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Transcript

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 and sort of the adjacent industries. Today, we're speaking with David Latimer, the Ceo and founder of New Frontier Design. To start, David, can you tell me a little bit about the history of New Frontier and how you got into doing all this stuff?

New Frontier Design

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on the podcast. So way back in college, I studied literature and philosophy and always chose a lifestyle of adventure and travel and experience. Not any one career path. I was one of those creative types who had no idea what I wanted to do and I spent a lot of time meandering through different places and industries. I lived in New York for almost three years, in East Village. I worked in fashion primarily. I traveled around Europe backpacking by myself for about eight months before New York, right after college. And I got burned out of New York and moved to Africa, Uganda, and worked in an orphanage helping to expand and improve what they were doing in a village outside Kampala and then Chicago.  But yeah, a lot of travel in between all those places. And between that timeframe, so about six years ago, I don't have time because I don't even know how to measure time anymore. Around a decade ago, I moved back to Nashville. I was born and raised in Nashville. And at that point, I had, you know, worked in hospitality, worked in tech, started doing design-build for bars, restaurants, nightclubs in River North and a couple of other trendy areas in Chicago. I was in and out of construction. My first job in high school was working on a framing crew. So I've always been really drawn to self-reliance and autonomy and I love learning. So, I get bored easily and am just very curious and always trying to improve myself and learn new skills, ideas, and concepts. So when I moved back to Nashville, I had this opportunity to be a GM, director of ops for a restaurant that had all the ingredients of a real home run. It turned out to not be. That turned out to be a perfect example of what not to do and how not to do it and who not to do it with. Which is very painful but a very important learning opportunity. And it sent me into this really introspective time where I was like, “all right, I'm anxious. I don't like the work I'm doing. Why am I living this way? How can I change?” And I started, you know, an inward journey. And I learned about myself. You know, journaling meditating, reading all sorts of resources on entrepreneurship. And I hate this title, but you know, self-help, picking up new skills. And during that time, my dad does affordable housing in Nashville, he has the oldest nonprofit. It's over thirty years old. And he introduced me to tiny homes on wheels. He saw it as a very good solution for increasing affordable housing. Now I'd say it's a legitimate crisis, but affordable housing issues in Nashville. And you know, it's in Bimmick, across the country. And I instantly fell in love with the product. And I was like, “wait a minute. so this is something I can design architecturally and do interior styling and decor myself? I can build it myself? I can move it wherever I want to go? It's a mechanism for intentional living, meaning you have very finite constraints on what you can do, and so you’ve got to be really intentional about how you consume, what you consume, and they bring your principles and values of daily living into your daily living, right? So it really becomes a life of experience over the acquisition of stuff and status. You know, I haven't experienced anything outside of time. I'm not sure if any other person has. If we take more control of our time, we are able to control our experiences and our relationships, which to me, is what life's about. So it;s a roundabout way of saying, “when I decided I wanted to do this, my father and I built the first couple together.” I learned a lot with him and he really gave me my start. So I'm very indebted to him and grateful. And then I I started to branch out to my own company. The very first tiny house I designed, I built with my my former partner and still good friend, Zach Thomas. He is in Nashville. I got an opportunity to have to be on an HGTV show. So the very first one, a design built from scratch, was on this episode, and that just launched everything from there. You know, Architectural Digest and all sorts of very reputable media design-build construction outlets throughout the country and the world covered it. With a small team, we built the first one and then once demand grew, hired a team, and started of producing them in Nashville.

Prefab Review

No, that's great. So yes, let's get into that and then we'll come back and talk about the design, which I think is actually probably the most notable. But in terms of the teams thing, so you actually started by building the first 1 or 2 themselves and then you actually have like a factory of carpenters and people who are actually building these? Or do you now outsource that with some kind of partner factory or something?

New Frontier

Yeah, great question. So the first few like I said, was just me and a few friends. I mean, I have amazing friends and Nashville has a really cool maker community. It certainly did you know, ten to fifteen years ago. Like I said, once I got a few of those under my belt, and started getting the orders, I hired a team locally in Nashville and we started building in a production facility.

Prefab Review

Yeah, excuse me. Is a production facility just like a barn or a warehouse?

New Frontier

Actually, I'm on one of my friends' farms there. Yeah, it was essentially a smaller warehouse. We would, you know, get them all dried in inside and then move them outside to do a lot of finish work and whatnot.

Prefab Review

Yep.

New Frontier

Yeah, so had a team. I woul