Just escaped from a 15 year career in IT consultancy, our founder and Managing Director Jon experienced “unusual” tents for the first time at a story-telling festival on Dartmoor. He came away inspired and with a settled determination to own a yurt. Perhaps by investing in a couple of other “unusual” tents, a business could be started...

Springtime saw the delivery of the first “Stunning Tents” - a 16’ Yurt, a 16’ Tipi and an Ouled Nail. A home-made website, home-made A5 flyers, and a lot of legwork generated around 20 jobs in that first year. But it very quickly became clear that running a business based on small tents like these wasn’t going to be viable. So the search was on for something “unusual” but much bigger, and that’s when we came across a company in the far north of Sweden with an unpronounceable name (since renamed thankfully). At the end of 2004, an order for one Giant Hat was placed…

Bigger tents mean bigger events, and bigger events require a more sophisticated approach. So we engaged a brand designer to design our logo, our “look and feel” and our website. An enormous investment at the time, but perhaps the most important one we have ever made. Because the orders really started to come in then; we ended the season with six Giant Hats.

Time to consolidate a little. We added a few more, smaller tents to our range, but concentrated this year on having a “fully booked” season with the 6 Giant Hats. We also began to sell the entire range of Tentipi tents.

Adding more Giant Hats for the 2007 season, and the success of the sales business, meant that Jon could no longer lead every rental job himself, so we recruited our first Crew Chief. Another fully booked season ensued.

By the end of 2007 it started to become obvious that we needed to make another step up in terms of the size of events we could cater for; the limitations in linking Giant Hats meant that we couldn’t provide workable spaces for events above a couple of hundred people. So we made the decision to invest in two Saddlespan tents. Ultra modern, with a different feel to our other tents, and very definitely bigger they allowed us to create spaces up to 18 metres x 54 metres clearspan.

Yet more Giant Hats. Another Crew Chief. And the introduction of the Saddlespan tents. A very busy year.

And in the quiet season… Eureka! We developed and tested new techniques for linking the Giant Hats making it possible to build structures up to 30m wide and as long as you like. Whilst we were at it we designed and built tipi-coloured walkway and solid oak double doors to make an impressive entrance to the Giant Hats. Walkway and wooden doors transform the comfort of winter events, as well as improving the sophistication of tipi events generally, opening up new possibilities.

Our busiest year ever by a considerable margin, but unfortunately having to turn away a lot of Giant Hat business as we were fully booked. The Saddlespan was not going out that much, and we had “cracked” the bigger configurations, so it seemed an obvious move to sell the Saddlespan and invest in more Giant Hats. And that’s exactly what we have done.

October 2009 sees the launch of our completely redesigned website with stunning new photography as well as 3D animations and videos.

We will have more Giant Hats, another Crew Chief, and some new techniques to broaden the range of events for which tipis can cater. We’ll continue to innovate and push forwards the boundaries of what is possible. Watch this space …