Question: The average American home is between 2000 and 2500 square feet in size. Jay Shafer's hand-crafted 89-square-foot house on wheels is so small he can almost parallel-park it. Ecological concerns have merged with an uncertain real estate market to give a big boost to the small-house movement, which promotes simple living in tiny spaces. A growing number of people are happily living in houses ranging from just 70 to 800 square feet, small enough to fit on a flatbed truck and pull into a field or farmstead. One of the pioneer builders of such tiny homes is the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, the brain child of Shafer, a 40-something professor-turned-designer who has lived in three of his own creations over the last several years. His young do-ityourself company, which was a one-person operation until just a year ago, builds and provides plans for several different models and sizes of tiny houses, with fully equipped but scaled-down kitchens and baths, windowed sleeping lofts under peaked roofs, front porches, and lots of ingenious storage space.
The houses are designed to hook up to public water and waste lines; many buyers use them as primary homes, but they can also serve as studios, guest rooms, weekend getaways, or home offices. Shafer was inspired to found the company about a dozen years ago, while teaching drawing at the University of Iowa. "I was living in an average-sized apartment and I realized I just didn't need so much space," he says. After a false start living in an uninsulated Airstream trailer, he decided to build his own 100-square-foot house from scratch, parking it on a friend's farm because minimumsize housing standards prevented him from putting it on a city lot. Not long after, Gregory Paul Johnson, a friend who later founded the Small House Society, asked Shafer to build him a similar home, and Tumbleweed Tiny House Company was born. Shafer and his company have been featured in This Old House magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, numerous public radio programs, and the Oprah Winfrey show.
He has sold more than a dozen homes and 50 sets of plans for the different models on view at his website; plans cost about $1,000 a set and the houses cost from $20,000 to $90,000 to build (the services of a professional contractor are recommended). Shafer also conducts workshops on tiny-house living, sometimes travels around the country with his house, and maintains a blog and active discussion board on his website. He has big plans for Tumbleweed, but rapid expansion doesn't fit his very personal business philosophy. "We are still in our infancy and still building our foundation for growth," he explains on his website. "We have a business plan that we are adhering to. Everything in due time." Among his future dreams are finding partners to represent Tumbleweed homes (real estate license required), partners to build them (licensed contractors only need apply), and makers of products like solar panels and lumber for incorporation into his homes (but nothing that would require redesigning any Tumbleweed products). In the long term, Shafer would even like to see a whole village of Tumbleweed homes, "even if it's just 3 houses." For now, though, like its products, Tumbleweed remains a small and very carefully built affair.23 For more information about this company, go to http://www .tumbleweedhouses.com.
1. Do you think Shafer's plan to grow his business slowly is a good one? Why or why not?
2. What economic and social factors do you think have aided Tumbleweed's success so far? Which might be potential challenges for the firm that Shafer should consider?
3. Do you think a company like Tumbleweed could go global? Why or why not?