How 27North Turned Van Life Into a Repeatable Manufacturing Process
Manufacturing Happy Hour
Van life in the United States is usually pictured as a do-it-yourself project: someone converting a school bus or a Mercedes Sprinter in their backyard over months or years. Pavel Bosovik, founder and CEO of 27North, builds expedition vans and adventure vehicles in Springfield, Missouri, and has tried to industrialize that process. In this conversation, recorded live at the 2024 Midwest Manufacturers Trade Show & Conference in Branson, Missouri, the host Chris asks Bosovik where the idea came from and how the company made a custom-feeling product repeatable. They also cover how 27North handles customization, how user experience shapes the design, why Bosovik talks so publicly about hardship, and what advice he would give manufacturers trying to grow.
From a Counterculture Hobby to a Premium Product
Bosovik traces van life back to the hippie era, with school-bus conversions ("the schoolie") and Burning Man culture. In his account, that community kept building its own vehicles, moved from school buses to vans, and created a culture of people who want to explore, disconnect from society, and connect with nature.
The business idea came from selling his first van. He listed it online, and it was bought by a group of pilots from Denver, Colorado. That sale made him realize the market was not limited to, as he put it for lack of a better word, "hippies" or young people. Working professionals wanted the experience too, and they were willing to pay for it. 27North then ran online ads, and Bosovik says a lot of C-level executives, business owners, and entrepreneurs were willing to pay a premium for a professionally built van.
The reason, he explains, is time. The pilots only had a couple of days off every few weeks. When he asked why they did not build their own, they told him it would probably take them four or five years, and they wanted to go next weekend.
Building a Repeatable Process: Document Everything, Down to the Screw
Asked how he made the build repeatable, Bosovik says there was no secret formula. His bachelor's degree accelerated things, giving him a foundation and the vocabulary, but he believes that in any new business or product launch, the process is the hardest part.
27North started simply: one van at a time, with six or seven key people, documenting everything as they went. That included how much glue was used and exactly how many screws. Bosovik thinks many people make the mistake of not tracking small details. Instead of writing "10 screws," they write "a handful of screws." In his view, the earlier you document the process in detail, the faster you can scale it.
Once the first van was fully documented, the team had a baseline to build on. From there they could perfect the design and swap out screws and parts. He says they are still swapping and upgrading parts every week, but always against that baseline. His advice to anyone launching a new product or company is to create a baseline first. It does not have to be perfect or the best. He points to the first iPhone, which people now call "the brick." It was once the coolest thing around, and later versions improved on it.
The host connects this to documenting processes for his podcast. Writing things down the first time feels overly detailed, but a month later that standard operating procedure helps him remember quickly. Bosovik adds a small podcasting example: even something as simple as "take a selfie with the person you're interviewing" gets forgotten when a lot is going on.
He then gives the scale of the problem at 27North. An average build now involves more than 500 parts and components, not counting the van itself. He notes that an average person can memorize about six or seven things. A buyer ordering for the next month will not remember 500 parts. Vague terms also break down between people. His own "handful" of screws might be 50 or 60 pieces, while his buyer's handful is two or three. So, he argues, the specification has to be as specific and precise as possible.
Customization Without Scope Creep
The host asks how 27North allows customization without derailing schedules. Bosovik says the company quickly learned where customization is not possible. It now advertises "modifications and upgrades" rather than open-ended customization.
He compares this to buying a new car. You don't choose the shape of the steering wheel, but you can buy a steering wheel cover. You don't choose the shape of the floor mats, but you can choose their color. 27North applies the same logic. A customer might upgrade from a one-liter to a two-liter compressor, for example. The point is that these options don't involve the production process. They can be installed after the fact, or shipped directly to the customer to install themselves.
The host observes that this borrows best practices from the automotive industry, and Bosovik agrees. He tells his team that you can only draw a circle so perfectly, so there's no sense in reinventing the wheel. His approach is to benchmark the automotive industry first, get up to its level, and then get creative and fine-tune from there.
User Experience as the Differentiator
The host raises a point from before the interview about how 27North thinks about user experience, including how water lines are run. Bosovik says user experience is central and is why the company started. By his count there are 117 expedition vehicle and van builders in the United States alone, and he sees most of them doing the same thing. His framing is that the manufacturer isn't the one using the van; the user is.
To find what users care about, 27North collected real-time feedback from its own customers and from online forums about competitors' vehicles. The team then used AI to condense that material into a list of 12 problems. Bosovik says that a year earlier, this research would have taken months of work by master's-level or at least bachelor's-level students. Now it can be put into AI to produce the list.
One of those 12 problems was how the electrical and plumbing systems are run. He says 27North's plumbing is simple enough that a 27-year-old customer in the middle of the Mexican desert could replace a freshwater gauge, a fuse, or a piece of piping. In his description, owners don't need to go to a service center and tear apart half the RV to replace a water filter or pump.
Exterior Modifications: What Bosovik Likes Most
Asked what he likes to tell people about the vans, Bosovik says, admitting his bias, that he likes the exterior modifications, or "mods," most. He claims that with many competitors, buyers then spend $50,000, $60,000, or sometimes $100,000 on modifications, in parts cost alone. 27North does that work upfront, he says, and its vans cost the same amount.
The work he lists includes rebuilding the suspension and fitting wheels certified by Mercedes, which he says avoids tire pressure sensor problems. The vans also get all-terrain tires, so owners can actually drive on gravel, slopes, mud, and branches. The result, as he describes it, looks like an off-road Jeep. Both the functionality and the look were key factors for him.
Why He Shares the Hard Parts Publicly
The host notes that Bosovik shares his story openly on social media, and not only about vans. He has said publicly that he was living with his in-laws when he started the business. The host also mentions that the company is about to open a new facility. He asks what Bosovik's vision was at the start.
Bosovik says he always wanted to make a big impact on society. He describes growing up among a wide range of people. In high school he sat in class with the children of judges, lawyers, and doctors, while he himself was on food stamps. A few seats away were foreign exchange students living in a mobile home. He describes it as everything from a trailer park, with two families in one mobile home, to multi-million-dollar mansions.
Across that whole range, he noticed the same false impression of life and entrepreneurship. People thought success meant a fancy car and a big home, and that life was easy, without challenges. He saw little difference in this between the business view and the personal view. He thinks social media and Hollywood played a part. His goal is to show that you can live a happy life while overcoming everyday challenges. That's why he talks openly about his problems and how he handles them. He wants to give an accurate picture of running a manufacturing facility, being married, being strong in faith, starting new ventures, and taking risks, instead of the version he believes society presents.
Advice for Manufacturers: Benchmark the Next Step, Not Elon Musk
For manufacturing leaders, Bosovik describes a recent conversation with a heavy-duty products manufacturer. The company was stuck at $20 million in annual revenue, wanted to reach $100 million, and felt unable to grow. After a short conversation, Bosovik concluded that they had a problem he sees in many others: they surround themselves with the wrong people.
In his view, this happens in two directions. New entrepreneurs in manufacturing want to be the next Elon Musk. People who are already somewhat successful surround themselves with less successful people. Either way, their peer group is at the wrong level. His prescription is to find people in your niche at the next step. If you want to grow from $20 million to $100 million, find $100 million companies. Forget Elon Musk, forget Toyota, and don't worry about their marketing.
He applies this to people moving from a garage to their first factory. Many try to create content the way Apple does, or buy machinery and steel presses like Toyota and Tesla, which he says they don't need. Instead, benchmark against a company one step ahead. Once you reach its level and want to keep growing, find the next company to benchmark. The host compares this to his own view of mentorship: look for someone who embodies what you want to become, or someone skilled at a specific thing you want to learn.
One Email to Seven CEOs
Bosovik gives a concrete example of doing this. Before planning a manufacturing facility, he contacted the Missouri Association of Manufacturers and mentioned "Andrew Michael" there as a great resource. He asked to be introduced to manufacturers of a certain annual revenue. The association introduced him to seven companies. He emailed all seven CEOs right away, using the same text with only the name changed, saying he wanted to get to where they were.
In his telling, one CEO taught him about accounting and another about the legal side. He calls the amount of legal groundwork overwhelming. The legal mentor told him the advice would save him $50 million in lawsuits, based on what that company had learned over 60 years, and shared copies of contracts and other material. Bosovik sums it up as one email saving him "$50 million worth of headaches," and encourages others to simply make the introduction. The host notes that this also answers what an association like the Missouri Association of Manufacturers can do for a company like 27North.
The Manufacturing Scene in Springfield and Missouri
Asked about manufacturing in Springfield and the wider region, Bosovik calls it the manufacturing hub of the world. He says there is no better place to manufacture than the Midwest, and specifically Missouri and Springfield. He describes the area as home to "the stainless steel capital of the world," and says Joplin, about 40 miles away, is the world's trailer and boat manufacturing center. He cites more than 6,000 manufacturers and organizations like the Missouri Association of Manufacturers.
He argues that local connections are better than searching online. Googling for help often leads to national companies with 1-800 numbers, where he says you can spend a lot of money without getting the result you need. Through the association, if you need political help with a land dispute or with getting credits, they can connect you with people such as the lieutenant governor or a director of business development. That means someone with a local 417 area code rather than a 1-800 number, whom you can reach and get an answer from the same day.
The conversation ends there, with the host saying he will keep following 27North and will share links in the show notes.
All right, Pav, pleasure to meet you.
Likewise, Chris. This has been a long time coming. I've been watching the journey of you making these adventure vans on a mass scale. You're very active on social media, so it's easy to follow that path, and I appreciate the transparency you provide there. So the first question I want to dive into is, I feel like van life, for example, is a very popular concept in the US, but I think a lot of people think of it from like a do-it-yourself standpoint: someone's converting a school bus, someone's converting a Mercedes Sprinter van in their spare time in their backyard. Yeah. But you've done this on a mass scale, so I have to ask, where did you come up with the idea to almost industrialize this process?
Yeah, so I would even take it a step further back and say it's probably somewhere whenever the hippie era is probably what first kind of kicked off this van life. I'd say it starts with like the schoolie and Burning Man, a little bit of all of that. And so now with the modern-day van life, well, that community continued to build their own vans, now instead of school buses, vans, and it created a culture, a culture of people wanting to go and explore and disconnect from society and connect with nature. And I had created my first van, and we had listed it online, and wonderful pilots out of Denver, Colorado purchased it, and that's where the idea came. I'm like, wait, it's not just these, for lack of a better word, hippies or, you know, youngsters that want to go do this. There's working professionals that want to experience this too, and they're willing to pay for it. And so we created a bunch of ads and we posted on the internet, and a lot of C-level executives, business owners, entrepreneurs were willing to pay a premium cost to have a professionally built one, and I'd say that's where that idea was born.
Yeah, and I don't doubt that, you know, they probably don't have as much time as someone that's younger that's like, this is what I'm doing in my spare time. I could see an executive being like, look, I just want it done for, you know, give me your best.
Exactly. Like these pilots, they only have a couple of days, you know, every few weeks. And so I asked them, you know, why don't you guys build your own, but, you know, went with us? They're like, it would take us probably four or five years, and we want to go next weekend.
Mm-hmm. Yep, no, I follow you. Well, I have to ask then, how did you build a process around this, for example, like something that is repeatable? Tell us a bit about that trial and error.
I wish there was a secret sauce, or I could say, hey, my bachelor's degree helped. It definitely accelerated the process. It helped me lay the foundation, know the vocabulary. But like in any new business or any new product that you launch, the processes is the hardest part. So we started simple. We were like one van at a time. We had like six, seven key players, and we documented the process. We documented how much glue, down to how many screws. And see, a lot of people, they make the mistake of not tracking the little things. Instead of saying 10 screws, they'll say, oh, a handful of screws. Now, the earlier on you start documenting the detailed process, the quicker you can scale it. Yeah. So once we had our first van really documented, then we could scale and build off of that. We could perfect, we can swap out screws, we can swap out parts. We're on a weekly basis swapping out, upgrading parts, but we have that baseline. That's what mine would be for launching a new product or company: create a baseline. Doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be the best. Look at the first iPhone.
Yeah, I mean, it's called the brick nowadays for a reason, because you look back. I held it recently. I'm like, whoa, I remember this used to be the coolest thing ever. I still have an old iPad 2 that I don't use anymore, but I see how far those things come and how quick they come.
I like what you said about documenting the details, because I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up, and your tangible example of, hey, don't say a handful of screws, say this many screws. Because I document processes with my podcast as well, and when I'm doing it for the first time, it almost feels like I'm being overly detailed. But it's one of those things that if I don't do it for a month, afterwards I can look back at that standard operating procedure. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember a lot faster how to do that now.
Oh, most definitely. I remember when I started podcasting, and there's like even a small thing like take a selfie with the person you're interviewing. It's like, how hard could that be to remember? But when you have so much going on, you forget that.
If you have that process, like our average build, we're past 500 parts, components. That's not including the van. And an average human can memorize what, six, seven things? And so even look at your purchasing, your buyer. Whenever they go to buy again for next month, they're not going to remember 500 parts. Yeah. And then if they do order screws, how do you define a handful? Well, a handful for me is, you know, 50, maybe 60 pieces. Yeah, however many can fit in your hand, right? A handful for our buyer is two or three. Right, right. And so you have to be as specific, as precise as you can be.
I'm curious, do you allow for customization? And if so, how do you do that to avoid like scope creep, or how do you do it so you can stick to your schedule so it doesn't get out of whack? Because this feels like something that could be creative beyond just, hey, this is the exact one we do over and over again. Tell me a little bit about that.
Yes, so we have quickly fine-tuned the process to learn where customizations is not possible. Yeah. And so what we now advertise is modifications and upgrades. The modifications and upgrades that we offer are accessories, similar to when you buy a new car. You don't get to go and pick the shape of the steering wheel, but you can buy a steering wheel cover. Yeah. You don't get to choose the shape of your floor mats, but you can choose the floor mat color. So we kind of piggybacked off that. And so you can upgrade your compressor. Instead of, you know, a one liter, you can get a two liter compressor. Something that doesn't involve the production process as well, but something that can be done after the fact and/or shipped directly to the customer, and the customer installs it.
Sounds like you're borrowing a lot of best practices from the automotive industry in general, where they've done that all the time, where there are upgrades, there are modifications, but it's not you adjusting your process in a way that wouldn't be sustainable or would impact the orders for other customers.
Exactly. The automotive industry has designed and fine-tuned the wheel. I always tell my team, there's only so perfect of a circle you can draw. You know, the wheel can only be so much of a circle, and so there's no sense in reinventing the wheel. We got to get creative and first benchmark from the automotive industry, get up to speed with them, and then we can be even more creative and fine-tune off of that. But at the end of the day, the wheel's already been invented.
Another topic that came up before you walked into the room, and I didn't necessarily prepare you for this one, but is your focus around user experience that goes into these vans. And there are things that maybe to the untrained eye you wouldn't think about, but when it comes to running water lines, I think, was the example that was given, you have a way to make this more ideal for your customers. Tell me how user experience plays into your design.
Yes, so user experience is key for us. That's why we started this journey. There's 117 expedition vehicle van builders out there just in the United States alone today, and everyone's kind of doing the same thing. But for us, we're like, at the end of the day, it's not the manufacturer using this, it's the user. And so we took real-time feedback from our consumers, real-time feedback from online forums of all our competitors. We AI'd that all into a list of 12 problems. And if you do your research, you know, a year ago it would take you, you know, months and months of probably master's level or at least bachelor's level college students to do all this research. Today you can plug this into AI and it'll give... We got a list of 12 problems, and one of them was the way electric and plumbing is ran. And so our plumbing system is so simple that a 27-year-old consumer in the middle of the Mexican desert can replace a freshwater gauge, can replace a fuse, can replace a piece of piping. You don't have to go to a service center and tear apart half of your RV to replace a water filter or water pump.
So we just got into the details of what goes into one of your vans, and what I call a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that you're not really dealing with until you need to do an upgrade, fix an issue, etc. Let's just talk about what the coolest parts about your vans are. When someone asks you, it's like, hey, describe one of your vans to me, what is one of the aspects of it that you love to tell people about?
I have to be kind of biased towards what I like, and that's the exterior modifications, also what we call mods. And so the mods that we have on our vans are top-notch. A lot of our competition, when you buy their van, you have to go spend 50, 60, sometimes 100,000 modifying, and that's just in parts cost. We do all that for you up front, and our van costs the same amount. So we rebuild your suspension, we put wheels and tires, wheels that are certified by Mercedes so you don't have tire pressure sensor problems, tires that are all-terrain so you can actually hit the gravel, hit the slopes, you know, be driving through some mud, some branches. And so on the exterior, when you look at it, it looks like a Jeep, you know, the off-road Jeeps. And that was probably my key factor: exterior mods, not only the functionality but the appearance of it.
Yeah, no, they're very cool. If anyone gets a chance, check out the 27North website. You can get a taste for all that right there. I'm going to switch gears a little bit in this conversation, because there's something, and I mentioned this right at the start, you share your story very well on an ongoing basis, and it's not always about the vans. It's about your life and your experience building the business. And one of the areas that always sticks out is you've been very public about telling your story: hey, when I started this business, I was living with my in-laws. And now I believe you're about to open up a brand new facility. Your growth has been massive. So I'm curious, what was your vision or your dream for this company when it was just starting out? Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, most definitely. Early on, from even before when I started, I always knew that I wanted to make a big impact on society itself. And I noticed from just the circle of people that I grew up with, it was really diverse. We had lower income families, we had middle class. I went to a high school where I got to, you know, sit in class with the kids of judges and lawyers and doctors, and then a few seats down was me on food stamps, and a few seats down was a couple of foreign exchange students that were living in a mobile home. So we had literally, I would say, all of the demographics, from trailer park to multi-million dollar mansions, and I saw just a diverse range of lifestyles.
And I noticed, whether you take the individuals that were living in the trailer park, two families in one mobile home, to the individual in the mansion, across the board there's a false kind of impression or a stereotype of life and entrepreneurship, running a business, being successful. Across the board, people thought success was a fancy car and a big home. Across the board, people thought life was easy, there's no challenges. And whether you take it from a business perspective or a personal perspective, I didn't see much difference other than a false impression. I think in part it was social media. I think Hollywood played a role in that.
And at the end of the day, I wanted to portray to people that you can still live a nice, happy life overcoming day-to-day challenges. And that's why I am so vocal about the challenges in my life, how I overcome them and how I make the best of them, to give people an accurate representation of what it's like to run a manufacturing facility, what it's like to be married, what it's like to be strong in your faith, what it's like to pursue new journeys, what it's like to take risk, to look at life the way it is and not this false perception that society portrays it as today.
And I like the real nature that comes out of your content and the real nature that came out in that answer as well. So let's package this up then. Like, if we were to give advice to the manufacturing leaders out there that are listening, what advice would you give them if they were just starting out as well?
Yeah, great question. I recently had an individual reach out within the manufacturing industry. They manufacture a lot of heavy-duty products, and they are stuck at 20 million revenue a year, and they really want to reach their goal of 100 million, and they feel like they can't grow and they can't scale. And after a short conversation, I came to the realization that they, along with many other people, have the same problem: they surround themselves with the wrong people. So you have a lot of entrepreneurs starting in the manufacturing industry, they want to be the next Elon Musk. Then you have individuals that are already somewhat successful, and they surround themselves with less successful people. And so now you got yourself with either the wrong crowd or the wrong crowd on the other side, in regards to they're too successful or not successful.
You have to find people in your niche. So if you want to scale your company from 20 million to 100 million, find $100 million companies. Forget Elon Musk.
Yeah, find people that are the next step of where you want to be in your journey.
Exactly. Forget Elon Musk, forget Toyota. Like, don't even be worried about their marketing. Don't try to do what they're doing. Find a 100 million a year company. I like to tell especially new individuals that are transitioning from their garage to their first factory, they're out there trying to create content the way Apple creates content, they're out there trying to buy machinery and steel presses like Toyota and Tesla. You don't need that. Find that next step in your life, benchmark with them. Once you get near or to their level and you want to keep growing, take the next step, find another company to benchmark with. Forget Toyota. Find a company that's nearest to you or nearest to the next step that you want to take, and benchmark from them.
It's funny when I talk to people about mentorship, because I feel like that's a term we often use very vaguely. I tell people, look for two types of people: look for someone that kind of embodies a lot of the different things you want to be someday, or look for someone that is really good at a skill you want to develop, and build your mentor relationship around that skill. And I see a lot of parallels with what you're saying: look for someone who is at that next step in the journey where you're trying to get to, and work with them, surround yourself with them.
Exactly. That's the first thing I did before I even started making plans of building a manufacturing facility. I reached out to the Missouri Association of Manufacturers, Andrew Michael, wonderful resources, and I said, hey, I need manufacturers. Yeah, what kind of manufacturers? I need x amount of million a year manufacturers. They introduced me to seven wonderful companies. I immediately reached out to all seven CEOs. I drafted them an email that's copy and paste other than the different, you know, name who it's addressed to. I said, I want to get to where you guys are. One taught me all about accounting, another one taught me all about legal. The legal aspect, I mean, it's overwhelming how much you have to cover your grounds in regards to just legal. He walked me through. He's like, Pav, I'm going to save you $50 million worth of lawsuits. That's how much we've learned over the last 60 years. I'm like, wonderful. One email saved me $50 million worth of headaches, and he gave me copies
…of his contracts, copies of everything he learned. MAM, just one email, just make that introduction, go say hi to that person.
You know, just to piggyback off what you said, I love the specifics you're sharing here. It's funny, one of my next questions was going to be, you know, what does an association like the Missouri Association of Manufacturers, what can that do for someone like you? And you already answered that question, right? Like, literally reaching out to seven people that, like you were just talking about, were at that next stage in the journey you wanted to get to, and they taught you lessons in their unique area of expertise, whether that was an accounting lesson, whether that was a legal lesson. Yeah, excellent advice there.
My last question for this conversation is, you know, we're here at the Midwest Manufacturers Trade Show and Conference, and you have a unique situation because you're based not too far from here in Springfield, Missouri. So I'm just kind of getting a little survey here: what would you say the manufacturing scene, the manufacturing community, is like in Springfield, Missouri? And feel free to expand beyond that as well to the greater—
I think it's the manufacturing hub of the world. Yeah, I don't think there's any better place in the world to be manufacturing than the Midwest, more specifically Missouri. Springfield, you've got the stainless steel capital of the world. You go 40 miles from here, Joplin, it's the trailer and boat manufacturer of the world. So you have an overwhelming amount of resources, 6,000-plus manufacturers. You have associations like MAM, so Missouri Association of Manufacturers.
You need legal help, reach out, they have it. You don't need to go Google, because what happens when you Google, a lot of times you get these national companies, you call a 1-800 number, and you spend a ton of money not to get the outcome that you want. Through organizations like MAM, you contact them and say, hey, I need someone within politics to help us figure out, you know, a land dispute or how to get credits. They'll connect you through the lieutenant governor, they'll connect you to a director of business development, a person with a 417 area code, not a 1-800, a local area, and you can get someone on the phone today and get an answer today of what you need to do.
I appreciate all the specifics you brought to this conversation. I'm looking forward to continuing to follow your journey, the journey of 27North, and in the show notes I'll make sure you have spots to link up with Pavel and everything else we talked about in this conversation. So thank you so much for jumping on the show. Hey, thank you for having me. Cheers.
Article published