Next: Corinne Watson is, literally, thinking big in small spaces
PHOTO / Fred Field
Corinne Watson, owner and co-founder of Tiny Homes of Maine in Houlton.
Corinne Watson likes to say she’s been drawing floor plans and sketching home designs on scraps of paper as long as she can remember. Born and raised in Smyrna, Aroostook County, the daughter of a Verizon linewoman, she was the first in her family to go to college, earning a degree in electrical engineering (with a concentration in microelectronics) from the University of Southern Maine. She has been an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor, Smith & Wesson and IDEXX Laboratories. Yet she left all of that to co-found Tiny Homes of Maine with husband Thomas Small, who is the design engineer and operations manager. She wanted to own and build a business but also address homelessness and the issue of affordable housing. She was also a strong advocate for a recently passed Maine law, LD-1981, which allows tiny houses to be registered and transported on the road. Orders for tiny homes have doubled during the pandemic and the company has an 8-month backlog of orders.
Mainebiz: Which came first, the idea to start your own company or the idea that tiny homes would be a great business?
Corinne Watson: We spent several months researching how to best build a tiny home before beginning construction. After a year of late nights and weekends building the tiny home, it came out beautifully! Seeing our hard work and determination unfold in the success of this project created a sense of achievement that I did not get at my day job and inspired me to start Tiny Homes of Maine. This first tiny home we built, the Chickadee, is featured in our logo.
MB: How do you account for the frenzied interest in tiny homes, with books, YouTube videos and Instagram swarming with them?
CW: There is no great mystery as to why tiny homes spark interest. They are affordable, aesthetically appealing, portable, and energy efficient. I find that more people are opting for less expensive living situations and fewer material objects in favor of traveling and new experiences.
MB: How did you decide on Houlton as a HQ for Tiny Homes of Maine?
CW: My husband and I both grew up near Houlton and our family still resides here. Also the cost of building in northern Maine is less than the cost of building in southern Maine, so the decision to come home was easy.
MB: You’ve been an engineer at some big companies. How did those jobs prepare you for this?
CW: I earned a degree in electrical engineering from USM, but acquired real, on-the-job training at each place of employment. Everyday use of what some might consider basic skills of fast typing and using spreadsheets became second nature. My career took the path of process, or manufacturing, engineering, which involves working with people and equipment to make the manufacturing process more efficient and to make the operator’s jobs easier.
MB: What’s it like now running your own business after experience at much larger corporations?
CW: I’ve learned more in the past four years than at any of my previous jobs. Running one’s own business requires a versatile skill set and the ability to learn on the job. It is a lot of responsibility, especially when it comes to hiring employees. One of the best things about owning and operating my own business is that there is no bureaucracy. At previous jobs I would have to get the approval of 10 different people. It was inefficient and difficult to make improvements.
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