Sauna Talk: Four sauna builders from four different countries come to Sauna Days 2025

Today on the bench, we bring you to Larsmont Cottages, Two Harbors. Minnesota for a special roundtable discussion with four sauna builders from four different countries as part of Sauna Days 2025.

• Alex, Bsaunasusa, Belarus
• Keegan, Deep Wave Saunas, USA
• Jake, Finnmark, UK
• Andrew, Sauna Builder, Canada

The weather was wonderful, the heat was resonating, and our conversation went deep.

Signature moments

Here is the podcast:

Here is the transcription

Speaker 0 0:00

Wow. This is so fun. Yep, two, two open, two seats. If you guys want to sit up here, got a couple more we got a couple more chairs. Yeah, wow. Okay, so, Grant, should we hit record? Okay, so we’re live. Welcome. This is a recording for sauna talk, but it is also a live presentation. My name is Glen, and I run a website called sauna times. I have a book that is now in print. Plug on that. Sauna build, start to finish, fourth edition, I’d say there’s probably 35 maybe 40 people in the room soon. A few more. But what’s I want to draw attention to. On my right here are four sauna builders from four different countries, spanning over 10,000 miles to come here, it’s quite remarkable. I’ll do introductions to my right, Alex from B saunas USA, from Belarus, 4700 miles. Brecht Belarus, to his right, Keegan kiddock, deepwave Sauna, 202 miles from where we’re sitting wins the closest to shortest drive award. Welcome Keegan, Jake Newport from finnmarks on it, Jake, when did you come in yesterday evening, yesterday evening and whopping, 3700 miles to Durham headquarters, world headquarters for Finnmark, UK. Welcome Jay, thank you. And last just arrived. When did you arrive? Just now? What was your journey like, Andrew?

 1:57

It was pretty smooth. Flew into Minneapolis. There at 1030 and yeah, got here pretty quick.

Speaker 1 2:04

Andrew from sauna builder, 1100 miles to come here from Calgary. This is a special presentation. This is we always say, good heat knows no borders, and sauna building really has kind of converged itself. I mean, it used to be this unique thing that was done in the hinterlands of the Nordic countries. But, you know, how long have Andrew start with you? How long have you been taking sauna, and how long have you been building sauna?

Speaker 1 2:35

So I grew up with sauna, actually, not too far from this area in Northwestern Ontario, kind of a remote cabin. Our parents had no running water or power, so we had a sauna on the dock. So I grew up with that as

Speaker 1 2:52

as a child, as a child, and how long have you been building some building

Unknown 2:56

saunas? For about eight years now. Yeah,

Speaker 1 2:59

Jake, so

Speaker 2 3:01

for me, growing up in the UK, a lot of the saunas that were there were these hot, dry boxes that you’d see in spas and hotels closed off to kids, very different to this experience that we’ve all come to love and then spending time out in Finland and the Nordic states in my early 20s, I had that road to Damascus moment that many of us have experienced, where, you know, you get out of the cold plunge and you’re in a totally different place, and you realize that it’s something different. So that kind of pushed me to throw my my career and my life into this. So we’ve been Finmark for 10 years now, 40 staff installing about two two to three bespoke saunas per week, and fulfilling somewhere between 50 and 75 saunas worth of materials per week. So every week there’s 80 more saunas that we’ve contributed

Speaker 1 4:03

to. Wow. Keegan, how long have you been taking saunas and building saunas?

Speaker 3 4:07

Well, I started taking saunas when I was really young, much like Andrew, we have a family cabin not far from here, up on the vermilion river. And since I can remember, we were going into a sauna, no power, same thing, just a little candle window, and as a child, as a child, yeah, fell in love with it. And then I’ve been building sauna for about 18 years. And about four years ago, I got together with one of my really close friends, Aaron. He’s my business partner. A lot of you guys met him, and he said, Hey, let’s, let’s, let’s do this full time and make this a real thing, instead of just doing it on the side and and when clients ask for it. So now, yeah, we’ve been doing that for we started deep way about four years ago. So,

Speaker 4 4:48

Alex, how long for you? Yeah, my story a little different, you know. So first time I went to a sauna, it was about 20 years ago, in public bath house in Philadelphia. Everybody think I’m in Belarus. I was born, but I came to us when I was 17. So I never, I was never in Asana back in Belarus, and I was in trucking business. I broke down in New Jersey, and we had like, two days off with my worker, like, let’s go to a banya, you know? Yeah. And we took, actually, was a problem with the trailer. When hook the trailer, we took a semi truck to the public bed house, park there, and and man and I ordered venting treatment. You know, I ordered massage. I remember I, this is my first experience, and I was blown away. And I just got hooked on first visit, visit. And then we’ve been going to, I’m in Buffalo, we’ve been going to public bathhouse in Toronto. We have, you know, like me and guys will get in the car across the border an hour, hour away. We’re in a bath house, you know, having a good time. And then I bought a land and I start building my own sauna, you know, like, but you call it Bania. You call it by, yeah, I call it banya and, and I start researching, you know, I YouTube, there is no information in us, like back, like seven, 710, years ago, very few information in in us. YouTube actually how to build this on it, you know, and I start researching. So I signed up to all Russian YouTubers. Basically channels this and that. And I start learning I’m like, for three years, seriously, it was not even a day since I not like how to build ventilation benches, like all this. And I have a land. I have 120 acres of land, and I start cutting, I found that we have basswood. So in back in Europe, basswood is very popular for a sauna. So I was cutting trees down make my whole small kiln dry, you know, saw mill, and making my own tunnel, groove, thick benches. So I took it like, the hard way. Now I turned back around, this is, this? Is this been crazy, like, Man, I built my own sauna. You know, I built my own sauna with my own wood from from my land. And it’s my Bania, actually. And then while I was doing that, and, like, I know so much, and I should start, start making them, start doing them, and I start open up at B sound as USA, five years just two weeks before covid. That’s when I open up the business. Yeah, it actually helped people been sitting home watching, you know, like health benefits and stuff, and it helped me. My trucking business was parked for like, six months, no income, nothing. You know, I have payment. And actually, that’s where I start my sauna business. And that’s it,

Speaker 1 7:50

beautiful, yeah, it’s interesting journey with the four of you guys. You know, two of you are classic builders, Andrew and Keegan. I mean, you guys had your own have your own construction companies right, have that right, and then transition into the idea of building saunas. Is it for you? Andrew, is it a full time thing? Saunas?

Speaker 1 8:11

Yeah, it definitely is. It didn’t start out that way though. I was a paramedic for 10 years and started out as a side hustle, and then eventually, one day, just had to take that leap of faith into business ownership and but, yeah, it’s definitely a full time gig now, but it didn’t start that

Speaker 1 8:33

way, and Keegan construction is the backbone of of your profession with the family

Speaker 3 8:38

business. Yeah, I was in construction for years, everything from building houses all the way up to building skyscrapers. And then got out of the rat race of that, and I just had enough of it, and went back to took over the family company, and then started talking with Aaron, and he said they like, I was like, I want to build saunas. That’s what I want to do. And so that’s when we transitioned, and that was about four years ago from doing anything else. And now it’s just, that’s our that’s our goal is to just build saunas, you know. So it’s been a wild ride. What

Speaker 1 9:11

do you guys think? You know, I’ll go to you, Jake, what do you think as the phone rings and as you collect the final check and payment for a sauna that you’ve built. I mean, do you sense this a big difference about providing happy, healthy lives to your clients, as opposed to being in general construction? And what does a day in the life feel like as you collect the final checks serving your clients?

Speaker 2 9:39

Well, when I first started this Finnmark as a business, I remember going to a big trade event in Europe, and there was a guy there who represents Javier guy called David, lovely guy. And I was dressed really smart because I didn’t know any better. And. Everyone else is dressed really casually. And he came over to me, and he was like, you know, the sauna industry, wellness industry, is a pullover industry. And I was like, What’s a what’s a pullover industry? I thought, maybe this is some kind of business term that I’d never heard of. So I was like, you know, tell me what’s a pullover industry? And he said, We all just wear pullovers. It’s not suit and tie pullover industry. So, you know, when you talk about wellness and you talk about, you know, bringing relaxation to people, it’s not just, you know, it’s not just a product that we’re selling commercially. It’s, it’s a lifestyle. And I see that parallel in a lot of the businesses here in the US and internationally, that the founders and operators have a different kind of mindset. You know, they’re not, they’re not rat race driven. And I think you see that kind of trickle down, you know, when people are buying wellness, experiences, products, installations, the end goal is they they want to be relaxed. And if you’re not relaxed, and if you’re not relaxed, and you don’t look relaxed, then they kind of not think of this. I’m buying into something that’s not, not authentic. So, so that experience is nice. 99% of the customers we deal with are really, really lovely people. You’re always going to have a percentage that are, you know, have an ax to grind somewhere. But compared to any other industry I’ve worked, in general, generally, genuinely lovely people and across the spectrum. So if you’re dealing with high net worth individuals, ultra high net worth individuals, all the way to the bottom end. You know, in the in the UK, we are a little bit more on the side of, like, skeptical of very successful business people, thinking they must be tyrannical. It’s not the case. You know, everybody we deal with across the spectrum, you know, generally, genuinely lovely people. And I think that’s probably says more to do with the type of people who want to sauna. You know, like everybody in this room, I come, I’ve come all the way back here from, from last year, because these are such, such lovely people. And I think, you know, perhaps, just going back to the comment I made before, about per week, how many more saunas we’re building, you know, I’m not, I’m not this sat like Scrooge McDuck counting dollar bills. I’m there going, there’s 80 more, 80 more of sounders out there this week, like this. You know, this is, this is how we’re shaping the culture and bringing this to people.

Speaker 1 12:23

So Alex, how do you find, you know what Jake’s saying? Do you find a similar percent in terms of your relationship with your customers and your clients? Are they all pretty cool? Or do you run into

Speaker 4 12:35

they all pretty cool, but there’s special individuals. They’re not happy all the time.

Speaker 2 12:46

I’ve used the phrase, don’t worry. In a few days, you’ll have had your first sauna, and none of this will matter anymore. You know, it changes very quickly. I think, right, people are just so desperate for that you know, if something’s not quite perfect in the in the whole journey, then, you know, don’t worry, none of this will matter in a few days.

Speaker 1 13:09

So this is special for you guys in the audience. We’re going to have this interactive and we’re going to open the floor to some questions. I think this is a gem of an opportunity. These are four amazing sauna builders, I do have to throw one of my first questions, or for discussion, is none of these guys are Finnish. And when you think about sauna, we think we have great respect for the origin of not just the word, but the classic practice of sauna and Nordic sauna, or Finnish sauna. Do you guys run into this at all? You don’t have a finished name. You don’t have dots above your vowels in the last name of your of your business, but, but what’s it like? Let’s just go right down the line like real quick. Give me a couple sentences of what’s it like being from a different country than the origin of the word

Speaker 4 14:01

for me, it’s actually helps because I have an accent. You know, people call and you have an accent, oh, you from Europe or something. Then you know everything about it helps me. So everybody I can say I’m finished, or whatever.

Speaker 3 14:19

Keegan, you know, it comes up, you know, people are like, well, the Finns do it this way. We hear that all the time. The fins do it this way. It’s like, well, there’s, there’s other ways to do things. There’s some people who like to do things with different style, stoves, different style, builds, different style, ventilation. And I think that the great thing about my culture Americans is that we like to take something that somebody else started and just try to make it better and prove it as much as we can, to make it our own, you know. And so for us, it’s like, well, yeah, they might do it that way, but

Speaker 1 14:53

this is why this works better. What’s an example that comes to mind? Ventilation

Speaker 3 14:57

is extremely common question. We get calls all the time. And from ventilation, not just from homeowners and people building their own saunas, we consult with that a lot, but from other builders and saying, Hey, why isn’t this working the way it’s supposed to work, you know? And so that’s extremely common for

Speaker 0 15:12

us. And Jake, you’re close to the Nordic countries. How about how about that for you? Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:17

I mean, I, my experience is, you know, the the Finns have been very good at conserving their culture and their cultural experience, but they’re not evangelists, you know, they’re sort of, they’re, they’re apostles of the this amazing experience. But they’re not hitting the road and getting out there and saying, Hey guys, this is an amazing experience. You should try it out. You know? They’re going, Oh, that’s not very good, or that’s not very good, and kind of gatekeeping a little bit the info. So, so, you know, we do a lot of, a lot of asking questions, a lot of listening, which is difficult if you know, Finn’s there, you know, you have to ask a lot of questions and get a few answers, and, you know, and trying to build consensus and understand what are integral mechanical properties and what are kind of guidelines, and what one old guy’s preference versus what everyone kind of agrees on. And I think, you know the analogy I use been going to events now for for the best part of a decade. And you know, it’s like, if a Finn tells you sauna is great, you’re like, Yeah, well, you would say that you’re Finnish, right? But if this kind of crazy British guy goes, Hey guys, we’ve been doing it wrong. There’s this amazing way of having sauna. And people go, okay, maybe there’s something. There’s something going on here. Like, if a British guy is saying, This is really good, we should try it out. So,

Speaker 1 16:43

Andrew, how about you? Well,

Speaker 1 16:47

I always say my girlfriend is Scandinavian, so I pull from that a little bit. And my mom’s actually from Thunder Bay, which has a huge Finnish population, and that has a lot of effect around that surrounding cottage country with saunas. And surprisingly, I would say, the majority of our clients, they really don’t know anything about saunas, like very rarely do we get some, like a European that wants a sauna. Most of the time it’s people with very limited experience with sauna, and I don’t even know if they’re aware of where it originates from. And I think I’d also add that, you know, I think heat therapy has been around for, like, since the beginning of time, in so many different forms, and we definitely gravitate towards the finished sauna. But yeah, we really don’t see a lot of people, you know, pointing out that we don’t have the finished, finished descent, but yeah, well, you look kind of finished.

Speaker 1 17:52

I asked the guys, before we started to come up with a topic themselves, you know, for each of the four to discuss. And I’ll start with indoor versus outdoor. Let’s, let’s kind of look at that as you can take this where you want to go. I could ask what you prefer. I could ask what you prefer to build, or how you dealers, choice. The third would be, if someone calls looking for guidance. Where do you steer them? And anyone to jump in indoor, outdoor?

Speaker 3 18:25

Sure, I’ll jump in. So I’ll just touch on the major difference we see with indoor and outdoor for us personally, and it really derives from the fact that most people put saunas in their basements if they’re going to do it, and so that complicates some of the ventilation. Everybody wants to vent it into their house. I’m like, Well, you can do that, but if you do that, you have to make sure that your house, your HVAC system, is accounting for that and taking the moisture out of the air. But the easiest way is to go in from the outside and out to the outside. And in doing that in a basement, it provides a little bit of a complication. Generally, when, like, your exhaust to passively exhaust event, like, when I say passively, not using mechanical ventilation, it gets difficult to do it after you we have, like a rule of thumb, it’s like, if it goes more than 290s we’re putting we’re putting a pan in it, just because at that point that the air doesn’t want to travel with the exterior pressures pushing on it as efficiently without that extra little boost. So that’s a really common question we get for doing basement saunas with mechanical ventilation.

Speaker 2 19:38

I’ll jump in on the next one. So in the UK, we’re predominantly surface dwellers, so we don’t have many properties with basements, except for in London, where housing price pressures are making people dig down, and where people have more money to spend to go down. So we we find our indoor offering tends to be more premium. Similarly, in. If you think about it, in the States, the average American’s Home, the average British Home. And I’m sure you guys can picture this quite vividly. It’s like a third the size, probably three times older, at least before they invented spirit levels. So you’ve got all these unusual challenges to overcome in weird and wonderful old buildings. Most people can’t afford to give up a room in a very small house over to a sauna. So we see the outdoor sauna market as one that’s growing nicely, especially at the more cost effective end of the market. For somebody who’s a high net worth or an ultra high net worth kind of customer, then it’s almost a symbol of prestige to have an indoor sauna in your home. The outdoor sauna market tends to be more barrels or modular garden buildings, because we tend to have, by American standards, small yards, but we tend to have more space in the garden that we can we can utilize Andrew, yeah, I’d

Speaker 1 21:03

say like the outdoor sauna. I’ve always thought of that as the Holy Grail. Like outdoor sauna with the natural body of water is what why I started building saunas and that, I think we stuck to that as our identity for a long time. But outdoor saunas for us are way more expensive. They’re almost double the price than indoor saunas. So something that we always try to do with our clients is we want to give them the information so they can make the best decision, which is based on price, lifestyle, all those factors. So we’re actually seeing now we build quite a bit, quite a few more indoor saunas, but it’s still, I love the I love the idea of that outdoor sauna, but I think the price point is a big one that we see with our clients, where typically an indoor sauna for us ranges from, you know, let’s say 15 to 25 30,000 and an outdoor sauna. You’re starting at 30,000 so Yeah, Alex, where

Speaker 1 22:06

do you find your product? Mix, your customer mix, indoor, outdoor. And comments about that. We

Speaker 4 22:10

do a lot more indoor, because I’m in Buffalo and we cover like East Coast and so people do build indoor in basements. That’s like a most selling product out there. But if you’re looking for experience, you know, indoor, outdoor, I think outdoor will be a much better experience. So if you have area in the backyard, but the indoor can be different too, like a basement, like Keegan said, ventilation is a problem. So if you do indoor sauna, say, on the first floor, and you have access to outdoors with Windows, so it will be the same experience as outdoor separate structure versus versus having one in the basement. So yeah, we’ll sell about, I would say 20% outdoor versus 80%

Speaker 1 23:00

indoor, very good, and you’re doing mostly electric given those percents, yes, yes, yeah, same for you guys. I mean, in Britain,

Speaker 2 23:08

yeah, we’re probably 90% electric, just cities have smoke regulations, for example. And then there’s a lifestyle differences. So some people want to do sauna as a as a means to kind of disconnect at a weekend. So the same kind of person who might have a wood burning pizza oven in the garden an outdoor kitchen, this is like their time to disconnect, and it’s more of an experience the electric sauna heater guys are more like I need to. I need this time for my wellness. I wake up, I go sauna, I go to work. You know, it’s much more for them. It’s like, more like a pill you take to stay healthy, rather than a lifestyle

Speaker 1 23:55

choice. What’s your percent and what’s your percent for outdoor I bet we’re

Speaker 1 24:02

about, we’re over 50% wood burning like we we really paint the picture of the experience with the wood burner, and it’s better like the common pushback against wood burning is the inconvenience of it. But I think it’s also important to note that that can be also looked as as part of the process where it shouldn’t be maybe a thing where you have to do quickly and flick on a switch that you know, you have to put a little bit of time and intention into it. And, I mean, it’s hard to argue, too, when you’re in a wood burning sauna. That experience

Speaker 1 24:36

Keegan. Keegan Didn’t I tell you, you’re gonna get along well with Andrew, yeah, speaking my language, yeah, for sure. What about your percents?

Speaker 3 24:43

Well, we do a lot of like our business has been a lot more focused on mobile in the last about year and a half. So we’re mostly wood fired. Listen, 90%

Speaker 1 24:52

let’s dive right into mobile. That was a topic that one of you brought up that you wanted to visit on. We’ll stay. Stay with you. How are you. Seen the evolution of mobile in America? Keegan,

Speaker 3 25:04

well, I think that mobile status got popular for a lot of people in Minnesota, specifically because in certain suburban areas, you’re not allowed to build structures on small lots, and you have to have the right coating. You have to talk about water runoff and how much hard ground surface you have. So they’re like, Well, I can put it on wheels and put it in the driveway, and nobody cares. They can’t say anything, you know. So I think that really is what kind of kick started it. And then you have a lot of these people that are starting little sauna pop ups around the lake systems in Minneapolis area. And I think that’s great for the culture, and I think that’s driving it a lot more, and people saying, hey, I want to maybe get out of the rat race and still have, you know, just not necessarily a full time gig, but something that I can do on the weekends, make a little bit extra money. And then the other side of it is the younger generations. Now, I read a statistic somewhere, but I can’t remember exactly what it was, but there’s a lot of them that they don’t really want to have these big, expensive homes, they don’t want to have that stuff. They go to vrbos, you know. And so something that they can just pick up and take with them wherever they go. It’s, it seems to be driving the market a little bit. So, yeah, the convenience of being able to take it wherever you want and have one sound if you got a cabin in Minnesota, cabins are very common. People have one up north. So we get a lot of people are like, hey, I want it to be here, and I want to be up north. So we just want one spend the money once, and then be able to trailer it up.

Speaker 1 26:26

So those that came to sauna days last year know that Alex brought his one of his or his mobile son two years ago, but you didn’t drive your mobile sauna here this year,

Unknown 26:36

my truck broke down.

Speaker 1 26:41

You’re counting. Tell us about mobile sauna as it relates to you and or your business.

Speaker 4 26:52

So I have a mobile sauna on a trailer. It’s you can rent it out. So I drive around, you know, Buffalo area. You can sometimes people, you know, want to do a venue treatment, and I can offer them as well. But it’s in the beginning, you know, I was really passionate about it now, with, with a lot more sales my mobile, you know, I don’t really advertise the mobile sauna, and we just, it’s a lot more popular here in Minneapolis, because we have so many ice fishing houses here. And it’s, you know, very, very popular in our area. It’s not, I drive around and you stop and everybody take pictures. They think, you know, they never saw a sauna wheels. And, you know, if it’s possible here, it’s like normal. It’s different. And we in United States, you know, it’s just a different state.

Speaker 1 27:47

Good point. It’s very different. You’re seeing an uptick in Britain, aren’t you? Jake mobile, yeah. So

Speaker 2 27:53

we do some custom, bespoke sauna trailers, and we also work with a finished company that does more mass produced sauna trailers on a sort of fixed design, and the demand is still, is still pretty good. But one of the things that we’re seeing happening, which I kind of talked about, I’ve talked about for the last couple of years, as something that might happen and is materializing now, is all these sauna trailer businesses popped up to be able to offer kind of location based experiences, so on a beautiful beach somewhere, or by a lake somewhere that, like you say, you wouldn’t be able to get planning permission, or, you know, the local government wouldn’t approve a structure. And my sort of hypothesis was that these would pull a lot of the spa goers out of the hotels and spas and resorts, and it kind of kind of has happened. And then a lot of the people, investors with money, are going, how do we bring those guys back? How do we kind of capture what they’ve got and bring it back? And so we’re seeing now this transition to more bricks and mortar wellness facilities coming back of a higher caliber than what was there before, and a lot of this kind of other ship model kind of wellness experiences. So the same people that maybe would go on a day trip to the coast to use a sauna trailer are like, well, if I have something on my doorstep where I can have this kind of wellness experience, or an alfgus ritual, or something like that, then they can access that on a daily basis as well. So my thoughts are kind of that market is plateauing a little bit because more people are not going to keep building these as they’ve kind of, you know, reach that point, but it’s pushing a new wave of funding into better sauna experiences in the city.

Speaker 1 29:46

So the mobile is transitioning to commercial. Yeah,

Speaker 2 29:49

I think it’s like, you know what? You know what investors are like, if they can’t see any proof of concept, then they’re like, forget about it. But if the proof of concept is, there are hundreds of 1000s of people. People going to literally out of their way to these weird and wonderful places to go and use this experience, and they’re booked up all the time they go, huh? Okay, yeah, well, we put one of these in a city is going to be booked up all the time. So, so suddenly it’s becoming, you know, people are putting millions of pounds, many millions of dollars, into these commercial facilities. You would not have seen that five years ago. Great point, great point. It’s helped a lot.

Speaker 1 30:25

Andrew, sticking with your heading over to do you want to say anything about the mobile in your community or your area up in Canada,

Speaker 1 30:32

it’s mostly businesses that reach out to us. And I think over time, the ones that do pop ups, you know, after they drive around, how many times they eventually want a permanent location. And I think, as well, it’s hard to like our mobile saunas aren’t, aren’t cheap. And so for a pop up business to start up, you know, it can take a long time to pay that off, yeah. And so I’ve received, you know, probably hundreds of calls for mobiles, and the conversion on those are pretty are pretty small, but I think it’s a great idea, and I hope there still is that pop up kind of vibe, because I like that, you know, small independent operation versus we’re seeing a huge trend in big resort commercial development where, you know, they’re spending anywhere from five to 20 million to build these massive, you know, Nordic Spas, and so I hope that there still is a place for smaller pop

Speaker 1 31:29

ups. Lovely, yeah, in that. So that was the next topic we wanted to visit on is commercial versus residential. And Andrew and Jake both touched upon the movement toward larger scale project, commercial. Are you, Andrew, involved in building these yourself? Is this a transition, or is this a new avenue for your company? Commercial? And tell us a little bit about it. If it

Speaker 1 31:55

is, yeah for sure, I’d say in the last two years, probably 50% of our revenue comes from commercial projects. I don’t know if it will stay that way. They’re, they’re very demanding projects that you know you’re you work with architects and engineers and consultants for years, sometimes before the project comes to fruition. So there, I think initially, when we were first doing them. They were really attractive, but over time they you really have to be mindful of how much time it takes to be involved.

Speaker 1 32:31

I see a lot of nodding of heads. Jake, you want to jump in on that? Yeah.

Speaker 2 32:34

So we were predominantly domestic, residential. We do an increasing number of larger commercial projects as we grow, but we kind of cap the number that we’re kind of comfortable with doing per year on the grounds that, you know, commercial, big commercial projects, are the kind of things that are make or break. You know, we see it in the UK construction industry. Probably here too, the boom and bust of construction. And the boom and bust and construct of construction is predominant. Isn’t happening on these small construction, family owned construction companies. It happens on these mega projects where somebody miscalculated something by an order of magnitude and suddenly everything is insanely over budget, going on forever, and creates these big kind of black holes. So they’re, you know, high risk, I wouldn’t even say high reward. They’re kind of, we see them almost like flagship product projects. So, you know, they’re the ones, like, people pick up the phone and go, Oh, we saw you guys. Help the guys make the commercial floating sounder, or, you know, the arc down in London, you know, can you build something for me? So it’s like, it’s kind of like a big marketing effort. So you don’t want to do too many of them per year. But yeah, massively multi stakeholder operations where, you know, there’s a lot of we’re very meticulous in what we do. There’s always a very clear paper trail and lots of emails, because in those big construction projects, as soon as something kind of starts going wrong, you got to make sure that your house is in order, because the you know, what’s the word, the crap gets flung pretty

Speaker 1 34:12

do either you guys want to talk commercial, residential?

Speaker 3 34:14

Yeah, like both what Jake and Andrew said. I mean, the timelines of it just makes it very difficult to want to do. I mean, we’re working on one now for over a year. We had two other ones that went and got done in that in that time span. And it’s like this one project we’ve been working on. It’s like, same thing. Jake’s saying. It’s like they, they got to a point and they thought their budget was one thing, and they realized it’s not, and it’s just, it’s difficult to put that much time into it, a year, you know, incalculable hours of consulting and working with GCS and all that stuff. And again, it’s a flagship thing. You know, you do it because, I mean, I like working on it. It’s fun. It’s, it’s great to try and expand what you’re doing to to to that size and scope. But at the same time, it’s, it’s not all. Is worth the chase? Yeah.

Speaker 1 35:01

How about you? Alex, are you doing any commercial at B sounds?

Speaker 4 35:04

And yes, we do mostly residential. But the commercials are getting, like, in the past year, like, a lot, a lot more commercial. But like, everybody’s saying, like, you get into it, you quote one thing, but you get designer GC all the permits. It just takes years, you know, years.

Speaker 1 35:24

Yeah, where’s that residential pain in the ass client,

Speaker 4 35:28

when now? Now it takes so much time, like before, you know, so many emails, phone calls, of your time that you spend in and sometimes it’s not even work. I mean, you don’t even know how to charge that. This is an important, this is really at the end, at the end of the day is like, you know, look at the time I spent. I should have sold two residential, three residential, and, and that’s it. Yeah, right. And so you have to really know, you know, like, in advance, what you get into

Speaker 2 35:58

sauna builders, we love to give this information for free. You know, pick up the phone to any of those. I’m sure we’ll just talk you for hours about it for free, right? You don’t get that in any other industry. I will tell you, my lawyer certainly doesn’t do that. I get a bill when I get an email. You know, it’s and all these other stakeholders, your designers, your interior designers, lighting designers, construction designers, these guys are getting paid by the hour. So when things get messy, these guys are just watching the dollar bills, whereas we’re sat here in the middle giving away this free advice all the time, going like, Oh my God. Like we’re not billing for this time.

Speaker 1 36:33

Totally be ready for your questions. We got a little time here. And before the hands go up, one more topic for the group the future, and we can start anywhere you like. I guess I could ask a very specific question. Is, I could ask, where do you see your company in five years? But I want to take it a little more personal and open your hearts to me. I want to know where you see yourself in this space in five years, relative to where the industry is going to sit. Who’s ready?

Speaker 1 37:07

Sure, I’ll fire it up here. I think going for a balance of you know what? What started us on this journey of building saunas was about sharing something that was very dear to my heart, my family’s in a piece of Lake life. And the question you brought up earlier about, you know, when you build, is it different than normal construction? And at times it’s not, and it turns into just construction. And I think we always have to remind ourselves that we are building something that is, that is different from like, you know, just a home or a deck or a fence. So for us, I think it’s about a balance of, like, staying true to why we started, which is about just spreading sauna for families and for people as a gathering place and health and wellness, but then also what makes you profitable as a business, and you know, combining those two things, and I know we’re for sure going to still be in the sauna market. I don’t know in what form I think you have to react to what’s going on around you. And it’s in this industry. It’s crazy how quick it’s changing. So I’m definitely excited to see what lies ahead. It’s hard to predict that at this point, but I like to envision a future of that balance of doing what you love, you know, making a comfortable living, and focusing on on other stuff. You know, not just work.

Speaker 2 38:46

Jake, five years from now, seems like a really long time. If I look five years back, where I’m sat and what I’m doing, I probably couldn’t have imagined so if I work on that same level of trajectory is going to be something really, you know, unusual and different. If I look at what’s happening today, exactly what you’ve said, there’s a lot of change going on in the world generally. I mean, you know, don’t talk politics at these places, right? But the world’s changing massively every day, and that affects all of us, but the sauna industry is also on this strong uphill trajectory. You know, it’s the the snowball down the mountain that continues to gain momentum. You know, every time five people try a sauna for the first time properly, they’ll go and tell another five people, and so on and so on. So we’re reaching, reaching this really great critical mass kind of point, and so we’re having to constantly rethink about how we can keep up with delivery without compromising on experience. And I think it’s so important what you’ve just said there as well, which is like, I have to come to these events and go and sit. In town and have a chat with you on the bench and enjoy the cold plunge to just remember why I was in this space in the first place. You know, it’s a pullover industry. Let’s keep this suit and tie in the in the cupboard for as long as possible.

Speaker 1 40:15

Alex, where do you see yourself in five years? And B sound as USA.

Speaker 4 40:20

So it is growing like, like everybody’s saying, it is when I started, and five years down the road, a lot more people sauna culture grew so much in United States. And age is different too. You know, used to be, I would say like 30 to 50. Now, like 6070, years old. You know, people are getting saunas, like older people like, not I not previously, and it is good, but we want to make sure we’re delivering a good product. And I just afraid, like in United States, where people see money come from, and now you have sauna blank, it’s all this nonsense. You know that, you know people can have you know you can steer a person different direction. So make sure we do doing a good product. Make sure people have any good experience, and we’re good. We when Right,

Speaker 3 41:14

right, right. Yeah, I think, as as you know, speaking just for the United States, we’re just scratching the surface. As far as what this industry can be. I always like to look back to the fishing industry with fish houses for our, you know, for the mobiles that we, you know, do a lot of, and they say 5% of the country hunts and fishes, and of that, like, what small, minuscule percent actually goes out and buys fish houses. And these aren’t people that are like, like, extremely well up. That’s what they would love to do, you know. And I’m like, think of how much larger the sauna market is for that, you know? And it’s, it’s almost unfathomable that that they could grow that quickly and grow into something that’s just going to, I think, take over the country as far as market, market shut, market size, but yeah, for us, five years from now, we just want to keep building a great product and improving our processes and just, you know, keep keep going the direction that we’re going right now.

Speaker 1 42:21

So So in five years, these four guys will be sitting right here sauna days. I don’t see any macro changes in your lives or your businesses. Well, we’ll see questions from the floor. Let’s start back here. You could ask question for any one of the four builders or introduce yourself.

Speaker 5 42:44

So I’m I’m Shane. This is my second year at sauna days and and enthusiastic selling a user, and have contributed, like you guys said, countless hours of free consulting with people and online and activating with Reddit and Facebook and admin. What made you guys decide to make the jump from sauna enthusiast to sauna business? Was it a part time thing first? Was it a full time diving with both feet? I’ll go. What was that decision?

Speaker 3 43:15

Yeah, so for me, I’ve been Saudi my whole life. It really was more of like several times a year we go to the cabins four hours away, five hours away, you know. And we’d use it up there. And I got to a point my life where I was just in the rat race and all these other stressors coming down. And it just put me in a place mentally that I wasn’t happy with where I was at, you know. And so actually, I met Glenn randomly through looking for a new stove, and went down that rabbit hole and fell in love with the whole process. And I think being able to bring that change of how it affected my life to other people is what really drives me down that path more and more. That’s why I wanted to start doing that full time instead of doing construction, you know, and a couple saunas a year. So, yeah, does that? Does that answer the

Speaker 1 44:07

question? Beautiful. Any other comment from you

Speaker 2 44:10

guys? Yeah. So for me, it was more of a side hustle at the start. So I’d been out to Finland fall in love with the experience it, you know, changed my life, my well being. I have a back injury from, from a long time ago, and from, you know, inflammation and pain management. It was just transformative. So I really wanted to do this, and kind of set myself away to want to build one of these things, and the building journey, you know, my family, who are here today, our easy to convince my father that we should build a sauna more difficult wherever she is my mother, but she went along with it. So we built this sauna. And in that journey of speaking to Finns about what equipment and materials we should use, a decade ago, there was no representation for these companies in the UK, and a lot of them just. Sort of said, well, are you just looking to buy one like, one heater or one order, or do you want to become our distribution agent? And at the time, I was kind of, you know, between worlds, and I thought, yeah, that sounds pretty good. And I set myself away setting up a web shop that could buy and sell this equipment. But it was very much a side hustle I was very early on in my career, you know, no small loan of a million dollars from my father, like Mr. Mr. Trump. So, so I was really from a standing start and reinvesting everything all the way. And I had, I started working in digital marketing because I figured that would really help me be able to sell online. And I came to this point where I was I was heavily involved in the setup and selling of kind of digital marketing services. And I was getting to the point where I was going to the copy room to take phone calls for people who wanted sauna heaters more than people who wanted digital marketing services. And it was getting so difficult, like somebody would come in, and I’d be like, yeah, SEO, digital marketing, and they’d leave, and I’d be like, sorry about that. Yeah, the sauna heater you want is this one and this timber, and it just got to the stage. I was like, I can’t. People are wondering why I’m going, I’m printing so much, you know, people are asking questions about why I’m in there all the time. So I was like, okay, maybe I should give this a go. And I took the gamble. I had very little savings. And I was like, if I, if I can’t make this work in 12 more, like eight months, then I need to find something else to do. And just as my savings finally burnt out, and it picked up enough so it was like, as is often the case in these stories, it was just, you know, on that final month, those final sales, and, yeah, the rest is history.

Speaker 1 46:52

Cool. A couple more questions. Yep, yep. Hi.

Speaker 6 46:57

This is for the panel. Can you, I know you guys are on the structural side, but can you talk a little bit about accessories? Are you seeing people being more discerning with accessories, buckets, ladles, those types of things? It’s a two part question. And then, if so, what? What are you seeing that’s probably these guys.

Speaker 4 47:17

They sell a lot more of those. You want to go first. What was the question again, what type of accessories?

Speaker 1 47:24

How much of a is that of your product mix? Oh,

Speaker 4 47:28

yeah, every, most every sauna, need accessory. And I mean, there’s different accessories out there. And the main ones, what you bucking and Lato and thermometer, is a main accessory that needs in the sauna.

Speaker 1 47:42

Same for you, Jake,

Speaker 2 47:45

you know what the accessories industry is a pain in the backside, right? Because this customer who buys something really small requires the same amount of support and service as somebody who’s almost getting a whole sauna in the UK, there’s this weird fascination, kind of comes from Germany with sand timers. I don’t know if you guys have that here, right? If I have to, if I have to hear and read another email about somebody, sand timer that stops like we it says on the website, this is an analog time measuring thing does not I’ve had emails from people who claimed that their 15 minutes and timer took 14 minutes and 20 seconds. I’ve had I’ve had people that we got a very long letter from somebody who was sort of threatening litigation because the sand had stopped and they’d spent 45 minutes in the sauna. And so, in an ideal world, you know, I would say we wouldn’t do it, but it’s part of the whole package. You can’t, you can’t, you know, be a sauna builder and not offer it. The other difficulty we have is most of the accessories are made in Finland, where sauna is a commodity, and so they’re typically low price, low quality accessories. But the typical English customer who can afford to have a sauna in their home or in their garden wants something a bit nicer, a bit more robust, a bit higher quality. And in this market, really, in the UK, you’ve got two options. You buy them from kind of Finland, or you buy them from China, and none of those things, neither of those options are high quality luxury accessories.

Speaker 1 49:27

Okay, we got we got more questions. Sorry to interrupt. Go but we’re going to try to roll through them quicker, because we want to hear more voices. Who’s next. Go ahead,

Speaker 7 49:38

I just have a comment like you. Four have been fantastic up here. It’s a lot of good information. I see a lot of that stuff going commercially right now. Is it? Well, I guess a question from that aspect, then, do you guys, is it mainly electric that you’re seeing in the commercial industry right now? I think that

Speaker 3 49:55

our, the first thing that we get asked about commercially is, everybody wants gas because it’s you. It’s cheaper in a lot of places to run gas and it is electric. The problem with that is there’s not a whole lot of quality gas stoves out there, and if they are for us, they’re overseas, and so to bring that here is usually extremely expensive, so they generally end up falling back on electric every single time we’ve done it, even though they started with gas and work to that with months again, it was a thing of like going down this rabbit hole and then coming back to a conclusion that, oh, that’s not gonna work. Start

Speaker 1 50:30

over. How about in Britain?

Speaker 2 50:32

So commercially, predominantly electric, in bricks and mortar, the sauna trailer commercial is all predominantly wood burning. Our gas infrastructure in the UK is very good because most houses had it from when lighting was all gas powered. So every home pretty much has gas plumbed in. There’s a few oil guys on oil, but mostly gas. So it would be a good solution, but we’re all very scared of gas. As soon as you mentioned gas to anybody, they just think of a massive explosion. Yeah, and also to carbon monoxide, yeah. So, you know, you and the other thing with sauna heaters is, you know, I see the I see wood burners. I see electrics burning through with heavy commercial usage. The idea of an unserviced gas, emitting thing that people are not going to look after properly, that’s going to rot underneath. May even I’m skeptical, and I’ve seen really good gas heaters, so thank you.

Speaker 1 51:26

Yeah, I might just add something here quickly. In Canada, our building code, we have a national building code, and then each province has a slight different variation of it, and there’s actually hardly any wood fired heaters that meet the standard that the code asks for. So none of them are tested or approved to the standard. So if you read the code word by word, it basically says that you can install these wood burning heaters without a CSA approval on them. Now it happens all over the place. But in commercial applications, I mean, they’re definitely pulling a permit. So unless you have a way of working around the code, you have to go with an electric heater. And with the commercial saunas, the electric heaters we’ve found that is, you can’t pay enough attention to the design of that system, because we’re getting into these big, massive sauna rooms where we’re putting in numerous stoves, and we’re starting to see, I mean, if, if the wiring or something is not done perfect, the amount of juice running through these wires, it’s crazy. And we see a lot of issues with with multiple stove setups in these big saunas, the amount of heat that they generate it, yeah, the amount of detail that has to be required in the design, installation and maintenance of them is, is significant.

Speaker 1 52:55

Great point. Thank you. Another question. Well, thanks Glenn for picking up the bill all the billable hours up there first. Just to kind of add on to this last comment, is, what is your guys’s favorite stove? You know, both wood and electric. You know, not margin wise, but actual use. You know, get

Unknown 53:15

the gloves out. I’ll go first. I’ll skip that question, I

Speaker 3 53:22

don’t think it’s a big secret that we’re big Puma fans. Home craft makes a really great electric stove, and we recommend those a lot because we do mobile so much we don’t install a ton of home crafts. We are getting more calls for that. But, yeah, we’re big Puma fans. There are other other good stoves out there, but for us, the customer service and like, I never get a call back in Akuma, I’ve gotten callbacks on every other stove I’ve ever installed. So it’s a big deal

Speaker 1 53:47

for us. Anyone else, I’d say wood burning. Narvi we gravitate towards quite a bit. Harvey has kind of like the cheaper option, still a good stove and electric we use all sorts. I know home craft is something that we’ve been itching to no and you know what the reason that why we haven’t used home craft is, once you work with a certain brand, and you get to know that brand and how you install them, and the problems that happen with them, it takes a long time. Like, if you have a builder that recommends using a certain product because they use it all the time, you know it’s good to follow that advice, because you get so comfortable working with that manufacturer, you get to learn everything about it. So to switch is always a difficult thing, but we’re working on it,

Speaker 1 54:41

Jake, you work with a lot of brands, and your proximity and relationship to Finland and Estonia is such that you’re connected to those brands and stuff, but you’ve been to America a couple of times now. Tell us about your perspective as it relates to brands.

Speaker 2 54:55

Yeah. I mean, when you ask what somebody’s favorite heater is. I think it’s like saying to somebody, you know, what’s your favorite car? Because, you know, it depends who you ask and what the usage is like. If you ask a kid, they’ll be like, Oh, Ferrari or Lamborghini, or even a big kid, right? You know, ask a family man, and he’ll say, Oh, this is really comfortable. And I like the seats on this totally depends on the setup. You know, how that’s going to be used the budget. And so, you know, I would have to know more about in what particular application before I said, you know, I would recommend this specific one. You know, it’s kind of, it’s kind of learn, learn exactly what you’re trying to get like from this experience. And I’ll

Speaker 1 55:36

chase the Jake. You’re just full of British diplomacy. But what I will

Speaker 2 55:40

say, what I will say, and what you will catch me saying on record is on the European side. And a lot of the Finnish and European brands highly skeptical of American brands, because the idea is, like so new to the party, how the hell can they know what what’s good? Like, they don’t even know what’s good. And then coming over here and trying them out, actually amazing. You know, I’m, you go around, I’m an evangelist for, for the the Kuma stove in Europe, which, you know, when people ask what it’s like, I kind of say, well, it’s different, like Finish, finish and kind of Nordic heaters are kind of like a petrol engine, you know, they they get hot fast, but then they get cold fast. Whereas the Kuma is like a diesel engine, it kind of slowly builds up, but boy, it gives a different kind of heat

Speaker 1 56:27

right on. See, there’s great British diplomacy. Yeah, any a couple more, couple more questions here, yeah, I just wanted to ask you guys that have been in the business for a while. Have you seen movement toward use of a cold element, cold plunge, over time? Has that become more integrated with the sauna experience? And what are you doing to accommodate that kind of a customer request?

Speaker 3 56:58

Right? So for us, it really just started being a question, like when we started deepwave A couple of years ago, it was never really something that people thought about before that we put them in their basements or in their backyard, and it wasn’t really part of the culture. Now, cold plunging has become as much of a health benefit in the wellness space, if not more than sauna in our in the United States, it’s huge. It’s everywhere. It’s blowing up. I think when I started looking at cold plunges four years ago, there was, like three, four companies, and now there’s got to be 30, you know, 40, and so, yeah, it’s getting asked about a lot more. And we usually just, we have some brands that we like, if they want to do it that way, a lot of people go with the simple thing. If they’re looking for a budget entry, they just get a stock tank and fill it up. But yeah, it’s definitely a question. We get quite a bit.

Speaker 4 57:47

How about you? Alex, same, same here is grew so much the cold plunge. It gets a lot more popular. Hot and cold, hot and cold. We sell some cold plunges, but not with a chiller. And it depends where you at two of country. So some states are more by, like California, they have really big on on cold plunge in New York. I mean, there is cold lunches there, but not that much, but it is snow, yeah.

Speaker 1 58:19

And grew up in Canada, you just find the closest Lake, right?

Speaker 1 58:22

Yeah, we, we build a custom cold plunges, and it’s an essential part of our design consult is, Have you considered, you know, your cold therapy. And Glenn, you and I had a great conversation a couple weeks ago about, you know, when you come out of a sauna, like, I like, I always want to rinse the sweat off myself. I always want to cool off. And a lot of people, if you don’t ask them, they won’t think of it, you know, especially if they don’t have experience with sauna, they’re just thinking about sauna. When you bring up, do you have a shout, like, if it’s indoor, you know, do you have a bathroom close by where you can shower, cool off? They that’s the first time that they think of, Oh, is that part of the experience or and we always tell like, that’s a huge part of it. That’s what makes it feel good, is cooling off and then going back

Speaker 1 59:10

in. Well, this is I’m looking out the window over Andrew’s shoulder, and what are we looking at? Yeah, I mean, who’s who’s getting jazzed up to jump in that late after this conversation, so many more questions. We’re almost out of time. We’ll take one more. One one more.

Speaker 2 59:28

Left side of the room, this man at the back has had his hand up for ages.

Speaker 1 59:33

Okay, go ahead. Hey. My

Speaker 8 59:35

name is Colin, first, first time here at sauna days. Excited. I’m curious who you guys sauna with during the week, and what a normal cadence of your own week. You know, sauna for work, sauna at home. Who’s it with? Give me like a Monday through Sunday, time of day. What stove? What heat with? Who? Sure, how long with cold.

Speaker 3 59:56

That whole thing really quickly. So. We I just had a newborn child, but before that, that kind of messed my whole schedule up. Now I’m only about one to twice, once, twice a week right now, but before that, it was like four to seven. We I go in about two to three times a week by myself. Then my fiance, Leslie, she jumps in with me once or twice. Or maybe we switch with the kid so that she can have her time out there too. Otherwise, I’ve got a few friends in my close circle that live really close to us, and they’re over two three times a week, usually with or without me. And yeah, we heat it up. It’s cool, and still takes hour, hour and a half, to get up to temp. Sometimes I’ll cook it longer if I want to really heat up the room and all the wood. But yeah, then it’s in and out three four times with cold shower and or cold plunge, whatever I’ve got going. So, yeah, that’s, that’s beautiful. Alex,

Speaker 4 1:00:49

yeah, sauna can be a real different, you know, sometimes you want to be there alone with your wife or with your friends, you know. So it just, it just, it is so different, you know, like on Saturdays or twice a week, I would get, you know, 510 guys, and we’ll go to, you know, my on my property,

Speaker 1 1:01:09

at your property, explain we’re gonna we’re out of time. But this is so great. I love the question. What a great question to end at, Alex, tell the group about your the sauna that you have on your property. Where is it? When you built it? How big is it? What divide?

Speaker 4 1:01:27

It’s a It’s nine by 11 feet by nine foot high. I have, like, four feet wide benches, you know, so you can fully lay down, you know. And I do have a pond on the outside where you come up, you know, you cut the ice in the wintertime, you know, going back and forth. Nice, big smoker. And for like, when you go, goes there with the Slavic friends, and you have to have, you know, a lot of meat. And it’s like, it’s a one day, whole day thing. So, yeah, but when you open, I love to sauna with my wife. You know, like, I have mobile sauna Park in my driveway, and we light up. And I have three sons, and they were using the sauna since they were, like, one year old, and they invite friends too. So I have, like, it’s on. It’s on a lot of time. How about you,

Speaker 2 1:02:24

Jake, so for a long time I had a wood burning sauna in my garden, which my after a long week, my wife would be like, we have to go in the sauna, and I’d have been so exhausted and tired, and no, no, get in rest, relax. You’ll feel better. And then afterwards, obviously feeling way better. The original G the original Finnmark sauna that we built at my father’s and my mother’s home. We go there as a family, a great place to connect. And big part of you know, if we go home to the family home, we all go in the sauna is that wood burning. That’s wood burning as well. We built an electric at work for all the staff to use. There’s quite a big setup there, and we finished that earlier this year, and that’s seeing more and more usage on a daily basis. So we’ve got showers and stuff there, and then sometimes we’ve done sauna festivals at midsummer, kind of unofficial so we don’t have to do all the health and safety and the security and the paramedics and stuff, but, but still, hundreds of people come along, and loads of families and everything in the middle of summer, and that’s just, you know, going to what Alex was saying about having all these people around going between sauna and cold plunge is just this experience is so magical,

Speaker 1 1:03:39

fantastic. Andrew, what’s your sauna routine? A

Speaker 1 1:03:42

couple times a week, I love to sauna by myself with my partner in the summertime, when we’re at our cabin in Northwestern Ontario, it it’s all it’s just like a part of life there, where all of our relatives that live on the lake, they have saunas, and the sauna runs most days at most places, and the one that my dad built, you know, probably 35 years ago, it’s barely standing up, but that’s my favorite place to sauna. And we’ve it’s always been a place where just family and friends have just come and and gathered. And I think that’s why, that’s what makes out one so special.

Speaker 1 1:04:22

Thank you. Thank you guys. And what a wonderful question to leave the panel with. Yeah, we’re out. We’re we’ll, we’ll talk on the bench, but I want you guys to give a big round of applause. The best, the best sauna makers are sauna takers, and these guys take a lot of saunas, as we all do in the room. So we’re going to keep rolling. Anyone want to leave? You can leave. I want to introduce the saunas that are over our shoulders right here. We’re just gonna take a minute and talk through the saunas that are on pro. Property. If anyone wants to move out, we have another speaker happening. Grant will be in in a couple of minutes. So sauna builders, that was great across many borders. Wonderful job with me on my left, introduce yourself.

Speaker 9 1:05:15

I am Kirk Jensen with superior sauna and 612, sauna

Speaker 1 1:05:18

society. Kurt, how long have you been taking saunas? Oh, gosh,

Speaker 9 1:05:23

10 years now, I guess, like it was introduced to a kind of late at Camp de Nord, which is not too far away from here. It’s actually up in Ely, Minnesota,

Speaker 1 1:05:30

right on. And while we’re rolling on record, we’re still recording right perfect for those listening to sauna talk unable to come to sauna days 2025 you’re going to get a quick profile here from Kurt on the saunas that are happening. Do you want to start in the upper village or the lower village?

Speaker 9 1:05:51

I’ll start in the lower village, if I can. So just over here to my right over there, we’ve got stone Grove sauna, the only barrel sauna on site. And next to them, we’ve got Megan cress has sauna. De Nord, the only female owned, operated sauna on site, and hers is a trailer unit. And then next to that, we’ve got, or across from that, we’ve got a collaborative unit that we’re calling deep steam, I guess, or deep stream, rather, that’s what Aaron hung on it. So it’s a collaboration from Prairie woods, which has been in here. He is not but he did the shell, or, excuse me, did the interior, and then Aaron did the shell, Aaron from deepwave, and then Garrett provided the electric Kuma stove that’s in there. So it’s a three way collaboration on that. So please take some time and go sit in that. It’s really an unusual sound, and I think you’ll enjoy that. Moving down towards the lakeside, we’ve got the deep wave steam Lodge, which they’ll be doing venex sessions, and there’s still a few of those open. I did check just prior to coming in here. So if you’re interested in getting a venex session, please make sure you get those booked, or you’ll get shut out of those, unfortunately. And then what else? I’m sorry, that was the upper village. Yeah, the steam Lodge is down there, north up.

Speaker 1 1:07:08

Quick word on that steam Lodge. I love that sauna. I mean that the heat in there is really special. Right on the shoreline, you can hear the waves. It’s a tent, tent design so it breathes extremely well. And that’s where we’re doing a lot of NX sessions. And then next to that one, we have,

Speaker 9 1:07:28

yeah, so next to that, we’ve got Darren Mays has his north up, the translucent sauna that’s out there. That’s a really nice view from in there. And then Excelsior sauna has one of our modular kits that are down there, so please stop by and see that as well. Did we get the Oh, and I’m sorry, and Lars larsmont unit,

Speaker 1 1:07:49

the brick and mortars, got great spiritual patina. It’s got a wood burner in there, and the benches are well worn. I love the heat in that song.

Speaker 9 1:07:56

Yeah, it is. It is a really, really unique sound of sitting and then going the

Speaker 1 1:08:03

tents. Oh,

Speaker 9 1:08:04

I’m sorry I missed Chad stuff. Yeah, north, north shore as well, on on the platform down there. So please stop down and see those. Then when we get to the upper area, we have get back to it the venic, the other venic locale, which is provided by deepwave Keegan’s group. And then Wisconsin sauna with Bo he’ll keep you entertained over there, for sure. And then next to that, we got Excelsior. Has a really nice transition warming room in there. And then finally, the torch propane, so it’s the only propane fired sound on the property. So let’s see. Please stop and see those. I mentioned the venex sessions. And just as a word from larsmont, Ben and I are sort of the intermediaries for larsmont and the operators. And I know Ben walked in the room,

Speaker 1 1:08:57

yeah, and I call them the sauna techs. And the cool thing about the two sauna techs, Kurt and Ben, is that they’re here to support the sauna vendors of those that really have committed themselves to bringing their saunas on property, but and to open them to us to share right on so you can hit so.

Episode Summary

The podcast features a panel discussion with four sauna builders from different countries – Andrew from Canada, Jake from the UK, Keegan from the USA, and Alex from the USA – who share their personal journeys into sauna building. Each builder discusses how they transitioned from other careers to become passionate sauna entrepreneurs, driven by personal experiences and a desire to share the wellness benefits of sauna culture. They explore various topics including the differences between indoor and outdoor saunas, the growing trend of mobile saunas, and the challenges of commercial versus residential sauna projects.

The builders unanimously agree that the sauna industry is rapidly growing, with increasing cultural acceptance and potential for market expansion. They emphasize the importance of maintaining the authentic spirit of sauna traditions while adapting to modern needs. Key insights include the prevalence of indoor electric saunas, the rising interest in mobile sauna experiences, and the complexity of commercial sauna projects. Their discussion highlights not just the technical aspects of sauna building, but also the deeper mission of promoting wellness, relaxation, and community through this ancient practice.