Wow. Just wow. We look back at 2012, amazed at our good fortune. The Colorado Yurt Company has much to brag about, and much gratitude.
The year started with some changes in our company culture. We were growing, but our production and management styles were still rooted in our free-spirited roots. In early 2012, we made a significant step- hiring a very innovative and skilled production manager, Doug Severson. Doug previously worked at Chaco, instituting efficient and leading edge production techniques. We were incredibly fortunate to have him join our crew. His arrival was just in time to start one of our biggest orders to date…
Doug Severson
…Coachella. For non-hipsters out there, we might need to elaborate. Coachella Music Festival is THE big event in California every spring; two full weekends packed with bands like “Florence and the Machine” and “Radiohead”. There’s onsite camping in tipis and safari-style tents. In February and March, our crew made 200 tents and 100 tipis to ship to Indio, CA. It was a huge undertaking- but we shipped with a couple days to spare.
Tipis at Coachella Music Festival
It’s been a media year-we were on television in a big way. Late last spring, a crew from Colorado Yurt Company took three 20’ yurts to California for the filming of HGTV DesignStar (an interior design competition reality show). Three finalists were challenged to design a bedroom yurt. We were excited to see the show in July- and were very opinionated about the judging (Hillari was ROBBED!). That night, our website had the most gigantic spike in hits we’ve ever seen. The next few weeks, we had many people call to ask questions and order our catalogue. It went a long way toward answering the question: “What’s a yurt?”.
HGTV DesignStar
In late 2011, we had three days with the crew of “How it’s Made”. They filmed production of tipis and yurts for segments we thought would air in early 2012. The post-production took longer than anticipated, and we just recently saw the tipi episode. The yurt episode will air on December 30th (10:00pm Eastern on Science). It has been an honor to be associated with this fine program- and it will be seen by lots of yurt/tipi-curious folks around the world.
Colorado Yurt crew and How It’s Made crew.
We had some unique orders this year, including yurts for a private resort in Greece. We sent a group of eleven painted tipis to a Native tribe in Quebec, tents to new camping resorts in Kentucky and France and structures to wonderful summer camp customers. There are new yurts at ski areas, continuing the trend of quick and affordable structures on the slopes. We made individual customers’ dreams of a yurt, tipi or tent become reality, and our facebook page and email in-boxes have been full of stories.
Tipis in Quebec
We asked for feedback this year via a customer survey. Results were overwhelmingly positive, but we did learn a few places where we can improve. We hope to debut new pitching guides and some improvements in other services, thanks to our amazing customers.
It has been a year of excitement and changes. One thing that hasn’t changed is the quality of our staff. We have the most dedicated and talented folks that walk through our door every work day to make this an awesome company. We’re all looking forward to 2013 and the challenges it will bring. We already have work lined up, and we are anticipating another year to remember.
Thanks to all of you for your interest in our company.