27: How to Get Your Van Converted Into a Camper in Just Six Weeks

So, you want to get a van converted? Many companies will quote you EXTENSIVE wait times, dashing your hopes of getting a campervan in time for the summer months.

Brady Severt is trying to change all that with his new company Gravity Vans, which will get you a converted van in just SIX WEEKS.

Check out Gravity Vans here: https://www.gravityvans.com/

And go here to see the full show notes with pictures of Brady's tiny house on wheels: https://www.thewaywardhome.com/episode27

Transcript

0:00

Hey there, this is Kristen Hayes with the wayward home.com, and I spend half the year in my camper van and half on my sailboat. And if you are listening to this and or watching it on YouTube, you might hear some loud sounds in the background cuz I am in a boatyard right now getting our boat ready to launch. So I apologize for that in advance. Um, but today I am speaking with Brady Sievert founder. Gravity Vans, where Brady's Company stands out from other van conversion companies is that their goal is to produce a camper van really quickly, and I'm really excited to be talking with him more about that. So Brady, thanks so much for, for coming on the Wayward Home Podcast. I'm really excited to talk to you about everything. Yeah, I'm excited as well. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us about what we're up to, chat about Gravity, vans and kind of the. Living in lifestyle. Totally. So first of all, I wanna hear a little more about your story. I know you've lived in, you know, a different types of, of tiny homes. So tell me a little bit about, about you. Yeah, I'd love you to give a little background. So my wife and I currently live full-time in our tiny house out in Boulder, and we've been ridiculously blessed to live on like 130 acre property, essentially staring right at the mountains. We get the flat irons and longs peak from bed. Um, but we had, you know, a bit of a process to get here. You know, it's like, it's easy to say like, here we are now and we love it and it's great. Um, It didn't come without some turbulence and a fun story. And so kind of where we started is that my wife and I grew up in Michigan, got, you know, good degrees out there. I got engineer degree and we were like, we had to move west and so we came west out to Boulder. I had a great medical device job out here doing corporate engineering work and outta nowhere. We had surprise company meeting. They said, you know, everybody in the break room. Now cancel it. Bring your neighbors. And in about 15 minutes we had like the corporate head of engineering, this is a, you know, 20,000 person company and they, they came in the back door and in 15 minutes they basically said this whole office has shut down all 120 of you hit the road, you're fired. Here's some severance, like best of luck. Um, so we had a very interesting start to moving to Boulder. and then about two months after that it was covid. And so here we are stranded looking for work. No one's hiring. We're sitting out here in Boulder looking for something to do. And at that point I had converted my, the back of my truck to be a camper setup. I'm pretty handy, have some engineering background, like I think I can do this more full-time. And so out of the blue I just start converting campers, you know, left and right from next door. And Facebook people, you know, messaging on there, Hey, I need some help, you know, within my electrical and I was just jumping on those posts, you know, I have like. My side hustle was actually on the side of my house. I had vans lined up. I'm kind of doing full-time work as a lot of people in this industry seem to get started. And from there it just kind of transitioned to like, I should probably do this a little more formally and like actually introduce some of my engineering skills and like, you know, take a real job out of this. So I worked in the van space for the last about three years doing kind of engineering and project manage. For a bunch of different companies, um, and had some great experiences scaling a couple businesses, helping them to get to, you know, over 200 vans a year. And as part of just being in that process, we decided like, why don't we do this? You know, we should be living this lifestyle and. You know, you wanna buy a home and in Boulder it's unbelievably expensive. And so the only affordable way to do it was we, you know, my wife and I had a conversation for about 10 minutes and next thing you know, we had ordered a trailer from Georgia and it was coming to get delivered to our, our neighborhood. And so, you know, we had an interesting start to the whole, then we ended up working on a tiny house throughout a. We've been living in it for a year and a half now, and been living the kind of the van life and living and breathing all of it, you know, in a professional sense and a personal sense for really the last three years. Very cool. So it sounds like, so do you also, so you have a converted van and a tiny house. Is that your current situation? So currently we actually have a converted truck and we're trying to roll that into a van because what we've learned in life is it's really hard to go backwards in amenities. You know, like we used to love camping so much and then we got a truck set up and now we camp a lot less. We just spend our time, you know, living out of the truck in the, on the weekends. And now that we've been in the van space for so long, it's kinda like we could have radiant floor heat in a van. or our little propane stove in the truck. So like we're now trying to upgrade that as well. That's so true. About, you know, you can't really go backward cuz we actually started in a Prius, went to an astro and now we have a sprinter van, which we're DIYing and it just seems so huge, you know, I'm like, I can't go back to like a small van or a Prius. So it is, you can use, yeah. And I'm sure Yeah. And at the time I'm sure you loved the Prius and figured like, oh, this is the best thing we could ever have. And then you stuff up one little step and. Man, that was terrible. Why? Why do we do, why do we do the Prius thing? We should get a van Exactly. So, yeah. For you, what appeal does, does the, the van have, like you said, the radiant heat, but what, what are some other aspects that a van has like over your, uh, truck, you know, camper setup? Oh, that, that's a great question. And so what, what we try to focus on at Gravity Vans is installing all, all the comforts of home. You know, like when you set out for a weekend or set out for full-time living, you know, do you have everything that you need? Like does it feel like this is just, you know, normal daily life? And so we make sure we have. Great HVAC systems, whether it be forest air, heat, radiant floor heat. We have air conditioning in all of our units, you know, hidden showers that our big focus is that you know so many people having worked in the van space for a few years, Everyone wants a shower. Like you think, you know, I, I need this because everywhere else you've lived has a shower and then you get in the van and it takes up all this space and you realize like, I'm showering less cuz I'm on the road. I've got limited water capacity and I don't really need it as much. And so we put like hidden stainless steel showers in, in a bench. That way you have many and, and you need to shower. You can do that inside. Internally it's great, but also you put the lid on the bench, it's a great comfortable couch, and then you're not taking up all the space. So we try to make sure that all the systems are in there, whether that be the plumbing or the electrical, that the second you leave for the, on the road, you're, you're already at home. Yeah. And I, uh, I'm also so curious about your tiny house, cuz that's something that I'm dreaming about one day as well. There's just so many varieties of tiny homes to live in from, you know, vans and trucks and boats and tiny homes like you have. So is your house like a tiny house on wheels or, or what's it like? Yeah, that is a good follow up cuz there, there are so many different versions and we took kind of an interesting approach. So we have a tiny house on wheels and it's a cargo enclosed trailer, so it's really just a big black box. And when you look at it from the outside, it hardly looks like a tiny house. And part of the reason we went that route is that we had an interesting use case and like in engineer. You, you kind of created a use and say like, you know, what are the functions we want to achieve? And one of the things we wanted to achieve with our house was we wanted it to go 75 miles an hour and we wanted to be able to, you know, pick up and go, you know, at the drop of a hat. And at this point, like we could probably leave in 45 minutes so we could move anywhere in America and under an hour. And so we. You know, to, to fit that need. We got a cargo enclosed trailer that essentially you can pull a car in that when we bought it, we pull the friend Subaru in there, took it around the block just to make sure like, Hey, this thing works. And that saved us a lot of time and money on like fabricating the outside. And you, you have the shell. So all we had to do was then work inwards. So that became a great use for exactly what we need. That's so interesting. So it's not like a traditional, like tiny, tiny home on wheels that people might imagine. It sounds like it's a whole reimagined, uh, project of yours. Exactly. And so it still has like all the comforts of home on the inside. And you know, we butcher block countertops and it's a great stuff, but on the outside it really just looks like a cargo trailer. And it also makes it a lot easier to park places too, cuz it's, uh, a lot less suspicious than, you know, a two story cedar shake tiny house that you kind, kind of envision when you hear the word tiny house. Yeah, for sure. And so how, how big, how big is it? How, how long is. So it is, it's 30 feet long and we were fortunate to get taller ceilings on the inside. So I'm six foot four and I was like, I'm not gonna be hunched over every day. And so we actually still have eight foot ceilings on the inside of our trailer. Wow. This is so cool. I'll have to get pictures, um, from you and put it on in the, uh, the website, uh, show notes of this so people can come in and see your, your tiny house. Cause it sounds really cool. Yeah. We'll have to send some along. It's, it's a different kind of take on. you know the norm of what you hear when you have tiny house. Yeah, I love that. And have you guys mostly been in Boulder with it or have you moved around with it quite a bit? We wanted to move around with it, but then we ended up just being pretty stationary. It's like we lucked out with good jobs here. My wife is an elementary school teacher, so she teaches special ed here for K through five. and we're, we're not too far from our school and we found this beautiful property. So we had these dreams of like, we're gonna drive all over. And then we've just been settled for a while. But the benefit of owning a great asset is that you get to continue to have it for a while. And so, you know, at some point we like to. We would wanna get back kind of into more nomadic living, but right now we're comfortably stationary and loving that we have reduced rent because of it. Very true. Yeah. So tell me more about your company, gravity Vans. We touched on it a little bit, but what type of operation is this? Do you have like a huge warehouse where you're building vans or like describe it to us? Yeah, happy to jump into it. And so what we, what we're doing at Gravity Vans is that, You know, been in the engineering space, um, for about three years, kind of like I had said before in the van space, and watched a bunch of companies succeed and scale and grow in different ways. Um, but I just love growth and progression. And one big thing about. That is like, you see this pain point throughout the van industry of like, these builds are taking months. You know, hey, we have, you know, a six month schedule, you can't get on it for six months and then it's gonna take us, you know, six to eight months to get your build kicked out. And just to see that inefficiency in so many places really inspired me of like, Why does it take so long? And so we've really focused on, you know, improving the engineering, improving like the non-sexy things, the manufacturing process. You know, how can we assemble cabinetry quicker? And so I started Gravity Vans with that focus of, you know, how can we turn a van in six weeks or less? And so at the moment, we're still a small operation. Uh, this, uh, today it's just me and I've got a small shop space looking to do some hiring here, coming into the spring and summer and expanding pretty quickly. Um, but we're able to do a lot of the work we do even out of a small space, um, cuz we leverage digital fabrication. So are, are you familiar with what that means? No. Tell us more about that. Yeah, I'd be happy to. It's kind of a, a techy term to hear. And so what digital fabrication is, is essentially leveraging robots and c n c machinery so you can do all the programming on your computer. We have these beautiful 3D photo photorealistic designs online, and so we can design everything, you know, to the millimeter in a van. and then send it over to ma a machine. And it cuts all of our framing. It cuts all the cabinetry. And the way we're able to kind of achieve those efficiencies is by, if you have robots do it, it comes out the same every time and they essentially spit out Legos for adults. And so you grab all your parts off the machine, follow some simple instructions, and all of a sudden, boom, you've got a van about three weeks. That's so interesting. So do you think that some of the lag time these other companies face is just the human effort that goes into manufacturing all these minuscule parts all over a van? There's a lot of that. Um, certainly with the assembly process, it's very labor intensive. So we attempt to, you know, how do we minimize the labor in a van? But one of the other ways that our business is kind of able to achieve this speed is that we try to offer, you know, semi custom packages that we're not a full custom fabricator. And that's what a lot of these companies are. And there's a design time and you know, back and forth meetings that we try to make it sweet and simple. So, Business proposition is we're a B Y O V conversion company where you bring your van to us, we'll convert it in six weeks or less. And as part of that, you get to choose a couple options. We have, you know, a few layouts, whether it's, you know, an adventure layout or a work from home layout, and you choose your layout. Choose some optional upgrades and then you can kind of choose your interior aesthetics. And because we have standardized layouts, we're able to repeatedly, you know, make the same thing at high quality and high speed time and time again. So that's part of the efficiency is that we're not doing full custom from the ground up. That's what I was wondering is like all the custom, just so much back and forth goes into it and then, you know, so much planning and is, I mean, is there really a benefit to, to doing something so custom when you can just do kind of a plug and play model like you have and it probably has all the comforts of home a person would need. Yeah, and I think there, there's certainly tradeoffs, you know, some people have these grandiose ideas and they want their genuine, one of a kind van. Um, and the custom route is perfect for them, but you have to recognize that comes with, you know, more time and more expense to make that happen. Whereas having worked in the van space for three years, you know, I've helped. Really over about 150 vans in the last two years, kind of through the design and manufacturing process. And what we find is people kind of want the same thing. You know, most of the time there's a few layouts you choose from. Everybody really wants a sink. You know, if you get a hidden shower in there that, you know, we feel if we offer these standard packages, We can offer, you know, most of what people want in a custom route, but if it's cheaper and quicker, you know, it's a mu it's a much simpler process to go than, you know, waiting over a year for your van. Yeah, very true. And so have you been achieving your goal of the six week, uh, turnaround? So far we have been, we've been pretty pleased with the production that we, at some point we actually wanna reduce it even less than six weeks. We'd love to get to a point of, you know, under a month. Um, but as part of growing and scaling a business, you kind of have to add some padding in there to leave room for hiring and leave room for shop expansion and some of the admin work too that takes place. Yeah. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges I'd imagine getting like a huge enough shop space might be complicated and all those machinery parts that you're using to manufacture the van. Yeah, that's definitely a trick too is that we're trying to grow and scale hopefully to, you know, 4,000, four to 6,000 square feet here pretty soon. And in Boulder it's, it's tough to find those kind of shops, so that's definitely a challenge. and also just trying to grow a customer base. Like I think so often people have this mentality like building a business, you know, if you build it, they will come. And we've spent a lot of time doing that, you know, getting legal contracts in place and liability insurance and how to, how to get the, you know, foundation of a business in there. and now we're ready to go. And now it's kinda like we gotta start doing more marketing, get more customers to come. And I'm sure you've experienced that with Wayward Home and it was kind of neat to hear your story that, you know, you worked so hard for so long and you know, you really bear the fruit of your labor. Mm-hmm. often quite a bit further after that start point. Yeah. Yeah. So true. Building a business is a work in progress always. And it does take so much time and effort, but once you get it established, it's an amazing, beautiful thing. So but it does take time, as you say. So, it seems like there's so many van conversion companies popping up, you know, every which way I look. There's a new van conversion company. Is it hard to like, stand out from all these companies out there? I think that's a, a massive kind of issue for, for young businesses in the advanced space today that I think the secret is finding some way to differentiate yourself, you know, whether that's through your personality or your product offering, or, you know, we're attempting to do things quicker than almost anybody else, and that's kind of our, our main value proposition. That I really feel for a lot of these young builders that, you know, you have the experience and you have the knowledge. Um, you just kinda have to find your place in the market. And I think it'll be really interesting to see how the van space either expands or contracts in the coming years. Cuz if you look at the RV market, they've been around for, you know, 50 to 70 years and. There's kind of like four main manufacturers, and right now in the US there's hundreds of van conversion companies, mom and pop shops. And I think how that makes it great is you get this unique, you know, personalized touch that somebody's actually caring for. You know, each brushstroke of painting or each installation of, of whatever they're doing. And so I think the great part of the van industry right now is with all these small shops, you get some more personalized, um, touches in your van and you get a better personal experience. You know, when you go to buy it. That's, that's very true. And I'm sure also with like the hundreds of conversion companies, there's also like quality issues that people need to sort out. And I'm guessing that that's probably kind of hard like, like I know you've worked with a lot of companies, but like what advice would you give people looking for a company on figuring out are they legit, are they building good vans? Like how do you even know. Yeah, I think a big thing to me, my suggestion for anyone listening to this is, you know, call that company, send them some emails, get to know them a bit and understand, you know, what their process is and what materials they use. Because that's a big thing that we use at Gravity Vans to differentiate ourselves is that we use premium quality, everything. You know, our, our cabinet. It's custom made, but it's made out of Baltic birch plywood, which is way more durable. We always use, we laminate everything instead of painting. And that's, you know, another thing that most of these companies, they paint and that will wear down with time. Where the benefit of laminate is, it's far more durable, easy to clean, it's scratch and scuff resistant. And so I think it's very easy, you know, this day and age to see a clean Instagram photo and say, man, they must do incredible work. Beginning to kind of know the background of what electrical components they're putting in there, you know, what their cabinetry is like, take some time and due diligence. And so it's tough as a buyer cuz you just want to go and be excited about it. But I would definitely suggest, you know, take your time, you know, call around, do a little bit of research to know what should I expect, you know, in this van before you jump. You know, any builder you see online. Totally. And it's not like you can just go and you know, tour every vans that these companies are making, but they are available at some like trade shows like Adventure Van Expo or Overland Expo. You can go look through some vans as well. So that could be possibly an option for people. Yeah. So if you're gonna, if you want to go check'em out, come check us out. We will be at the Adventure Van Expos and, um, Overland Expos throughout this spring and summer, whether that be in, you know, Arizona, Colorado, kind of all over the us. We've got a bit of a summer tour if you wanna come see our vans in person. Oh, cool. Where are you gonna be anywhere else besides those two event? Um, so tho they, both of those, um, expo organizations have multiple events. So we will kind of be all over. We'll be at like the Sonoma version. We're hoping to be in Hood River. We're hoping to be in Colorado. So, you know, get on the calendar of, you know, adventure Van Expo and um, Overland Expo, and you can, you can find us at each of. Very cool. And I'll also link to those in the show notes. People can go on there and, and look at what dates, um, those events are. Cause I've been to the Adventure Van Expo in Hood River and it's really fun and I would encourage anybody, you know, looking at vans or van conversion companies to go to that. I think they're very educational and just fun to interact with all the different van enthusiasts. So hopefully I'll see you at one of those this summer. Yeah, that would be great. It'd be nice to meet in person. Yeah. Cool. So what types of vans, um, do you guys, do you guys convert? We work on the main three, so ProMasters, Ford Transits, and um, Mercedes Sprinter Vans. Our primary focus right now is on ProMasters and Transits. Um, mostly on the basis of I've helped convert over 150 essentially of those types. And so we have a lot more familiarity with what goes on in the van and we're, we're slowly working more into sprinters as. There's a lot of people that also do sprinters, so we're trying to focus more on these other builds that, you know, are less known from other companies that we wanna serve. All parts of the market, not just the sprinter vans. Totally. And are you guys, um, working on the new Ford Transit Trail, what are your thoughts on that van? I think it's a fantastic fan that you get some more of the functionalities that you see. A lot of these, you know, other conversion companies add on, you know, whether that's the, the better suspension kit or the tires. It's great that they're trying to serve that market and I'm hoping that some of these other companies, you know, whether it be Ram. Or Mercedes start to recognize that a lot of these people buying these vans don't want'em for just cargo use. They want'em for outdoor living. And how can we cater our product to that? Because at the end of the day, um, if we can get the manufacturers supporting, you know, this industry more, it's gonna be cheaper for the customer than for us to add a suspension kit or for us to add extra windows to your van that you know, me as an individual, we make, you know. If it's 10 or 30 or 50 vans a year, these large manufacturers are making tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. And so it's always cheaper for them to put those options in there. So I'm really excited to see Ford, you know, unveiling and kind of serving this nomadic living van life market. Um, specifically, Very cool. And yeah. What do you thinks gonna happen with the, the van industry? I know it had a huge boom during Covid and it might have chilled out just a little. I I've heard that from some people. I don't know if that's, if you've seen that, but what do you think's going to happen in the future? I, I don't know. I'm not a future predictor. I would like to think I have, you know, a guesstimate or, but I don't even know if I'd say I have a beat on it, but, I think if you look at the overall RV market and the RV industry, uh, vans and Class B, you know, RVs are, are very small space of the overall market. And so whether or not, you know, van life as a trend keeps taking off or more people are excited about. Living. I think there's also gonna be a subset of people who have been living the RV life or you know, have a class a motor home that realize, wow, like I now get all the amenities in a smaller space that's more versatile and more mobile. So I would like to think that the van industry, you know, really has a long ways to go. Um, and in addition to that, like I think there's different ways you can branch out beyond just the stereotypical adventure vans. One of the goals for our business is to expand into different markets, whether it be mobile businesses and offering mobile hair salons or mobile tanning solutions or, you know, something I'm personally very passionate about is like healthcare. You know, I used to work for a medical device company providing great solutions to people that, you know, I believe that the van is a just a vessel. You. Like anything else, like a cracker, you know, you put it in hummus, you put it in cheese dip, you have all these great options for it. And right now people are mostly using vans for just adventuring. And I'd love to serve people in rural areas with, you know, a mobile medical clinic. You know, how can we serve people in areas like we have the van and we have the production capability to convert the inside. Some people want a bed and other people need, you know, an an inspection chair to have their doctor look at them. Oh wow, you have so many cool ideas. Hopefully we'll see those come to fruition in the next couple years. That's, that's so awesome. So, yeah. Um, let me think. Cause you said you had an adventure package and a lot of people are doing the adventure Van kind of build out. What does your Van Mobile office, um, package look? That's a really good question since we're hoping to unveil it here in a couple weeks. So we have a foundational layout right now, and we're rolling out three or four more layouts here in the coming weeks. And so with the work from home, um, we're looking at a raising and lowering desk so you can be sited. Seated, um, you know, or standing, cuz if you're trying to work full-time in your van, you want to have some of those ergonomics not just stuck to an uncomfortable bench seat. Um, we're looking at doing dual monitors as well. Um, so that way if you're really working in finance or anything else, you, you really need those screens to be productive. Um, and then just some of the regular amenities of a vehicle. You know, still having the bed in there, still having a hidden shower so that you can have life on the road, but you can also have an efficient workplace setup. So the big things are the monitors, the desk, and then, you know, mobile internet, whether that's through we Boost or starlink. Very cool. And so you're unveiling these next layouts, um, in the. Yeah, very soon in the coming week. So we've been working on these designs, um, for a while. That, you know, in the six week model, we have to have it tried true prototyped and r and d before we release it. Otherwise, you know, if we say, Hey, come check this out in six weeks and it's the first time we're doing it, um, we'd be much slower at that. Very true. So if someone wants to work with you guys, how, what's this process and what should they do? Yeah. Um, we're pretty easy to get ahold of. We like to make it very clear and transparent. Our pricing's all online. You can walk, walk through a little form builder that you can select your vehicle, select your package, select your options, and ha get a final price. And so the easiest way, um, to get on our schedule is just either reach out via email or give us a call. Everything's on our site@gravityvans.com and we'll be happy to plug you into the schedule cuz we. A good amount of availability here in the spring and we're starting to book out in the summer, but always looking for more builds. Cool. That's exciting. I love that people can actually see the, the price. Cause I've been to a lot of van conversion company websites and they give this huge range and it's like, but what is the price I like that you guys offer that. That's very important to me is that, you know, part of the, you know, streamlined building is we should have a, a hassle free process to get vans that, you know, by eliminating some of the options and saying, oh, you can choose 110 things in this van. We've, we've got about 10 or so choices. And so it makes it a lot easier to jump through the. You know, those decisions know exactly what each of those decisions cost, and then you can be satisfied at the end not knowing that there's hidden fees or you know, it's going to take, you know, another two months beyond what we forecasted that we want it to be simple and quick so that you, you know, get introduced to Gravity vans and six weeks later you're thrilled with your bill then out the door and you didn't have to waste any summer waiting for your. Very cool. So someone would just go out and, and purchase their van and maybe they could finance their van, do what they want, and then they bring that van to you guys. Right, exactly. So that's the crux of what we do, is that typically we do B Y O V conversions. Every now and again, we will purchase a van, kind of use it for some marketing use, and then go to sell it. And so at the moment we actually have a van for sale, um, listed up on our site. Offering kind of a specialty discount to anyone who's on Wayward Home Podcast listening to this right now, that if you are the first to come find the van, we're happy to give you a$2,000 discount on the list price. So if you're listening and looking, uh, hopefully you get to us first. that's a very cool offer. Oh, that's super exciting and I hope one of my listeners takes advantage of that. So that's very generous of you. Thank you. And yeah, definitely gonna get the podcast up quickly so people can jump on that You gotta, you gotta add some incentives there. You know, you make it fun, you know? Yeah. Totally. Cool. Well, yeah. Well, is there anything else that you wanted to add that, that we missed? Uh, not a lot. I'm just very excited and kind of to be on the podcast and very excited to get to know you a little bit and really just see where Gravity Vans goes in hopes that, you know, we start building a big business that can serve other industries as well, beyond just the adventurers, but, you know, having a heart for those with, you know, rural medical needs. Very cool. Well, we'll be tracking your progress and putting all the links to gravity in the show notes, so hopefully someone will, you know, check you out and come to the expos this summer and all kinds of fun stuff on the calendar. So thanks so much for coming on and telling us about Gravity, that that was so fun. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having me out.