Glamping is a huge business right now, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. There's a shit-load of money to be made by flogging your pods to glamping site owners. However, at some point, the market will become saturated and the orders won't be flying in so rapidly.
This doesn't necessarily mean you're doomed. The manufacturers who do the right things should be okay, but you may still want to protect your business by looking outside of the glamping sector when selling your pods. After all, glamping pods are highly versatile structures that don't have to be restricted to glamping sites.
Here are five ideas for selling your pods outside of the glamping market.
Garden Office
Garden offices have been hugely popular in recent times. The demand for a small room at the end of the garden has skyrocketed since working from home became the norm. And with a reported 45% of office workers willing to take a pay cut in order to continue working from home in the long-term, remote working doesn't seem like a trend that's going away after the pandemic. By selling your pods as places for busy office workers to be productive in their back gardens, your business could span two booming sectors.
We recently had a client come to us who wanted help designing and building his own garden office. After a few technical drawings and a bit of 3D rendering, we designed the frame seen above. He's now excited to get going using our frame, and we'll be keeping you updated as the build develops. Get in touch to see how we can help you design and build a dream garden office for you or your clients.
Sauna
Of course, selling your glamping pods as saunas will require more than just a name change. There will be loads of things you have to do to turn a standard pod into a cleansing (and extremely sweaty) hideaway. We won't tell you how to do it because, to be frank, we don't have a clue. The purpose of this blog post isn't to tell you what to do and how to do it; it's to light the touch paper and let you decide whether a particular idea might work for you. The only thing we'd strongly recommend is for you to speak to us about how our CNC-cut timber frames will speed up your rate of production, lower your costs and save you a load of hassle when you manufacture your pods.
Anyway, back to sweaty saunas. These could be used as a place to relax in a back garden, or they could be a unique selling point on a glamping site. There are plenty of selling opportunities, and it's perfectly possible to turn a pod/cabin into a sauna, as Estonian company Iglucraft have proved.
Garden Pub
Garden pubs were one of the stories of the lockdown summer, with many DIY-handy Brits knocking a few bits of wood together to build a place to drink in their back garden. If you've got experience in building glamping pods, you could take these personal watering holes to the next level by offering custom designs, attractive interiors and superior finishes. And, let's be honest, it would be a pretty fun project, wouldn't it?
Home Cinema
In a similar vein to the garden pub idea, a little cinema room at the bottom of the garden, with popcorn and cosy blankets galore, could be a hit with families with a bit of cash and lawn space to spare. Like the garden pub, this would probably be a completely bespoke offering, allowing for bigger margins than a standard glamping pod sale.
Catering Unit
Henley Hut Co have recently announced their Regatta range, which is a towable shepherd hut that they say can be used as a 'pizzeria, street food hut, coffee cabin, ice cream parlour or as a beautiful outside bar area'. We don't advise plonking a glamping pod on a trailer and calling it a catering van, but we do use the Regatta as an example of how glamping manufacturers can innovate and expand outside of the glamping market. Think outside the box.
Oh, and our frames speed up the shepherd hut manufacturing process as well. If you make shepherd huts, let's talk.
Final Words
As we said earlier, we're not telling you that you have to drop everything you're doing and start making these five structures. We're just throwing some ideas about that you might find interesting and that you think are worth a try. Then again, you might think they're all shit and never visit our page again. We wouldn't blame you.
Do you manufacture glamping pods, shepherd huts or any other form of glamping structure? Are you interested in speeding up your production process and lowering your costs with CNC-cut timber frames? Click here to find out more.