Why and how we came up with this design
As a family, we owned a motorhome for six years and put tens of thousands of kilometres on it around NZ. It is such a great way to see and experience the country in a unique way. Ours was a 7.4 m motorhome and was fine for the four of us while our children were young.
.jpg)
The thing I disliked the most was all the cool places we just couldn’t go in a large motorhome. Not just the beaches and gravel roads, but even just parking in a town we were visiting. You would have to find two car parks.
In some supermarkets, there was no way you could manoeuvre into a park, and it made logistics a constant battle, always thinking about where you could park or go. Driving such a large vehicle was also painful, and we had to put plans on hold as it was just too dangerous to drive a large vehicle in high crosswinds.
The short story is, I wanted the freedom of a small van but the space of a large van. I spent years looking at slide-outs, pop-ups and awnings, thinking there had to be a better solution.
I started making little scale models of different ideas eight years ago and have been having a play on and off ever since. About two and a half years ago, we started building and testing more seriously, and the Roomygami product is the end result.
I was lucky to have a bunch of friends I’ve worked with over the years who had all the skills needed to pull this project together. To say we’ve had fun doing this is a bit of an understatement.
Rather than designing just another new camper van, we have purposefully made this a product that allows van designers to get creative with how they use the extra space. There are so many options, depending on the types of adventures you want to have. We are very excited to see what sorts of designs our partners come up with.