Inside Modular: The Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction
Inside Modular is the official podcast of the Modular Building Institute, the Voice of Commercial Modular Construction. This series will highlight industry news and trends, include conversations with industry thought-leaders, and discuss the advantages of modular building construction.
Inside Modular: The Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction
From Bespoke Tiny Homes to Full Modular Developments: How Wind River Built Scaled Up
Travis Pyke, founder and CEO of Wind River Built, shares his journey from tiny home builder to modular manufacturer and explains how his company's vertical integration approach allowed it to quickly scale production and attract commercial building developers.
For developers considering modular construction, Pyke's insights about coordination, partner selection, and pre-construction planning provide a roadmap to successful projects. By focusing on transparency, quality, and bringing more services under one roof, Wind River Built demonstrates how modern modular construction can deliver turnkey solutions that consistently exceed client expectations.
Hello and welcome to Inside Modular, the podcast of commercial modular construction brought to you by the Modular Building Institute. Welcome everyone. My name is John McMullen. I'm the marketing director here at MBI. Today I'm joined by Travis Pike, founder and CEO at Wind River Built. Travis is here to talk about how developers can get started with modular construction and share the advantages of vertical integration. Travis, welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 2:John, excited to be on here with you and talk modular.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Tell me about yourself, Travis. What's your background and how did Wind River Built come to be?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll give a condensed version here because that story can be long. But essentially I come from a background of trades construction, carpentry. You know, early on in seventh grade I homeschooled and our family built our own house. So that's kind of I've been drawing plans, fascinated by design and architecture, from an early age. But in 2012, you know, the tiny home movement was kind of catching on and it was really intriguing to me.
Speaker 2:I was about to get married and I read an article about it and a few days later bought, you know, a trailer off Craigslist and started diving into the minimalist tiny home world. And so I started out of just a desire to want to live that lifestyle. And, you know, save money kind of be a good stepping stone for me and my new family. Save money kind of be a good stepping stone for me and my new family. So I spent a year and a half building the first.
Speaker 2:The Wind River Bungalow is what we called it 192 square feet. My wife and I lived in it for over four years. But after I finished that, another friend wanted to build a tiny home and for him and his wife we came together, started Wind River Tiny Homes in 2014. So we've been in business this fall will be 11 years and about eight of those years was just solely focused on building park model tiny homes on wheels that everyone knows about. Then, two years ago, we decided to scale our operations and modular started researching modular several years ago and it just seemed like the obvious direction to go, taking our reputation what we'd built in the tiny home world, but applying it to a much broader market and different building type.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that. The fact that you designed your own home. Not many people can say that that's awesome. Yes, so since you've become Wind River Built, it's been a couple of years. Can you walk us through the typical customer journey when a developer comes to you for an example? What is that journey like for them, from the initial inquiry to completing a project? What are those conversations like along the way?
Speaker 2:I think that's what really sets Wind River apart. I know it's cliche to say you know we have great customer service, but we call it more a customer journey. So it truly is, from like the very beginning early conversations, ideation, all the way to well after you've received a product of ours.
Speaker 2:But yeah it's individuals wanting to buy a home from us, a tiny home or modular. Or, now that we've scaled, we're engaging with a lot more developers, both in the hospitality market and residential. But from start to finish we're in the weeds with the customer, trying to remove any roadblocks, answer any questions, problem solve. We've really built. We've been focusing on building our team out. You know we have a new facility, we got all the tools, great manufacturing facility, but we've really been focused on, like, the services that we provide from our team.
Speaker 2:So what that typically looks like is, you know, early conversations kind of just figure out if project's viable, if we're in the same realm of like the product and quality and cost that we provide, and if those all align, we'd go into a pre-construction design engagement and that's where you get the full services from our team design studio, design team, engineers, architects that we're partnered with and we really go through the nitty gritty to design something totally custom, unique. Or if a developer brings us a plan that's partially figured out, or they can bring us an architectural set of documents, engineered plans, and we can build to that. So I think that's what's unique is that we meet the developer or the customer, wherever they're at and be able to provide those services all the way through.
Speaker 1:How does being vertically integrated help you maintain quality across? You know different phases of the project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you hit it on the head. The number one reason for vertical integration is quality driven first. From our early days, when we started in a pole barn, all the way to now in our 100,000 square foot facility, vertical integration has been a big part of our business model and it's always. You know, we have the mindset of, like you know we can build it better, higher quality, faster and cheaper, but it's always quality where we've been told we're obsessed with quality, Like we would not put anything out the door that we wouldn't want to build for ourselves so we can control that quality.
Speaker 2:So, bringing cabinetry and millwork in-house, we do all. Fabricating all the steel frames, trailers, whatever needs to be done out of steel, we do that ourselves. We've truly brought everything in-house. The cost savings comes later, once we've streamlined it and become more efficient. But it's all quality driven and because we do it in-house, we can customize.
Speaker 2:And so early on our business model was like you dream it, we'll build it fully custom. Well, it's hard to scale that, so we standardized over the last few years and came out with models that you can kind of tweak in a catalog, like there's a sandbox to plan and we still have to do that for small orders or individual customers. But if a developer is coming to us, especially in hospitality, they want a unique, bespoke product that is just them. We've leaned fully back into custom on volume orders like that. And with that, what materials, what do you want? Appliances, what different systems, MEP we'll do that from scratch, ground up, and we can do that since we're doing so much in-house and can control the cost and quality of that. So I think that's been super important for that to be part of our business model.
Speaker 1:I was wondering if you could maybe give an example of something that you've built for a developer client and maybe describe how your integrated approach has really made a critical difference, you know, maybe versus more traditional or even traditional modular approach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got a great example for that group that had kind of ambitious plans to have these. They're kind of like detached hotels but kind of a luxury resort outside of national parks around the country. They had done one small one, but modular was a direction they wanted to go and so we worked with their whole team over a few months, designed with them a unique model just to them, not like anything else, and we really got in the trenches with them. Like I said, there was issues that had to be solved, different things where they had mentioned a lot of other builders they talked to was just like here's the scope of our services, here's a few designs. You can only make these tweaks. And we offered to get in the trenches and figured out with them and it was a really great process.
Speaker 2:So that was for 75 modular units going up near the Great Smoky Mountains, which we're about to wrap up. The 75th unit they're all stacked up outside getting ready to go to their site. It was such a positive experience for their group that when they put an RFP out to do a development of 75 units in Joshua Tree on the other side of the country, it was obvious we need to go with these guys, even though the shipping costs and everything the value that they were going to have was we've gone through this process with them. We're going to get a consistent quality product. They know that we're in it a hundred percent with them, and so the feedback from them validated why how we set up our, our customer journey and services was we want to be a repeat customer for these developers that want to continue to grow. So that's a good case study going on right now of what we offer the developer.
Speaker 1:Well, kudos to you. That's an awesome testament to you guys, and I know logistics can present a lot of problems and you mentioned that with the Joshua Tree project. How does Wind River manage the coordination between delivery, the owners, the GCs, all the moving parts that it takes to get a large project from A to B, especially across the country? What's your process for that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we felt very important early on to be able to control that and manage that. And so we work with great third party logistics companies that we've had great experience with. One is to where it's just an individual driver all the way to like we need, you know, multiple fleets of 10 drivers and trailers to get, you know, 75 units across the country inventory. So on the large volume orders we work with a handful of logistics partners.
Speaker 2:Wind river holds the logistics under our contract with the owner. So in our scope it's response we're responsible to get the units to the site. Coordinating with the gc or owner on like the order they need to come in the orientation is their staging there. But we felt like that was a huge value add for the developer was like let us take that on, we'll hold that contract instead of giving them some suggestions and then figuring out so we can control that, because early on a customer would have a great journey with us and then a logistics partner that we didn't have control over or something would happen and it just would sour that experience. At the very end things would happen and it just would sour, you know that experience. At the very end things would happen and it's like we want Wind River to be involved until we can like hand those keys over and get the unit to the site. So we're very much involved with meetings, coordinating with owner GC to get the units there.
Speaker 2:And just to add to that I know we're just talking about like shipping logistics, but for the right projects in kind of the greater Southeast, we have a network of partners we work closely with.
Speaker 2:So even the vertical aspect, once the units are there, they have to be craned onto site, stitched to the foundation, stitched together if they're two story. So we have a great structural engineering partner who does all of our structural engineering of our units, but he also can do different levels of scope on the vertical aspect. So some developers you know we're able to go to and let them know that we can do the unit, we can get it there, and then somebody that feels in-house I mean they're essentially an extension of our team can oversee the craning, crane analysis, handling all that, getting them set and stitched. So that's been a huge value too. And again, it's geographically dependent on where that partner will go, but then it truly is turnkey from start to finish. We can help them get the units there because that's one of the pitfalls of modulars it's a lot of upfront planning and moving parts, and if you can coordinate that well and kind of vertically integrate that for the developers, they don't have to figure it out. Huge value from what we've been hearing.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you guys have learned a lot along the way and are continuing to learn. If you're able to say what are some of the specific pitfalls that you've come across and how have you learned to avoid them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of it just comes down to coordination. We don't want to be a partner or a builder that is just kind of like hands off and like well, you have to figure that out. We want modular to be successful across the board and so you know, we're listening to kind of the horror stories of modular. We were talking to a developer right now that when he met us he's like just he, let us know right up front. He's like I do not like modular.
Speaker 2:He'd hit some of those pitfalls of things not going together on on site, not getting what he needed, not knowing the full scope of how that all works. But we're winning him over 100%. We're going to be building homes with him because of our approach, of the coordination, how much we're involved, the ability to have a structural engineer involved that can build the foundations, that can set the units. So I think the pitfalls we go to all the to. You know all the mbi events, world of modular, and we're continually wanting to improve our services and and elevate you know what we offer and and one of the one of the breakout sessions we went to at world of modular this year was kind of the pitfalls of modular, like why it hasn't worked in certain scenarios, and that was one of the best sessions I went to. Got a lot of good information on how we can better our services for the client.
Speaker 1:Well, we've talked about logistics quite a bit. You mentioned working with developers to get multi-story buildings up, get foundations built. What types of foundations or other structural challenges have you helped developers overcome and what was your approach? How did you guide them through those challenges?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really good question. I think the biggest thing that we've done is finding a good, trusted, valued partner in the structural engineer. So he's very knowledgeable and intimate with the designs of our homes because through the certification phase he's he's the one designing the floor systems and and doing all the structural calcs. So having him introducing him to the developer or the client to to go out to the site, understand where the units are going Is it steep, is it sloped? You know what type of foundation does it need?
Speaker 2:We were just in North Carolina last week looking at steep slope so our engineer can design elevated steel concrete foundations that integrate fully with the floor system we're building, whether it's a wood floor system, a steel floor. It's just one of those things that a GC to figure out on site, having to coordinate multiple parties that aren't familiar with how we're building it, being able to bring that into our scope, has been huge. So we're looking at steel elevated platforms, typical crawl space foundations, slab foundations, precast foundation walls. We're working closely with a company that can design that to just to integrate with our units and we're all taking that under one roof and the developers have just kept saying that. You know that's incredible to be able to have that piece that we don't have to figure out.
Speaker 1:So, based on your experience, how does a strong network and it sounds like you've got one, you've got your structural engineer in place, you've got other staff and partners in place how does a strong network of architects and engineers and GCs even help simplify the experience for developers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what we found is it's hard to be exceptional and really good at everything and we understand when we're not. You know, we're not civil engineers, we're not structural engineers. So I think identifying the best partners that are really good at what they do and getting them involved early on is what's going to make a project successful. So we're continuing to build that out. I think our close partner, that's a structural engineer that can do the vertical work, was one of the biggest ones.
Speaker 2:We're working with a civil engineer now on a townhome project we're doing internally here in Cleveland, tennessee. They're a nationwide company so we can now tap into there's a lot about civil engineering we don't know, but they're learning and intrigued by modular. We're going to be doing a project with them so we can tap into civil engineers. Our architect is licensed in a lot of states and will get licensed in a new state if he doesn't have that, and they're learning the ins and outs of modular and how to design around that. So it's been huge. We don't have to figure it out. You know, in the early days we were very much. You know we're scrappy. We do like to problem solve and figure it out, but that doesn't mean we need to figure out areas where someone else is exceptional.
Speaker 1:How do you vet or select your partners? I'm sure you learned as you went. As you said, you got to the point where you needed outside partners to come in and sort of you know, boost you guys up. How did you select those partners? What vetting process did they go through to make sure they aligned with your vision and how you did things?
Speaker 2:Well, some of it's been just between Caleb, my business partner. You know, he and I both come from a construction trades background, so we have a good network here in our area and, like the southeast, so some of it was just trusted partners that we already knew. Some of it's just trial and error too, Like you do a project with a partner and it's like, oh, they just didn't quite align, whether it's the customer service, the speed and urgency quality. So we try to find partners that match our obsession of providing a really quality product and quality services If those align and they're interested in diving into the nuances of modular. That's kind of the vetting process. But so between a network that we already kind of had established and then meeting new folks along the way and kind of trial and error, you kind of land at kind of where we're at now and we're still trying to build that out even further.
Speaker 2:But I think we're getting closer to being able to offer a full scope of services from start to finish for a project. You know, the last piece is like finding a GC that can do all the finishing details on site. If it's too far away, like we don't have a crew that we can send off for weeks at a time to like wrap up a project. And we've done some projects where we hired that out and they did not do it to the quality or the customer service that we would have, and so you know we didn't use them again. So trying to find crews that can go on site and do the site work in a way that aligns with how we would do it is really important.
Speaker 1:You mentioned earlier in the conversation pre-construction design services that you provide. I wanted to loop back to that just for a minute. Can you walk us through what's included in your pre-construction design and how it sort of sets the stage for a successful project?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I'd mentioned, with modular products, anybody doing modular knows that there's a lot more coordination and planning involved. There's different cooks in the kitchen, so to say, and so knowing what all those are up front, having a responsibility matrix that we have and everyone knows exactly what's in their scope Is Wind River doing this or is the GC doing this? Or the owner? So, up front, kind of laying the whole project out, the steps that we need to go through, making sure everyone's aligned at the different stages, that needs to happen, and then we're fully transparent, kind of an open book. We want to be honest about everything right from the start.
Speaker 2:If things are going well, the customer knows. If there's an issue, the customer is going to know and not trying to circumnavigate anything. I think building trust with the developer and having that trust within our network of partners is key for a project to go well and then for the customer. On the design side, as we're going through the design, we get down to the detail of like which way is the toilet paper holder installed, like the little details, and then a final cost, like the deliverable out of that pre-construction design is a final set of plans that can go through certification and get stamped through the state and a contract price, whether it's one unit or a volume order. So having that process in place, just it's fully transparent. The developer knows what they're getting and the costs they're getting in that.
Speaker 1:Have you seen cases, or do you have an example, where all these pre-construction conversations have prevented rework later or kept you from having to go and redo something later in the process? I was wondering if you could give me an example.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've been doing modular now for almost two years, once we moved into our new facility. So we have two big projects that we've completed. We did 26 modular units for student housing at a local university, kind of a village of modular homes mountain cottages they call them. So that was our first kind of taste doing a larger project and working with the engineers on site and the GC and all of that. And did it go perfectly? No, but having our process in place, we felt like it went really smoothly and we learned along the way.
Speaker 2:After every project we do a post-project, post-production review and meeting with everyone to go through what went well, what didn't, what could be better, so that we can apply that to the next project. And then this order we're fulfilling right now of 75 units, and then this order we're filling right now of 75 units. You know, at the beginning of that there was a lot of things not in our scope or that we didn't know how they were handling. But because of the experience they had we brought new things into our scope because like we could go to them and be like no, we can handle that and we can design it that way to reduce the amount of subcontractors and work that they had to do on site contractors and work that they had to do on site. So, over that one year engagement, we've come out of that with a much better process and like what we can, what we can offer. And, just on that note, our structural engineer is going to be. He won the contract to set all those units. It's like half halfway through we were planning for the GC that they had at the time to do all that setting and trying to you, trying to introduce them to the design. Here's how you're going to build the porches and connect everything. Well, now our structural engineer will be doing all that, which is just an extension of our team, and that was huge for them.
Speaker 2:It's just one thing they don't have to worry about. To worry about and all the little roadblocks that you hit, things you have to overcome along the way when it's in that network and in that house. In house, um, there's a lot of conversations and meetings that happen that the owner, developer don't even know about. Or you know, they didn't have to coordinate three or four different groups. We had an issue, we problem solved it internally and it was just something that they didn't have to deal with. We just figured it out and that's the feedback we're getting, like what roadblocks can we remove from them? What headaches can we help them with? The less that they have to do onsite for the project, the better. All saying that that they are still very much involved in all the meetings, but that's really helpful for them from what we've been hearing.
Speaker 1:Well, travis, this has been great. I really appreciate your time. Before I let you go, I have one more question for you as a relatively new modular manufacturer, I know you started as a tiny home business. You've grown since then, so you've been in the industry a while. I was wondering what advice you could offer other manufacturers who are just getting going. What would you suggest to them in terms of making connections with owner developers, deepening those relationships? What should new manufacturers be doing to grow their business and invite developers in?
Speaker 2:You know, networking comes in a lot of different forms and ways but for so many years we were just head down small company just getting the work done and like, not focused on building relationships. We were just so busy and didn't have that capacity. And in the last few years, you know, going to events and networking whether it's planning meetings in your local municipality, joining different groups within the community, builders associations, the Modular Building Institute the events that you all put on have been huge and just networking with others in the industry and other partners that can help us grow our services and our team. So I think just really getting out there and bumping shoulders with people and it's I always say it's like kind of playing the long game, like networking isn't just going to get you a sale or get you a bill right away, but that referral and repeat customer getting your name out there, and it really takes just getting a project off the ground and kind of a case study to understand, to be able to go out and show people what you're capable of and your product is huge.
Speaker 2:And the last thing I'd say is always be focused on the value that you can bring to the developer. You have to put yourself in their shoes and understand their frustrations and concerns and be able to confidently answer that and concerns and be able to confidently answer that. So we always look at it through the lens. What can we be doing to bring value to our customers and developers? And if you approach it that way, with high integrity and transparency, you're going to build relationships with developers that are going to last and keep that pipeline filled, which is what we're all trying to do. Is as controlled as modular is. That's one of the hard things is like. Keeping the facility full and having those projects and I truly think it's going to be repeat and referral and not so much focus on just getting organic sales in but doing the next project with these folks that you've done successful projects with.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much, travis. I really appreciate your time today. I can't wait to see the completion of this project you're working on. Congratulations again. 75 units is no small task.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:And you know. Thanks again. This is. This has been a great conversation. I appreciate it, thank you.
Speaker 2:John Really enjoyed being on here with you.
Speaker 1:My name is John McMullen. This has been another episode of Inside Modular, the podcast of commercial modular construction. Until next time.