Two Roads, One Van
Chad Perce
In 2013 , Chad helped launch Freedom Conversions with his business partner Clint Drawdy and more of their closest business allies. Clint's wife, Jennifer endured a life saving surgery that required the removal of part of her colon. Much like people afflicted with Crohn’s Disease, colitis, or those recovering from colorectal surgery, Jennifer requires frequent access to a restroom to get through each day. People suffering in these ways often do not go places or do things due to the fear of not having a restroom at a moments notice. The goal of Freedom Conversions was to provide a vehicle with a bathroom so that people could go through life with freedom and not having to worry about where a bathroom may be, because they'll always have one.
Grant Wilson
In 2017, Grant Wilson founded VanGoOutdoors in St. Augustine, Fl. He has a long history of tinkering and building. He began automotive work 20 years ago and has built up quite the resume. He built the first ever V8 Exocet, designed and built winch mounts and lift springs for Offroad Subaru, was a key leader in the Pensacola drifting movement and organized drifting events in Saudi Arabia while serving in the US Air Force. His passion for faster and more capable vehicles turned him to the Van Life where he quickly became one of the most well known builder in the industry
Slowly people began coming to Freedom Conversions for more camper style builds. In order to gain more knowledge and skill, the team connected with Grant. After working together for a while, Chad and Grant agreed that merging their collective skills into one business would help achieve the overall goal of helping people get to where they wanted to go.
Where We are Now
We took on the van world one step at a time. We moved into a small shop with just enough space to fit a couple vans and two desks for office work. Despite the small amount of space and make shift administration area, more and more people flocked to our shop wanting their vans up-fitted. We were in our first location for about a year and within that time we went from two guys making it work, to two guys making it happen, three van builders, an office manager, and two people on our marketing team.
As our team grew, so did the volume of customers we were receiving. In October 2020 we finally out-grew the little space and were ready for something bigger and better that would take us from just another small shop to leaders in the van world. In our new space we were able to grow our team from eight people to fourteen, which has allowed us to become better and more efficient builders. With a shop allowing for five vans to be worked on at once, we can take on more business and feel more confident while building. We also have a fully stocked showroom where we keep a wide selection of products ready to sell to customers when they come in to see us.
Although we haven’t been around for too long we have been able to accomplish things we never thought we would within our first year of business, and all of that is thanks to you guys. Without our customers and supporters, we wouldn’t be able to do what we love.
