Meet Dean Wiltshire of Colorado Teardrops

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dean Wiltshire.

Hi Dean, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My idea for starting Colorado Teardrops began while tent camping in Yellowstone in 2011 with my 11-year-old daughter, and all around the campsite were warning signs about bears. Very shortly after we left Yellowstone to continue our road trip through the west, the news shared a story that a bear had killed a camper in Yellowstone National Park. At that time, I was driving a Honda Crosstour, and wishing I had the safety of a light hardshell camper trailer to protect my daughter and myself.

That experience led me to create a teardrop trailer that was light enough to be pulled by a smaller crossover SUV/sedan such as my Honda or a Subaru. By 2014 I had created a teardrop camper trailer prototype, took my learnings from the prototype and created two more teardrop campers that were used as a rental fleet, so that I could get customer feedback, test the build quality, and also the demand for teardrop camper trailers in the state of Colorado.

People loved them and soon I was taking orders while implementing all the feedback I could get from the rental fleet. We have been continually improving the product, and even today we use the feedback and ideas from customers in the field to implement improvements.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The last 8 years have been full of challenges. In the early days, I remember being close to letting go of my employees and closing up the shop, but then an order would appear and throw me a lifeline.

Our customers started to evangelize for us, and the popularity of our models started to grow. One of our rental customers had an idea that if there was only room for the grandkids, they would all be able to adventure together. I pondered that and designed a larger trailer with two couches that converts into a bunkbed for a family of 4, that could still be pulled by a smaller tow vehicle. That is our most popular model today.

Living in Colorado, we are fortunate to be in the epicenter of camping. Covid provided unique challenges and brought benefits, as well. We were able to keep all of our employees through PPP loans, and to manage the spread of Covid throughout the company we separated employees into two work shifts, so that those who wanted to start the day early could, and those who preferred to work into the evening could work a different shift. That enabled us to keep a highly productive team healthy and employed.

With the pandemic, an incredible interest in camping and the outdoor industry in general exploded. Due to Covid we had many challenges with the supply chain and getting the materials we needed. Luckily, we have good relationships with our vendors and hardworking employees who managed to juggle vendors and find what we needed – but it wasn’t easy.

With the challenge of inflation, we have done our best to absorb price increases through manufacturing efficiencies while maintaining our high standards of quality on our teardrop campers at a similar price point. Many of those efficiencies that helped get us through the pandemic resulted from my early commitment to reinvesting into the company and our employees.

We’ve been impressed with Colorado Teardrops, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We specialize in making high-quality small camper trailers. We’ve designed and built our trailers to be very durable. We use traditional materials instead of plastics or fiberglass. They are built to last for generations, which is something we take great pride in.

We are disrupters and don’t do things the way they are done by the big manufacturers. We focus on a quality product that we can stand behind.

We have steered away from bottom-line, CFO driven cost-cutting measures and the reward incentives for saving incrementally at scale with cheaper parts and materials that ultimately results in lower-quality products. We run smart processes on our factory floor and use high quality materials to produce a teardrop trailer that is built to last generations.

Colorado Teardrop camper trailers are only available for sale at the factory. We don’t use a distributor network. By not supporting a separate distributor sales channel with their fees and commission structure, we can focus instead on putting those resources into producing a higher-quality product.

More importantly, by not using a dealer, we meet our customers directly and build relationships with them, which is an incredible opportunity to continually improve our product from their input at three important customer contact points – presale, product pickup and follow-up service. By having these customer “touch points” we learn continually about what our customers are looking for and how to improve and evolve our products to changing consumer needs.

For example, we have patent pending status on camping trailers that can extend the range of an electric vehicle (EV) when towing. The trend is towards electrification of the auto industry and we want to make sure people can get out and camp in comfort, style, and safety in those types of vehicles.

We make the camping experience more comfortable and enjoyable so that our customers and their families can explore the natural world.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Being a business owner is fraught with risk. Over the years I have gotten better at managing the risk and associated stress. As a company, we have a group of employees that I think of as family that I care deeply for, and it is all of our livelihoods at stake. That is a lot of pressure at times. When things are not going as planned and stress is high, I’ve found that exercise, my experience at getting through tough times, and getting outside and recreating as much as possible in our teardrop trailers have all helped manage the stress.

I just try to use and enjoy our product as much as possible to remember why we created the most durable teardrop trailer – so that people can be outside enjoying the beauty of our state, or whatever state our customers are visiting or living in.

With respect to risk – in our 8 years as a company, we have doubled (2x) our space 4 separate times, to the point where we are now at 20,000 SF manufacturing facility with just under 50 employees.

The forecasting and cashflow planning for expanding into a new building was very risky. Our customer base and the economy have been kind to us.

And our risks so far have always worked out.

As we expand our product offering, we are about to take new risks. With the emergence of electric vehicles, and the impending electrification of the auto industry, we have expanded our product offering with camper trailers that are specifically designed for towing behind an electric vehicle to support adventure camping from electric vehicles.