New Fish House Manufacture

[fishingstar]

The biggest competition Ice Castle has is Gray Wolf, Ice cabin, Ice cave.

They are all built by Forest River they can buy in bulk they have the work force.

I have a camper made from them. questionable on the quality. 

[slammer]

Not to worry LRG.  You can pick on me all you want.  I guess I'm in the same thought pattern as Getanet,  a house is not a priority now.  I know quality cost $$$.  One thing that I think is crazy is the amount of new houses that are available for sale.  At what point does the market saturate?  How many of these houses financed for 120 months will be repoed or sold at a loss?  A fishouse in every driveway?  Seems like it.

 

I wonder how much longer some of these builders will be around?

[vtx1029]

As suggested I think you would be better off selling components and such for this industry. A kit would be a great idea IMO. As I'm building my house you run into things like bending and cutting sheetmetal. It seems every metal retailer needs to make their payroll on a shear or 2. There are plenty of pieces you could pick, improve upon and start a new market for yourself in the icehouse field. How about an adjustable weight distribution dolly, the ones on the market take all the tong weight off your wheeler where your going to want a 1/4 of the weight for traction. How about an affordable ramp door with door frame. It would be easy to make one or 2 sizes that you could jig weld up and still be profitable. I have yet to see anyone use a sealed bearing setup for axle pivots... 

[EricR]

On 10/24/2016 at 8:18 PM, BrittC said:

Thanks for the additional feedback guys. I'm up in the air if I could make this a go. I would want to do aluminum houses and by looking at what was out there I was thinking there is room for another manufacture. I currently have a Yetti and while it is a nice house it has very few options for customizing. Only tandem axle they had was a 21' and there are things I would want done but is not available through Yetti. I wasn't impressed with Firebrand when I looked at them. The one house I looked at I couldn't get a window shut as the window was not installed correctly. Custom cottage I would need to take a 2nd mortgage out. 

 

So have to do a little more brainstorming on this!

Where was this FireBrand located that you couldn't get the window to operate?  As always, I will disclose that I manage the finishing shop for FireBrand, so frankly, I find this hard to believe.   Granted, we do not install the windows, but operate them all when we do final cleaning...   Thanks - Eric

[Moon Lake Refuge]

Big issue you run into there is taking on blame for structural work.  Customer complains a frame is bent, window doesn't open etc...  Frame manufacture pushes back and says it weekend where you drilled a hole, or your paneling but to much strain on a window opening etc.  Not likely but could definitely come up.  And then you are potentially in a lawsuit with a company that is likely much larger than you if you're just starting up.  Plus I would imagine any manufacturers out there would void their warranty prior to letting another company finish their shell, especially if they already offer to finish them in house.  You may get some bites but I could see a long list of cost prohibiting issues coming up there.