RV Pro: Women In Business
May 2022
Sarah Raymond
Vice President of Design
Patrick Industries
Even though she grew up near Elkhart, Ind., Sarah Raymond did not know much about the RV industry in her younger years.
“I didn’t have any family in the industry and I was kind of unaware of all that was happening around me,” she says.
Her appetite for a warmer climate and life experience took her first to Atlanta, where she launched a successful business at the height of the housing boom. Then, feeling like she wasn’t quite ready to settle down, she moved sight unseen to Costa Rica to open and run a café and art shop for two years.
It was when she returned to the Midwest in 2003 for family-related reasons that she joined the RV industry, becoming director of design/marketing for Adorn, a company that would later be acquired by Patrick Industries. Working today as the supplier’s vice president of design, Raymond enjoys her hectic schedule and the fact that no two days are ever the same.
At Patrick, Raymond leads a team of interior designers, a web developer, a sample department, graphic artists, and a design engineer who produces CAD and 3D-printed items, plus a craftsman who builds the department’s displays. Housed at Patrick Industries’ sprawling stand-alone design center and showroom, her team is constantly bringing new products online and developing creative new displays to showcase the company’s products.
The opening of the design center and showroom itself has been a crowing achievement for Raymond during her career with Patrick Industries.