MH Marketing Sales Management

by Kent Stichter

Nobody could be more fatigued than I am to hear the phrase, "Think outside the box." It has become such a cliché. That being said, nowhere does it make more sense than in the manufactured housing industry. Only in our industry can it be taken literally, since it is a box that defines, or confines, every design idea.

As a design professional in our industry for more than 20 years, I have been asked, or challenged, to find new home designs that are not simply variations on the last great selling home. With every design, the constraint or limit is always the size of the box. Is it narrow and short enough to be pulled down the highway and shorter than the lowest overpass or bridge? It is simply the limitation that everyone accepts. We have become more sophisticated in stacking the boxes and using new materials but the essence of what is designed must always fit in a box.

Much of the effort in design has been to make our homes look more like stick-built houses and most manufacturers have been successful in that effort. We have "broken the box" by varying the front elevations and no longer shy away from adding design features and bump-out rooms to disguise the fact that what shipped down the road from a factory was just what fit in a box. A crane is not the frightening thing that it was 10 years ago.

So what is the riddle? Can someone reading this article truly think outside the box and break free from the limits of the typical box and still ship the box? Can you solve the following manufactured housing design riddle:

The design concept for a 2000 square foot, 2-story Colonial home with a 10 ft first floor ceiling, 9 ft second floor ceiling, 10/12-roof pitch, and finished attic living space. Nothing unusual, so far. The finished home would look like thousands of factory built homes that have been built for many decades. The challenge is to fit the entire home on two carriers, no hinged roof, complete the plumbing and heating systems in the factory between floors, finish the attic living space in the factory and construct the entire home in only four boxes.