GUELPH – Three brothers from the Fergus area have been cooking up plenty of business for their Guelph-based fire pit manufacturing company.
Adrian, Eric and Ken Tamminga began Iron Embers in 2011, building fire pits out of a garage and bringing the products to a farmers’ market in Orangeville.
Fast forward a decade and the company has grown, and now operates out of a 10,000 square foot facility on Airpark Place.
With skyrocketing interest in outdoor products when COVID hit, Eric said the company saw a big boom in business.
“We went from two employees to 35 employees over the span of about a year and a half,” he said. “(We) moved into the shop, tooled up, scaled our distribution, scaled a whole bunch of stuff.
“That was kind of our launch point to get the business to a real thing.”
It got to a point where Eric quit his engineering job, and focused on Iron Embers full-time, taking advantage of an opportunity on something he’s done since childhood.
Eric recalled making one with his dad 20 years ago for their home, and it was a hit with visitors.
“Every time people came over, we had pretty good compliments on it,” he said. “(They) were like ‘you should make these and sell them and whatever, I would love to have one like this cause it's super heavy duty, you can’t find anything like this on the market.’
“Eventually we did that and tried it, and people liked it, and here we are.”
But why Guelph?
“It’s kind of in the middle of where we all live, except for (our administration manager) Erica (Moore), who lives way up north (in Orangeville),” said Eric, who now lives in Cambridge.
A lot of their employees are in the Guelph area as well.
It’s also a central location for reaching dealers and suppliers, and is close to the 400 series of highways for distribution.
Products have been shipped across Canada and the United States.
Seven different styles have been introduced over the years, and can be customized and personalized based on a customer’s needs.
They’ve also been able to find footings in stores, including select Home Hardwares.
But Eric admits it’s “kind of a bummer” that Guelph, where the company is based, doesn’t allow for outdoor fires.
“It’s a little weird to be making fire pits in a city that doesn’t allow us to use them,” he said. “But most people are taking them to their cottages and stuff like that. They’ll buy them locally and then trek them up north.”
Despite that, the plan is to stick in Guelph for the foreseeable future.
“Whether we’ll be in this building, (we’ll see),” Eric said.
“I imagine we’ll outgrow this space at some point in the next several years, and looking to expand a bit. We’ll kind of see what comes.”