Blu homes raised $12 million to get started and is currently raising another $13 million to grow the business.
04/12/2011- East Longmeadow - Blu Homes - Exterior of one of the finished units at the Blu Homes company factory in East Longmeadow EAST LONGMEADOW – Walk into one corner of a cavernous former aircraft factory at 330 Chestnut St. in East Longmeadow and it feels like a neighborhood – a sleekly designed modern neighborhood where the homes environmentally-sensitive bamboo floors.
The homes are model homes for Blu Homes, a maker of environmentally-sensitive prefabricated homes that does its design and administrative work in Waltham but its manufacturing in a 80,000-square-foot factory across the street from Lenox American Saw.
Besides hosting Pratt & Whitney during World War II, the space was also once home to a packaging machinery company and to a Hasbro warehouse
Blu moved in about a year ago and had 15 employees by July 2010. Now it has 40 workers including electricians, plumbers welders and carpenters. The company has plans to expand its work force.
“We have had a surprising number of sales,” said Maura G. McCarthy co-founder and vice president of sales. “It feels there is a lot of pull from the market right now.”
The company sold 16 homes in the first quarter and expects to sell about 70 by the time the year is over.
That sounds like a lot, McCarthy said. But she pointed out that there are about 250,000 new home starts a year nationwide.
“So we are only capturing 70 of them,” she said. “It’s a small number in that context, but it is big for us.”
McCarthy said the recession has made smaller homes and energy savings trendy.
“It’s cool now to raise chickens,” she said. “There is a back-to-basics mentality.”
Founded in 2007, Blu boasts 60 homes built already, about 30 on each coast of the United States, according to Blu’s press materials. They’ve recently placed one in Berkshire County and there are Blu homes in upstate New York.
Blu Homes are built with steel frames that fold out, allowing for larger more open spaces and more windows. They are heavily insulated with homeowners often saving 50 percent on energy costs.
“These houses are like tanks,” McCarthy said. “When you close the door, it feels solid.”
Prices vary according to size and design. The Origin model, which ranges from 18-feet-by-24-feet to 18-feet-by-48-feet in size sells for $95,000 as a shell or $125,000 for a fill home.
The Breezhouse model which is 2,295 square-feet and can have three-to-four bedrooms and three bathrooms on one level sells for $495,000. Two-level homes are also available as are add-on rooms for use as offices, studios or bedrooms.
Blu grew from research done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rhode Island School of Design, she said. The brain trust is in Waltham. But the space to manufacture is not available there.
She said Blu came to East Longmeadow because the site has a 250-ton crane left over from a past tenant making it easy to ship out completed homes. There is also a competent and skilled work force.
“A lot of factories failed because the workers didn’t care and couldn’t show up,” she said.
McCarthy, who comes form a venture capital background, said Blu raised $12 million to get started and is currently raising another $13 million to grow the business.