Off-Grid Ready: Rossmönster’s Next-Gen Overland Rigs

A craftsman, an engineer and a dog walk into a bar … three hours later, the bar’s been remodeled, the lighting is solar-powered and a four-legged ambassador is born.

The origins of Rossmönster aren’t far off from that story. The company name was derived from Co-founder Ross Williamson (the craftsman) and his Swedish roots (mönster loosely translating to “build beautifully and simply”), with a logo standing as tribute to the brand’s first shop dog, Thor. Alongside Co-founder and CEO Luke Farny (the engineer), the journey to a successful overlanding company didn’t need a road map — it needed the perfect rig. What started as a passion project in 2016, built off Farny’s personal $1,800 Ram cargo van, sparked a 10-year dive into a direct-to-consumer custom van shop.

“We built our first van in the driveway of one of [Williamson’s] jobsites and listed it on Craigslist, and it sold the very next day,” Farny says. “So, we bought and built out two more vans that sold rather quickly, and we said, ‘You know, this could be more fun than our day jobs.’”

From Driveway Builds to a Growing Team

After hiring their first two employees, Farny and Williamson took on a shop space and clients seeking custom Sprinter vans, long before #vanlife made its way onto the scene. Today, the duo’s vision has transformed into a nearly 50-person team pushing a rugged lineup of truck campers and Sprinters with Scandinavian-forward style, sold through a dealer network. The newest debut, dubbed Havn, aims to fill a market gap for off-grid travelers who don’t need the extreme off-road focus of the company’s Baja truck camper.

“What’s special about what we do and how we do it is we manufacture everything here in-house, and get to keep a tight grasp on quality,” Farny says. “Having all those skills in-house means there’s a lot of innovation that opens doors to be able to launch new products.”

Even with a rich history of direct-to-consumer work, Longmont, Colorado-based Rossmönster’s updated wholesale model now makes up roughly 75% of its business. The company currently has a dozen dealer locations densely populated in the West, with eyes on reaching 25 by year-end, including a few dealers on the East Coast. Giving customers the opportunity to drive the company’s rigs locally while considering their price tags —which start at $233,983 for the Skye van — has a been factor in choosing to adopt a dealer network.

“We’re newer in the pond of dealers, but we’ve been building vehicles for 10 years and our service network is alive and well, tried-and-true at this point,” he says. “We support the customer directly on the backend along with our dealer network. With these vehicles, you definitely want people to be comfortable to go out and use them, off-grid and all over the world — so primarily they have to be durable, but secondarily they have to be serviceable and supportable.”

Showing up for customers from both a design and customer support perspective is the true key to success, Farny adds, and being able to provide that level of service means experiencing the lifestyle yourself.

“Not only myself, but most of our team is out camping in these vehicles and staying in them a lot of nights per year. Having that tight feedback loop from an innovation standpoint really makes the product better.

“It also gets us out there. We get to connect with our customers, hear their feedback, support them and really just be part of the community instead of them just owning another vehicle.”

Such was the advent of the recently launched Skye Van — Rossmönster’s Class B amalgamation of a decade of “best of” requests from hundreds of its customers.

“In the custom world, we get to see so many cool and crazy and wacky ideas,” Farny says, adding that the company just wrapped a project working with a Light to Medium Tactical Vehicle (LMTV) in its custom-build channel.

“The magic is in distilling those ideas into something that’s going to be durable and functional long-term,” he says. “It’s being able to draw little bits of the hundreds of vehicles we’ve built into a solution. At the end of the day, there’s not one vehicle that’s perfect for everyone — but creating a platform that is multifunctional and lends itself well to most uses is really what we created in the Skye. That’s the direct product of us listening to our customers.”

Engaging the Overlanding Community

Community is a big part of Rossmönster’s culture — from owners’ rallies and camping events to the Overland Expo and other gatherings, the company finds taking part in their customers’ outdoor experiences is a surefire way to sustain a successful product.

“We are definitely seeing a lot of people move out of their first or second or third Sprinter van and into the trucks,” Farny said of customers’ feedback on trends. “We’re really excited to see customers taking that leap and experiencing what that platform has to offer.

“Generally, the ethos of the way we design things is building vehicles that are holistically set up to get you out there and be successful on day one. Our vehicles aren’t coming stripped down where you need to add $50,000 worth of accessories to be camp-ready.”

From a systems perspective, Farny says Rossmönster’s offerings are designed in a way where most issues are able to be resolved with a call to a service tech, from even as far off the beaten path as South America.

“That doesn’t mean you might not have to seek service for something, but a lot of your traditional RV service points have either been eliminated or at least brought to the surface to be way more accessible.”

Innovation Backed by In-House Expertise

It’s obvious Rossmönster prides itself on being the ultimate subject matter expert on its own product — including keeping much of its material sourcing and servicing close to home. The company manufactures nearly all components in-house, such as cabinetry, electrical and plumbing, a full fabrication shop and more.

“We’re very proud of our supply chain. We source American parts as much as possible — even Colorado parts as much as possible. Obviously we live in a global economy and there’s limitations with that, but we’re actually quite lucky that the tariffs haven’t affected us majorly yet, and likely won’t because we are manufacturing American parts.”

That sentiment fairs well for the next big stop on the road map: a new 40,000-square-foot shop. The company’s original space was nearly 24,000 square feet.

“That’s going to support the production of the Baja and of this new product [Havn]. We’ll have more bays inside, and our service center will grow a bit, too. The idea is this will be a destination where people will be able to come and see the vehicles, seek service and be a hub for our customers here in Colorado.”

Currently building 12 vehicles a month, Farny says the new capacity will increase production volume to an additional vehicle per week of its newest product — and possibly even more important, give the company’s 10-plus shop dogs more space to run around.

“That’s just a big part of enjoying where we work. [The dogs] contribute a lot to the culture and who we are at the core,” he says. “We have a very skilled and talented workforce here. We share the passion for this space and so creating an environment where we all want to show up to work every day has been core from the start.

“We build every day, but we also get out there and use [the vehicles] together on the weekends and as we travel for shows, wherever the rubber meets the road.”