Just a few years ago, I wrote an article about a start-up
called Blu Homes and how they had to threaten Michelle Kaufmann with legal action to stop her from using the designs she had sold Blu Homes, especially the Breezehouse.
They had a factory in
for a short while before closing it and moving to the West Coast and setting up their
enterprise in an abandoned ship yard in Vallejo, CA. I know they weren’t building a ton of
homes at that time and from what I learned from vendors, they still aren’t
setting any records, but I digress.
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| The Blu Homes factory in Vallejo, Ca factory. |
Last year they apparently received a huge investment,
reported to be $60M +/-, telling people that is was to be used mostly for
marketing and promotion. For that kind of money, they could have bought
factories in the South, Northeast,
the Southwest and still had money left over. But they didn’t.
Instead, they went on a marketing spree the likes of which
the modular home industry hasn’t seen since the glory days of New World Homes,
which isn’t a factory, just a builder. If you follow Facebook, they promote
themselves more than Toll Brothers and
put together. Pictures of wine and cheese “Open Houses” and catered tours of the
Walker Zanger design gallery in NYC on Facebook along with YouTube and Twitter make their marketing
skills second to none in our industry. They have peddled their homes to more tree hugging, green and national news media than all the other modular factories in the US combined and still don’t have much to show for it.
Along with all this self promoting, I’ve begun noticing that
they are investing heavily in Google advertising with banners and logo boxes
showing up just about every time I search for something ‘modular’ or ‘prefab.’
These are very expensive and I guess it won’t take long for them to burn
through a portion of that investment money. I’ve decided to click on their
banner and logo every time it pops up and keep track of it. My goal is to help
them use a some of that $60M on trying to win me over to buy a Breezehouse or at
least get an invitation to their next wine and cheese party.
With their factory in
why are they shipping their homes 3,000 miles back to the East. Yes, I know
they fold (what is up with that anyway?) and can be shipped easily by common
carrier but why would someone pay that much for a home when there are factories
much closer, like Epoch Homes and Westchester Homes that could build a
non-folding home that actually has much more appeal for a small fraction of the cost
of a Blu Home.
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| Don’t tell me that Epoch or Westchester couldn’t have built this house instead of shipping it almost 3,000 miles |
Oh, wait a minute. The home they promoted with that
infamous wine and cheese party is a ‘model’ home. Another home they shipped
east was for a couple in
that must not have realized that there are other modular factories closer or
maybe they are related to someone at Blu Homes. That home had to have been $300 to
$400 a sq ft and could have been built for less than a $100 by an east coast
factory. My God, that couple could have bought a Clayton iHouse fully loaded with every option for
about $100K delivered and set up. Marketing!
Their website lists just about every house they have built
or are about to build and adding them up only brings you up to what a real
modular home factory builds in a month. In fact, I worked for several factories that could build that many in a week and without all that marketing effort!
They even supply an interactive map showing the approximately 30 homes they’ve built in the entire US so far. What is that? About 10 a year!
So what does little old Modcoach predict for Blu Homes?
Unless someone steps up and starts a sales effort to match their phenomenal
marketing efforts, they will become just another victim of an investor replacing the
owners with their own people and the company changing to look and act just like the other
modular (prefab on the west coast) factories.
Let’s hope that their future doesn’t rely on more of Walt
Disney’s nephews buying a Blu Home.
