If you follow us, you should know Avrame is all about A-frame kit homes and self-building.
We like simple things and our offer is simple:
- a line of 12 A-frame house kits in various sizes
- two (for now) PDF Guides to help you building your prefab home, whether it is an A-frame or not.
Over time, we’ve received very positive feedback about our houses and our two digital products.
However, despite the 95% of our audience being super happy with what we do, there is a 5% which is whining and moaning about a number of things they’d like we’d do differently.
In this article, I want to address their concerns and make clear why we do what we do the way we do.
These are the main topics of concern:
- why don’t we deliver turnkey houses?
- we do we ask money for our Self-building Guides?
- why did we introduce a Classic line?
About Turnkey Houses
Several people asked why we offer kits only and why don’t we build them a turnkey house instead.
We do understand that getting a turnkey home is way easier for the customer, however, this does not go well with our philosophy.
We want people to build houses they can really afford and we know that the only way to do that is to take control of the management of the project… and maybe do some of the work yourself.
Getting your house turnkey from a construction company is expensive and we do not want to be part of that economy.
Another reason why we decided to avoid turnkey houses is that we want to reach and impact as many people as possible.
Focusing on making excellent house kits brought us in the position to serve a lot of people with a unique product. The result is that Avrame homes are now being built in every corner of the world… we have houses built (or going up) in Europe, US, Canada, Japan, South Korea… even on small islands where no other prefab company has ever built before.
All this would not be possible if we made the choice to serve our customers with turnkey houses.
In fact, building turnkey requires a large number of local and licensed specialists (architects, engineers, plumbers, electricians, concrete workers, …) and it would be impossible to partner up with those specialists all over the world.
If we were to offer turnkey houses we should localize our services to small areas and Avrame houses would become something that only a few families can take advantage of.
We very much prefer having and serving a thriving community of people who are passionate about A-frames and love the work we do, worldwide.
…by the way, thank you for being part of that community!
About Self-building Guides
Now, this is funny: some people have been complaining for having to pay to access our Self-building Guides.
In their opinion, that information should be free and we should educate our customers out of good will.
Well, in order to do that, I should be able to work in a free office, live in a free house and drive a free car that runs on free gasoline… but unfortunately, I have to pay for those things.
Those digital products are part of the way our business is structured and we cannot give them away for free.
If you were to go to your architect to dig out the same information, you would have to spend several hours with a specialist who charges you $100/hour…
Instead, with our guides, you get everything you need to know without even moving from your couch (and believe me, we know more about building houses than your architect does).
FREE??? >>> if anything we should charge more than the architect does 🙂
Besides the real value these Guides provide to our customers, the revenue coming from them pays for the very article you are reading now (and for the entire Tips section), for the YouTube videos and for other important stuff we are doing in the background to keep our operations running.
Fortunately, the majority of our audience gets it and we can keep doing the things you love.
As I write, the Budgeting Guide has sold nearly 200 copies and the 100 Questions Guide twice that number.
We are extremely grateful for all of you who got their copy and joined our closed Facebook group for customers only.
About Avrame Classic Line
We recently launched a Classic Line of kit homes, which characteristics are similar to our A-frames but they are not actually A-frames.
Some of our fans expressed their concern for this initiative, worrying that we might lose focus and deviate from the A-frame we are known for.
So, to reassure them that that is never going to happen, here is the backstage story of how the Classic Line came into being…
The main reason why we came up with this alternative to A-frame kits, is that in some areas of the world it is impossible to get building permission for an A-frame house due to its non-classical look or steep roof pitch.
So, with time, we ended up having a good number of potential customers who cannot build an A-frame but still want a house with the benefits of our kit homes.
They want things like:
- green materials
- minimum waste
- fast installation
- low maintenance
- very compact shipping
- affordable price
…they want an Avrame house that is not an A-frame.
This Classic Line is for them.
We are not promoting the Classic Line on our website and Avrame will always be “the A-frame Company”… just, we want to serve and help all those who trusted us, invested their time with us, maybe bought our Self-building Guides and then hit a wall when they saw their building application rejected.
Conclusion
Behind what we do here at Avrame (and how we do it) there are very sound reasons.
We do our best to share our vision with you guys, and to be transparent about every initiative we have.
We give away lots of free information, here on the Tips section of our website and on our YouTube channel.
…but kits and self-building guides have a price. Sorry about that.
No, actually I am not sorry.
Paid stuff is good because helps us understanding who is serious about starting the journey of building a house and who is just browsing around.
We are grateful for having you as part of our audience, YOU… who reached the end of this long post… YOU, who maybe haven’t stepped forward yet and you just need a little nudge to make your dream of a new home become a reality.
Everything we do, it is for YOU.