Episode 31 - Chris Jaussi, Zip Kit Homes

Update: 2022-06-01

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Prefab Review

Hi, my name is Michael Frank and this is the Prefab Pod presented by Prefab Review, where we interview leading people and companies in the prefab housing industry. Today, we're speaking with Chris Jaussi, the owner of Zip Kit Homes. Welcome, Chris. We're glad to have you here.

Zip Kit Homes

Thanks. Glad to be here.

Prefab Review

To start, can you tell me a bit about the history of Zip Kit Homes?

Zip Kit Homes

Yeah, sure. So, Zip Kit Homes. I've been a contractor most of my life. My dad is a contractor. So I grew up in the industry and went to college. I decided I never wanted to be in construction and somehow I ended up back in construction. So I've been a contractor for the name of our parent company - Timber Hawk Homes. I own that company, my wife and I. After the 2008 financial crisis, as a general contractor, we went from building close to 100 homes in 2008, and in 2009 we built like 2 or 3. So we had some factory space that we owned. And we weren't building anything, so it was basically out of desperation. I was like, "man, we've got to do something different because nobody's building any houses and you know we're going to end up bankrupt if we don't do something." At that time we said, "okay, let's try to figure out how to build more of the house in our factory space rather than onsite." And so that was 2009 and kind of started slowly. And we tried a number of different things. We tried modular. We tried panelized. We tried big panels, small panels, little houses, big houses So you know, for three or four years, it was a lot like throwing spaghetti at a wall and just kind of seeing what sticks. So it was a business that almost developed out of desperation caused by the 2008 financial crisis. So really 2009 to 2012 is when we really started going with Zip Kit homes.

Prefab Review

Got it. And are you still doing the contracting, like site work? Or are you now 100% in modular homes.

Zip Kit Homes

We're doing a hundred percent kit and modular. So no more site work. We've done it in the past and even somewhat recently. But now, not at all. We're just doing the modular and the kit homes.

Prefab Review

Cool. What's the scale of your business? Can share how many homes you are building a year?

Zip Kit Homes

Yeah, so I mean it depends. Last year, I think we built like 65 homes or something like that. This year, we'll probably do quite a few more because we're going to focus a little bit more on our small little zip pods. Which is a small 400 - 500 sqft. If we go with the smaller pods, I bet this year we'll do 100 to 125, or something like that.

Prefab Review

Cool, and I guess one of the things that I mentioned to you before which is interesting about you all. So our site's been around, I don't know, four or five years at this point. A few years at least, anyway. There are some companies where they had a couple of beautiful plans on their site. You know in 2019 or 2020 and now they still have the same you know, 5 beautiful plans on their site and it doesn't seem like a lot of their product offering has changed whereas, you all seem like you've done a lot of iterations both in terms of your actual products. But also kind of who you're selling to. Can you talk a little bit about that evolution?

Zip Kit Homes

Yeah. I mean, maybe those other companies are a lot smarter than we are because sometimes those evolutions aren't the best thing, you know? We've probably made too many switches and changes and evolutions. But so we started you know, 2009, '10, '11, and we've tried big really fancy modular homes and we found that we didn't really like doing that. Right now, and we didn't really plan on this but we've kind of ended up selling our kit homes more in really expensive areas and you know again, we didn't plan on doing that when we started the business but it just kind of turned out so that is really expensive, hard to build areas, we have a much bigger cost advantage. Or there's the bigger benefit of building it off-site in Southern Utah where we're located and so you know, probably one of our biggest areas been up in like Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Prefab Review

I was and would say we've actually heard from some people who have said that they built usually it's I don't know if it's Jackson Hole, but right, isn't one of the towns right outside Jackson Hole at least, we've heard of a couple of years going up.

Zip Kit Homes

Yeah, so right outside Jackson, you know, Victor and Drugs, Idaho is just over there. So in those areas, any kind of resort, ski resort, kind of remote areas, construction costs are like.

Prefab Review

Yeah, I think Driggs was the town that we've heard of a few. Yeah,

Zip Kit Homes

Crazy expensive. And because it's so expensive, there's a bigger cost advantage than if we're just sending it. You know in the same area where we're building, there really isn't that big of a cost advantage. So you know, just kind of by nature, that's the way our business has gone to selling our kit homes in kind of the high-end areas.

Prefab Review

Great.

Zip Kit Homes

And we have some really nice modern homes. You know, probably our style, I would say, is kind of the mountain modern style. So it's kind of yeah, it's modern, but it's you know, contemporary.

Prefab Review

That's how I describe you.

Zip Kit Homes

But sometimes it's got a lot of natural wood or metal or things like that. So it could fit in a ski resort, a mountain-type environment. But it's modern and that's kind of our style. So anyway, our panelized kit homes are one of our areas but you know we're kind of focused on the more expensive areas because that's where we can have