Which company is the best American log home manufacturer? I’m playing with an idea of representing an American log home company here in Finland. I know this is tough market, because half of world’s biggest log home companies come from Finland. Still, I believe that American rustic log homes have a suitable and distinctive style, which is hard to imitate. Log cabin rental business is growing by leaps and bounds in Lapland and rental companies need specialties to compete efficiently.

AMERICAN LOG HOMES HAVE CHARACTER
That’s true, say what you will, but American log homes are one of a kind, bit like American cars – big, bulky, powerful and cool. Unfortunately, American car manufacturers are in a bit of a trouble, markets cry for efficient cars and companies can’t deliver. Let’s hope the log home industry understands to jump the energy efficiency bandwagon and doesn’t just lull itself into thinking that people will buy those dream log homes no matter what. I’m all for dreams but if we can’t afford them, then we just have to change our dreams. Anyway, back to the topic.

LOCAL FINNISH LOG HOUSE IN LAPLAND

log cabin home in Finnish Lapland

Now, here is a photo of competition. You will see this sort of new log homes and log cabins in ski resorts of Lapland. Good thing with this style is that it reads log home all over it. However, like most Finnish log homes, design is so Scandinavian that it starts to lack character. This kind of Scandinavian-styled log cabin will surely loose against rustic American log home. The victory prize is yet another happy family of overnight renters. So, any recommendations? Please, just type it down to comments.

Log cabin used to be a family affair in Finland. Everybody seemed to have that special log cabin somewhere on the countryside. Log cabins were self-built and maintained, big part of the fun being slate of chores needed to keep the cabin in shape. That has changed.

Nowadays the traditional approach on log cabins has stagnated and a new trend has overtaken the old way of spreading log homes to deep forests by lakes and rivers. Today the idea is to get a carefree vacation cabin that doesn’t need constant attention like log cabins used to need. Solution has been to focus on building new log cabins around skiing resorts. Around these resorts, cabins locate side by side, making it easy and profitable for service industry to take care of the cabins. Owners can forget maintenance and hit the slopes, go motor sledging, cross-country skiing etc.

levihusky

How this has changed the log cabin industry? Prices have rocketed. Skiing resorts are mostly in Finnish Lapland, which basically is galaxy far, far away, no matter from where you look at it. It is not possible to build and maintain the cabin anymore, because of the distance. Distance is also the reason, why these cabins would be empty most of the year. When we combine the high price of such resort log cabin home, the difficulty of visiting it, and the couple of weeks usage that any given log cabin has – we get log cabin rentals. More and more Finns rent their log cabins during the time they are not using cabins by themselves. The variety of log cabin rentals in Lapland, Finland is at all time high.

levivillage

All this is good news for travelers. When people visit skiing resorts in Finland they have much improved selection of accommodation, which in turn increases the volume of travelers. Finally increased traveler volume brings more possibilities for entrepreneurs, therefore services become more readily available. For now Lapland vacation log cabin sector is booming and there is slight bubble developing, but in the long term, prices will level off and Lapland’s tourism sector can enjoy steady flow of travelers.

levi

I got curious on what there is available on log mobile homes in the net. I made a search with Google like this “log mobile homes” and results were scarce only about 576 results. I started to wonder is it really so new an idea to have mobile home, which is made of logs?

In theory, the modular structure that log homes have makes it possible to put them into pieces and back together again – movable solution so to say. Difference with traditional mobile homes is that log mobile homes often stand alone from the ground, while traditional mobile homes have wheels under them at all times. This frequently gives difficulties for manufactured log home owners who want their log homes to be classified as log mobile homes.

So what about those search results? I found following results helpful:

http://www.house-uk.co.uk/
http://www.mobile-parkhomes.co.uk/

These two services seem to be most appropriate, however, looks like they belong under same umbrella, so no real competition between the two websites.

Rest of the sites that come up in the search are basically junk sites or then vaguely related like photographs or real estate sites that offer opportunities to own something. It appears that log mobile homes are really unique and new invention. Or maybe I should try to use different keywords. Maybe later.

Later is now (7th April 2006), slightly different view to log mobile homes comes in form of mobile log homes.

Japan is a good market for log home companies. Country has strong woodworking and artisan tradition, but past industrialization has stripped the country of most usable forests – usable in the sense of log home building. Nowadays, Japan is very much environment considerate and they know what devastating effects clear cutting over the mountains would have. Therefore they generally prefer to import log dwellings that fit to picturesque mountain scenery.

Many large log home manufacturers have been relying on Japanese sales for years. During the Asian economic crisis this reliance cause huge difficulties for many companies – sales plummeted. Future looks bright though, Japan is making strong economic comeback.

Some of the strongest players on this strengthening Japanese market come from Finland (amazingly). Americans have the longest business relationship with Japanese on the area of log homes, so their total volume is still hard to top. Finns have been able to shake the market because of their (or should I say our) log homes have that special Scandinavian design. Scandinavian design is notorious for its pulling power among Japanese consumers, and for that matter, among other consumers too.

Original motivator for this article came from this story that was published at Vancouver Sun. Several companies (Superior Log Homes, Norse Log Homes, Ram Creek Log Homes and Big Foot Homes Inc.) are mentioned in this article and if you want to know what are their future plans, you better read the original.Here is a link to a Japanese building material survey. You will notice that U.S. and Canada are very strong building material suppliers. Finland is usually mentioned in relation with wood materials.

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