Throughout the summer, Soapbox will profile each of the eight finalists in the Artworks Big Pitch competition, which offers artists, makers, designers and creative entrepreneurs a chance to claim up to $20,000 in cash prizes, as well as pro-bono professional services. The competition concludes August 27 at the American Sign Museum with the eight finalists each giving five-minute presentations to a panel of judges. You can read Soapbox’s article on the Big Pitch here.
Magic exists. We just have to choose to let it into our lives. You can be fairly certain of that after meeting Django Kroner, founder and owner of the
Canopy Crew.
Launched in November 2013, The Canopy Crew is a custom tree house building and tree care company. As a business owner, Kroner is quite green, but when it comes to tree care, construction, rigging and woodwork, he has several years under his belt already.
At the age of 19, Kroner moved to Red River Gorge, Ky., to pursue his passion for rock climbing. While there, he began working at a cabin rental company building timber frame cabins and living in a tent. Eventually, he decided that he wanted to build a tree house to get off of the forest floor. He spent three years living in the treehouse.
“Living there brought an amazing sense of contentment. No matter what the day held, as soon as I’d go up in the tree house, it’d be a good night,” Kroner says. “Having friends over and seeing how it inspired them made me want to share the magic of tree houses with more people.”
So he decided to leave Red River Gorge, though he still returns frequently, and head to Cincinnati to learn about tree health here to complement the building and rigging skills he learned while in Kentucky.
Now with the Canopy Crew, Kroner is able to build tree houses that not only are safe and sustainable, but also interact with the trees in the healthiest manner possible. He has projects that span the Southwest Ohio/Northern Kentucky region, from Yellow Springs to Eastgate to, of course, Red River Gorge.
“I’m working on developing several tree houses, potentially a tree house village, down at the gorge,” Kroner says. “That way people from around the area can come and experience the amazing perspective that comes with life in a tree house.”
Django became involved with the Big Pitch competition through participating in
Artworks’ CO.STARTERS program.
“Artworks has been a huge help for me and my business,” Kroner says. “Through CO.STARTERS and now the Big Pitch, they’ve provided me with some great expertise that relates to me. Starting a business on my own means that I have a thousand questions, and to have something besides Google is huge. If I win the competition, I think that will help me get somewhere that would otherwise have taken three to four years to get to. And if I don’t, it’s still opened up this mentality for me that I can just get after it and start making things happen now.”
Check out these other Artworks Big Pitch finalists:
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