A cottage built in a controlled environment and shipped to the site?
Seems impossible! Actually, large objects like homes have been built in factories for decades—we affectionately know them as trailers, manufactured homes, modular homes, panelized homes, etc. It’s an industry that has its market niche and has proven to be an ideal way of producing homes year-round regardless of the time of year, with good quality, good price and good lead times. It’s a respected industry but has struggled with the limitations that come primarily with the constraints of transporting the product. How to get a 3 bedroom 2 bath home down the road shipping to anywhere cost effectively? Pretty tall order!
I don’t want that “Double-wide” look!
The problem with factory produced homes is that if you want it low priced it will need to be at least 90% completed before it leaves the factory or else you’ll be tagged with more expensive site setup costs. The goal is to produce as much of the house as possible back at the factory passing more of the cost savings of factory efficiencies on in the form of lower prices. This is where site built homes can’t compete because there is no way to setup onsite jigs to speed up repetitive tasks and prevent unfinished portions of the house from being subject to the elements…problems all solved in the controlled environment of the factory. So it’s great for quality that the product gets built in a factory, but people despise that “double-wide trailer” look…
Gingerbread homes are compact
This allows for practically the whole house to be shipped in one shipment, possibly two shipments depending on the options. But how? No one else seems to be able to do it so how come gingerbread homes can? Because of the small foot print and vertical nature of the cottage itself we can ship to almost anywhere!
All of the whimsical features of our cottages stay in tact
We aren’t constrained by the physical nature and size of the cottage to have to eliminate or minimize the cuteness of it, on the contrary, we welcome the opportunity to ship our cottages just like Amazon.com would—from our factory to your building site—its that easy!
Sears and Roebuck sold cottages by catalogue division from 1908-1940
70,000 were sold over a 33 year period very successfully. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company’s unwieldy, unprofitable building materials department. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. He is credited with suggesting to Richard Sears that the company assemble kits of all the parts needed and sell entire houses through mail order.
See link.
Today’s technology lends itself to doing more efficiently what mail ordering did 100 years ago.
With 3D CAD designed cottages, built in a controlled environment, gingerbread homes can produce cute, cozy “little is better” cottages without any constraints!