Meet Matt Bulloch of TentCraft

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Bulloch. They and their team shared their story with us below:

Matt Bulloch started his career in 1999 as a Wildland Firefighter at the U.S. Forest Service, where they fought seasonal wildfires across the western US.

In 2002, he enlisted in the Army National Guard and served as an Infantryman, being called to active duty with the US Army for Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2005, he joined Credit Suisse as an Analyst, providing private placement services to private equity funds, but he admittedly hated the culture and the job.

A chance meeting in Manhattan in 2007 with Paul Britten of Britten Inc. Over some beers in New York City ultimately led Matt to Northern Michigan and to start TentCraft. Paul had a custom tent product in his digital print business catalog that none of his employees were interested in selling.

Matt decided to give it a shot. TentCraft started with tent offerings primarily geared toward experiential marketing agencies representing major brands like Verizon Wireless and Blackberry.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The pandemic was a big shift for TentCraft, but focused leadership and a dedicated, in-house production team allowed us to succeed.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
TentCraft is an American manufacturer of custom tents, structures, and event products that provides businesses — from small mom-and-pop shops to globally recognized brands — the visibility and quality they deserve at events across the country. The company specializes in creating custom structures that stand out at events — and offering solutions that you can’t find anywhere else.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Traverse City, Michigan, TentCraft is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) that’s proud to continue the tradition of high-quality, innovative American manufacturing.

TentCraft started with a couple of tent offerings primarily geared toward experiential marketing agencies representing major brands like Verizon Wireless and Blackberry. Over the next few years, Matt grew the company but questioned whether he wanted to be in the tent game for the long haul.

While keeping equity in TentCraft, he enrolled at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and landed an internship with Apple. He decided, however, that working for a large company wasn’t appealing to him.

He convinced his then-girlfriend and now-wife Kelly to leave California and return to Traverse City to put in three years of hard work to scale TentCraft. If growth wasn’t in the cards for the company, Matt said he would have found a new job. The company did grow, and the TentCraft name started to gain name-brand recognition among the largest experiential marketing agencies.

In 2016, Matt saw a big opportunity to manufacture tent frames in-house in Northern Michigan instead of importing them — which is what most of the industry does today. By fully integrating the company and shifting to a build-to-order strategy, TentCraft could compete faster and better control the quality of its custom products.

When customers called TentCraft complaining about cheap tents they purchased elsewhere that fell apart after a few uses, the TentCraft sales team could now show them photos or videos of their custom tents being manufactured and the level of craftsmanship that goes into every product.

The power of American manufacturing has instilled confidence in a customer’s decision to spend a little more on a quality solution, knowing it was backed by a lifetime warranty. And if anything were to go wrong, a team dedicated to best-in-class customer service could quickly help them out.

The bet to manufacture tent frames in-house really paid off in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S.

Seemingly overnight, millions of dollars in TentCraft revenue evaporated as some of the country’s largest events, from the SXSW Conference to the NCAA March Madness Tournament, were canceled due to the fast-spreading virus.

On a Saturday afternoon in March, Matt sent an email out to the TentCraft team — a document they would later frame and gift to him — saying TentCraft was going to retool as a company and shift all of its efforts toward life-saving medical tents to be used for COVID-19 screening, testing, and, ultimately, vaccinations.

The team packed months of work into a couple of weeks, and TentCraft became the nation’s leading manufacturer of quick-deploy medical tents.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
My wife Kelly and all the amazing employees we’ve had at TentCraft.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tentcraft.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tentcraft
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TentCraft
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tentcraft
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Tentcraftsocial