Driving Our Economy Forward: Wind River Built
CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF) — Wind River Built recently announced a new $15 million dollar expansion.
The locally owned company designs tiny and modular homes. Tonight we are taking a closer look at the newly expanded facility at the Cleveland Bradley industrial park in tonights, Driving Our Economy Forward.
“This is a big day for the Wind River Built team as well as for our community. 1, 2, 3!!!”
“I started the company after building a tiny home for my wife and I to move into after we got married. That’s how this all started. I read an article about the tiny house movement. It took about a year building that for my wife and I, and by the end of it, my business partner Caleb and another friend of ours, we joined forces and uh started Wind River in 2014. In 2018 we moved into our first 10,000 ft facility just down the road and we had anywhere from 18 to 25 employees. At the beginning of this year we had about 50 and we currently have 110. In 2012 is when we decided to start looking for property to build this facility, said Travis Pyke, CEO and Chief Design Officer of Wind River Built.
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“We try to do things a little bit differently here. Our people are important. Without our people we wouldn’t be where we’re at right now. So try to be in tune to their to their needs and and um different aspects of what what they need to be successful in their jobs. Not just in their jobs but in life in general,” said Brandon Otis, Manufacturing Supervisor of Wind River Built.
“So in 10 years we’ve built about 120 115 to 120 Park Model tiny homes so the ones on wheels, and less than 12 months we’ll build 105 modular units. Most people aren’t looking to live in it the rest of their lives it’s more for us it was a stepping stone. We feel like more and more people looking for a home are looking for something intentionally designed quality built, not how much square foot can I get. You know the most paying for my buck. It’s people want to spend time outside of their homes or they really only spend time in certain parts of their home. There’s not really many developers and home builders that are building small small homes small footprint homes. You probably heard the missing middle it’s the it’s those looking for their first home. Um you know under 2,000 ft maybe 1,000 to, 1500 ft intentionally designed uh quality built. Here we can we can build them off-site really high quality cause it’s in a controlled environment. And then we can send them out on site to get put on foundations um so that’s when we started kind of looking into modular that’s where it made sense to to grow the company. But we believe here at Wind River Built um that we that we build the highest quality um intentionally designed homes. Both Park Model tiny homes that are on wheels um or modular homes that can be set on a a foundation and be um a real home. From start to
finish we have a really unique customer experience all the way through. We’re with you from design building it and delivering it so I feel like that’s what makes us different is um we’re obsessive with quality like we will not put out anything that we would live in ourselves so the customer experience and the quality I know it sounds cliche but um that’s that’s what makes working with Wind River a really special experience,” said Pyke.
