A Guy Who Makes A Living Building Treehouses
Roderick Romero has made a thriving business out of our love for leaves--he makes treehouses. It sounds like a gig for aspiring entrepreneurs in elementary school, but Romero isn’t building structures out of old plywood, cardboard, rope and hope. His tree homes can cost as much as $60,000, and they attract clients such as actress Julianne Moore and fashion designer Donna Karan. He has traveled as far as Italy and Morocco to build treehouses, and his creations are listed in the Neiman Marcus catalog. Tarzan didn’t have digs this good.
Romero’s business grew naturally. He built his first treehouse for an art show in 1997. He built his second treehouse for his brother in North Bend, Washington. It had internet access, and that’s when Romero began to recognize the potential. “I had done four or five and was really enjoying this, and people kept calling, so I kept doing it,” he says. “It wasn’t any sort of conscious move to focus on treehouses. It just turned out that way.”
In 2001, he started Romero Studios, which has grown 20 percent every year since. In 2007, he and his wife, Anisa, are poised to start their own furniture line and open a store near their home in New York City. Meanwhile, Romero is constructing about four treehouses a year, as well as creating immense sculptures and doing major landscaping projects for residential clients.
Romero admits he’s already planning a treehouse for his 16-month-old daughter, Petra. “All my clients have some child in them,” says Romero. “They start off saying, ‘Oh, it’s really for the kids,’ but it’s the adults who eventually move into the treehouse. They don’t just see it as a little place for the kids to play in, but something the entire family can enjoy together.”
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