123: Glen Reid of Futura Trailers brought his innovative idea of a lowering trailer to reality
Description
Glen is from New Zealand and his dad actually used to own a trailer company. His dad sold the company in the mid-eighties and it was a couple decades before Glen got back into trailers. After high school, Glen got into construction and went off to create his own construction company. Glen then moved to Dubai and did construction there as well. Over the next decade, he built a very large business with around 700 employees.
His next adventure went down a completely different path. He took his wife and two small children to the United States. They bought an RV and toured the US for 6 months to take a break from it all. After the adventure, they moved back to New Zealand and Glen decided to get back into building trailers. He had bought a race car and struggled with loading and unloading it. So, he decided to fix the problem himself! He started with a motorcycle trailer that lowered to the ground to make it easier to load.
The next phase was building a single-axle trailer that was capable of carrying a small car. Eventually, he created a tandem-axle trailer that could carry a full-size vehicle. At one point, they were making 50 different trailers and things were getting more and more complicated. After a trip to SEMA, he realized that they needed to streamline operations and focus on their core products. They shed 48 of their 50 different trailers to do this. Now, they only focus on the products that provide the most value.