of the business.
“You could do it yourself,” Smith said. “You could try and go into all these OEMs and meet the right people and tell the right stories and get your product placed. But you own a small business and you’re wearing 30 hats already.”
The other option, he said, is hiring and training a salesperson who may not have existing relationships or experience navigating RV manufacturers.
Alinea instead seeks to function as that supplier’s sales department.
One example is Falcon Products, a second-generation family-owned manufacturer led by Josh Connolly. The company produces routed high-density polyethylene components, including sink covers and knife blocks.
Smith said Connolly saw opportunities to expand Falcon’s RV business but was also spending his time operating and repairing CNC equipment, filling production needs, packaging products and handling other responsibilities.
Alinea began handling quote requests, product changes and OEM sales calls on Falcon’s behalf.
“In a very short amount of time, we’ve been able to grow his business pretty substantially,” Smith said.
Alinea also represents Premium Rock, a larger supplier offering print products and emerging technologies. Smith said the company already had products and expertise but needed additional sales capacity to present those offerings to more RV manufacturers.
The opportunity for independent suppliers may also be growing as consolidation continues throughout the RV supply base, Smith said.
Rather than seeing many entirely unserved product categories, he said Alinea frequently encounters components already available to OEMs but supplied by only one major source.
“There are several things that are being supplied, but they’re being supplied by one party,” Smith said. “There needs to be more diversity in the supply chain.”
In some cases, he said, Alinea has approached existing manufacturers that already have the machinery and technical capabilities needed to produce a component and encouraged them to enter categories where additional competition could benefit OEMs.
Smith said the firm is selective about those partnerships.
Alinea has declined opportunities when a supplier lacked a sufficiently differentiated product, did not have a clear fit within the RV market or appeared unable to handle the additional production that could result from increased sales.
“Our vetting process consists of three questions, really: does the character of the owner match ours, does the owner have production capacity for significant growth, and is the owner capable of being competitive in terms of price,” Smith said.
Quality and the ability to support OEM customers are also central to the firm’s vetting process, he added.
For Wagner, existing relationships are only part of the equation.
“A lot of it is obviously driven toward earning the sale, but that process has to start with, one, relationship, and then, two, understanding the processes inside the plant so you can help both sides of the equation,” Wagner said.
That can include working through the prototyping stage, identifying the needs of individual plants and helping a supplier tailor a product to a particular OEM application.
Smith said he and Wagner have developed relationships with executives, general managers, product managers and purchasing personnel across the industry during their careers.
“The RV business feels like one of the last true relationship-driven businesses out there,” Smith said.
In addition to sales representation, the company offers optional warehousing, inventory staging, freight coordination and just-in-time delivery services.
“We get to represent cool products from cool companies,” he said, “and we get to go hang out with our friends and tell them all about these cool companies and products that we’re representing. Somehow it ends up in a bunch of sales and a good situation for everybody involved. We feel pretty lucky to do what we do, and to do it in this particular industry”
