Sales Manager, Financial Controller, Administrator, Owner

Amy Airey

Amy's an organisational force to be reckoned with. Her background in early childhood education, and hotel management set her up perfectly for the many hats she wears in the Build Tiny Team. Amy's involved in many things here a Build Tiny, including quoting, accounts, procurement, client relations, health and safety to name a few. Her passion for baking never goes amiss, and she's probably the most popular person in the work shop, being that she stocks the cookie jar AND pays the wages! As a client of ours, you will get to know Amy from early on as for most enquiries, Amy is your go-to person. 

Tiny House Designer BDes BAS

Karen Flett

Part biker-chick, part sophisticated designer, Karen has a background in small space architecture - both in New Zealand and the US. Karen is normally found working remotely from her home studio in Wellington with her pup Bella curled up at her feet. Karen has a passion for extraordinarily small spaces, falling in love with airstream motorhomes while living and working in the US, she even wrote a book about it! -  Living The Airstream Life. Karen does an excellent job of listening to our clients needs, an interpreting that into design language with beautiful and liveable tiny house designs. Karen is a busy bee and on-top of her work with is, is also working towards her Masters of Architecture.

Tiny House Builder

Hayden Airey 

Being a family business it has been great to get another Airey on board. Hayden, Jason's charming older brother helped us out during a busy time as a contractor. When a full time position became available we immediately offered him a permanent role. Hayden is a great fit for Build Tiny, as he is a skilled joiner and an all round handy good guy. Everything Hayden builds is always to a high standard, he's a bit of a perfectionist, which is great for our clients. Hayden has fallen into a niche as our in-house roofer, so when you cant find Hayden around the workshop, it pays to look up! Originally from Waihi, he now calls Katikati home, where he lives with his two school age children. When Hayden isn't working on a project in his shed he is out camping in his retro caravan, or fishing out of his inflatable 'Blowie'.

Apprentice Cabinet Maker

Bridget Taylor

Bridget is a budding cabinet maker currently working through her apprenticeship with Build Tiny. She's smashing the assessments and course work all while contributing to the great work of our cabinetry team building and installing cabinetry in multiple tiny homes at once. 

Director & Owner

Ian Stevens

Having retired from his demanding yet rewarding career in the Kiwifruit Industry at the end of 2017, Ian now offers his skills and experience in a governance capacity as a director of Build Tiny. He brings with him a wealth of experience in business systems and operations which are applied to the production of tiny homes. While not involved with the business on a day-to-day basis, Ian is an integral part of the team. When he's at the workshop, he's usually researching new equipment and systems or tinkering with a spreadsheet. Ian can often be found behind the wheel of his Ford Ranger with a tiny house in tow, having attended the delivery of numerous tiny homes across the country. 

Director, Head of Design, Marketing Manager, BDes IntAr, Owner

Gina Stevens

Gina's had a passion for small space design since completing her Interior Architecture Degree in 2010. Working professionally as a graphic designer since then, Gina took the plunge to design and build her own tiny house in 2016/17, lured by the freedoms of Tiny House living. She has since developed a deep understanding of the challenges facing the NZ Tiny House Community, as well as the practical requirements for building tiny homes in New Zealand. Gina is enthusiastic about helping others design their dream home, putting her 3D modelling and drafting skills to use designing beautiful custom homes for Build Tiny. Gina now focuses on all Build Tiny marketing, as well as designing custom tiny homes, talking with clients, and developing the business.

Tiny House Builder

Kelvin McKeown

Kelvin's been part of the Build Tiny team since April of 2019. Building buses in his past role, Kelvin brought a diverse skill-set and can-do attitude to the Build Tiny workshop. As part of our core build team, Kelvin is involved in almost all parts of the tiny house building process, bringing peoples tiny house dreams to life. His high standard of workmanship fits in well with our values as a company, as does his witty workshop banter. Kelvin also features in the occasional tiny house video tour, as does his adorable pup Maisie, and charming daughter Jorja. Kelvin is a recently retired local soccer veteran, and now gives back to the local community by teaching children's soccer. 

Tiny House Builder

Tom Farr

Tom's not the first of the Build Tiny team to relocate to the sunny Bay of Plenty for the lifestyle and opportunities. Tom moved to Katikati with his wife Karen and youngest son Oscar. Aucklands loss is Build Tiny's gain! As a skilled tradie with a background as a mechanic, Tom has turned his hand to building and construction in recent years, becoming part of our expert tiny house building crew. He's a bit of an all-rounder having represented NZ as a triathlete, showing his strength of character, and commitment to success in all that he does. 

Tiny House Builder

Jay Partridge

Jay joined our team in 2022 with experience as a roofer, as well as bench-top and cabinetry installation. He's an energiser bunny who's often found working when he should be kicking back having smoko. Jay put's his hand to almost any task and does so with exceptional attention to detail. Best thing of all is Jay is super passionate about tiny homes, though it's likely that he's secretly stealing all our trade secrets so he can go and build his own dream tiny house for himself and his family! 

Workshop Manager,

Simon Farrell

Simon plays a key position in the team as the workshop manager, overseeing everything from quoting to production across our cabinetry and tiny house building facilities. He was a professional golfer in a previous life with a background in building and operations for the construction industry. He's lived in NZ long enough to be considered a local, but his faint english accent is still strong enough to confuse most!

Cabinet maker 

Ray Bavage

We've had the pleasure of having Ray on our team since Jan 2019. His extensive background as a qualified cabinet maker made Ray a perfect fit. Over the last 20 years Ray has worked on the land as an orchard manger, tree surgeon, and business owner before going into the building sector. Ray has applied himself to custom furniture making, boat building, cabinetry, joinery, tiling, house renovation and now tiny house building. He loves it so much he spends his spare time renovating and building homes for his family. Ray and partner Maree who are also proud grandparents, with four children between them. With all his knowledge Ray is the go-to-guy in the workshop, and is always generous with his time teaching others new skills. Ray's quick-wit never goes a-miss - you can see it for yourself in multiple tiny house video tours that Ray features in!

Cabinet Maker

Jon Taylor

Jon's is an experienced cabinet maker with a background in fitting-out super-yachts. It was this past experience that set Jon up perfectly for a career as a tiny house cabinet maker, as he's used to building small things inside small spaces! He's also an avocado orchardist in his spare time which keeps him very busy. 

Owner

Jason Airey

As one of the original founders of Build Tiny, and a former Director, Jason was our first Workshop Manager, leading the building team for the first 4 years of the business. Prior to that Jason was career builder who'd been in the industry for around 20 years. His workmanship is second-to-none, having worked in a variety of sectors, predominantly residential building, earthquake repairs and assessments - giving him a well-rounded understanding of the industry. Jason handed the reigns over to the rest of the team in 2020, and went on to build a home for his family, and pursue new opportunities in his career. Jason is still an owner of the company and now acts in a governance position, as well as getting stuck in with the odd client delivery.