Who is David?

Meet David Fraser, Founder of Bunkie Life!

About Bunkie Life

Bunkies you can build in a kit.

Bunkie Life, a brand that creates tiny houses, works to create a world where families have a place to unite, unplug, and unwind. Bunkie Life’s kits offer extra space for families, no matter how large, to connect with the people who matter most to them.

David’s Journey

When David and his wife had their first child, the guest bedroom of their house became a nursery. After a while, his mother told him that she couldn’t sleep on the couch anymore. In response, David looked into multiple options, from building an addition to the house and looking at tiny home listings on Craigslist. Finally, he came up with the idea of a Bunkie, which is essentially a separate structure that can be set up in anyone’s backyard. 

David, his wife, and his father built the first prototype together in 2015. Then, David started renting out Airbnb Bunkies close to the countryside and they performed well. Not long after, people began asking if they could get a Bunkie for themself. 

In 2021, David and his wife were asked to appear on “Dragon’s Den” the Canadian version of “Shark Tank,” and the team began making a codified version in-house. After they pitched their business on “Dragon’s Den” they ended up buying their own factory.

The Bunkie Life Team

Bunkie Life has two separate wings of the business. On the production side, 18 team members create and design Bunkies in the factory. Twelve team members work on the brand side. One team member is based in Ottawa and another clocks in from the UK. Additionally, the team has a few agents who are based in the Philippines. Other team members are hybrid, where they come into the office every once in a while as needed.

“Our motto is, generally speaking, if you get your crap done, I don’t care where you do it from,” David says. “That’s always been my philosophy.”

The CX Philosophy at Bunkie Life

When it comes to CX, the Bunkie Life team tries to begin with the end in mind. The end, in their eyes, is that families build their Bunkie together and send a photo back to the company showing off their hard work. Whenever the team receives one of their customer’s family photos, it’s a win for them. To ensure that customers can arrive at that point, the team has created touchpoints along the customer journey. 

Furthermore, the team designed the Bunkie kit to make sure that they’re easy to build and anyone can use them. David hops on Zooms to chat with customers about any issues they may have, and the team has created enough online content that explains the building process for customers. Bunkie Life also offers a set of instructions and build manuals that preempt issues that customers may run into. 

“We just find if you can answer the question that [customers] don’t even know they’re about to have, that makes the whole journey of the customer experience so much smoother for everyone,” he says.

Evolving Customer Experience

During the first few years of the business, David and his team worked to improve their product as they improved the brand’s approach to customer experience. Through this, the team creates in-depth instruction manuals that are specific to each product. Now, when customers receive their Bunkie, they also get a small gift from the delivery driver. David says that those little touchpoints show that the brand cares for the customer journey. 

“It really helps a lot because there’s a lot with our product, especially, we’re not able to come on every single truck to every single state,” David says. “We have to really make sure that last touchpoint is a solid one too.”

Hiring New Members

The CX team at Bunkie Life is very lean. David’s wife is the main person that customers can speak to if they have a complex issue. The team also has a list of common issues that people run into, which serves as a knowledge base for the team to help customers. When new team members are hired, they build a Bunkie to understand what the experience is like. 

The CX team answers the phone from Monday to Saturday because people usually build their Bunkies over the weekend. Furthermore, the team encourages customers to call, and David has found that customer feedback helps the team continue to improve their customer instruction guides.

“There’s a saying in manufacturing,” he says. “It’s kind of like a snowball. If you get it at the top of the mountain, you can squash [customer problems] and it doesn’t become a larger snowball. If it doesn’t become a larger snowball, then it doesn’t become a medium avalanche… If you can catch those issues at the source, at the top of the hill and prevent them, they won’t become this big thing later.”

Bunkie Life’s Growth Strategies

Fostering Innovation

The Bunkie Life team makes each product in-house and has patents on some of the processes they’ve created over the years. Every year, the team includes the customers in various iterations of the products. The team makes sure to ask clients what they would like to see from the brand in the future. From there, they make incremental changes to continuously improve products. 

“Generally speaking, it’s just asking the client,” he says. “What do you guys want? What do you want to see more of? What do you wish was different? Then [we make] incremental improvements and iterations. If you look at what the current line-up is versus what it was five years ago, it looks like a dramatic change, but each year, it’s been relatively incremental.”

Boosting Revenue

Since the brand got its start in 2017, it has come from a bootstrap company to making $10 million per year. The team used marketing angles from early on that they’ve continued to improve every year, with one being a large promotional giveaway. Through the giveaway, the team gives away a Bunkie, but it’s an understatement of what the team does, David says. The giveaway is a contest that followers can participate in and earn points by completing various actions, like watching a livestream. The giveaway is the one of the  largest drivers of revenue for the team.

Peak Season Strategies

Because the brand is based in Ontario, the bulk of its business is in Canada. As the company grows into the states, David and his team want to make the purchasing cycle less cyclical. In the winter months, less customers purchase Bunkies because they don’t want to build in the snow. Otherwise, the team introduced the giveaway to mitigate customers’ purchasing cycle. In January, the team announces a big promotion, then prepares to fill the sales pipe for the spring, which helps the team buy lumber and get orders organized and ready for the spring season. This year is the first that Bunkie Life will seriously market in the U.S., so David and his team hopes to ship items into Texas, Florida, and California during the winter months. 

Elevating to the Next Level

In the future, the Bunkie Life wants to ship to all 50 states. Within the next year, the team wants to keep growing revenue and continue being a profitable company. Additionally, the bigger picture is to open up a manufacturing facility in the U.S., one that’s much bigger than the main factory in Canada.

The company has also given back to nonprofits and supported a good cause. Recently, the brand donated $250,000 towards the Ronald McDonald House because it aligns with the company’s mission to keep families together and support them. The company will serve 1,000 families this year, and looking forward, David hopes his company will be able to serve 15,000 families within eight years.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

David advises aspiring entrepreneurs to connect with customers. By checking in with them, business leaders can troubleshoot CX issues, solve problems, and improve the brand. Ensuring the customer journey is followed all the way through and checking in with the customer after they receive their package can give entrepreneurs great insight on how the customers respond to the company. 

“What can we do at the top of that whole journey to encourage [our customers]? What we’ve found is that if people have fully bought into the Bunkie Life thing and absorbed a lot of the material, they have a better experience,” David says. “It makes our lives easier because there are less complaints or less issues to solve but it’s a better experience for them.”