Collapsible cabins create a storm of online interest in China and overseas

What's the shortest time a home can be erected on a flat open space? Thirty minutes may be the answer. It takes only three or four workers this amount of time to construct a "foldable" house which can be ordered online, delivered by truck and packed away at a future date.

Chen Junhu, a 50-year-old entrepreneur from Anhui province, designed the collapsible cabins that can be erected anywhere without traditional concrete foundations.

One of Chen's most popular foldable designs arrives as a flat pack. Similar to a paper lantern effect, the roof is pulled up, snapping two hinged walls into place. The two other walls, stored in the floor space, are pulled up and locked into the joints of the roof and walls.

Other designs involve walls and roofs being folded out from a prebuilt central rectangular structure placed on-site.

Chen said the maximum area of his movable, collapsible homes is 36 square meters. "The scale of the house relies on how much material a 6.8-meter truck can carry," Chen said.

Inspiration

The idea of a foldable house was hatched in 2014, when Chen was working as a welder in Huainan, Anhui, and saw the demand for temporary housing for migrant workers at construction sites in his neighborhood.

"I'd worked in masonry before," he said.

"The prefab houses would be thrown away and become waste when the work was done. It's economical to offer foldable and recyclable houses for workers in a construction project because they can reuse the modules when they shift to other sites."

His vision of improving the accommodation of migrant workers and reducing waste produced by the discarding of the prefabs, took time to realize. Though he had experience in the field, the junior high school graduate had no professional training in the building industry.

"I sketched the folding house at first, but clients wouldn't take a serious look at my draft because it's not a standard design," Chen said.

He bought a computer in 2014 and learned to use basic design software from books and videos. Chen applied for a patent for the foldable house the same year.

He sells his foldable houses on his online store on Taobao, China's largest e-commerce platform. Customers make orders online and outline their requirements to Chen and his team. In addition to fittings and utilities-such as windows, doors and electricity-lamps and other interior decorations can be included.

"We have discussions with customers and design the collapsible houses according to the climate and customs of the region. The designs for people in the northern and southern parts of China are different," Chen said.

'Solid structure'

Weighing 2 to 3 metric tons each, he said the houses can cope with wind speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour in inland regions. In coastal areas, pilings are installed in the four corners of the cabin to fix the structure to the ground

Chen added that the folding sections of modules are reinforced with bolts to stabilize the structure.

"Some customers question the safety of foldable houses as it looks like they will fly away with the wind. There's really no need to worry about their solidity. A truck also occupies a small piece of land, have you ever seen one fly away with the wind?" he said.

The houses start at 300 yuan ($43) per square meter for the most basic model, but customized versions can cost more than three times as much.

Chen and his team usually take dozens of orders per month, according to Wu Cuili, who manages the online store.

Ninety percent of their customers, including construction companies and individual buyers, found the online store through posts by Chen on Douyin, the short-video platform also known as TikTok. A 15-second time-lapse video showing a villa unfolding gained 18 million views in just four hours.

"Customers from Africa, the Middle East and Australia also ordered our products after they saw the videos on TikTok," Chen said.

Delivery inside China takes a week from the time the advance payment is made.

Overseas orders take longer to fill, with the cost of the shipping often equal to the cost of the foldable home. Wu said: "A special requirement of an overseas order is that a shipping container at least 12 meters long is involved."

Copycats

But as business booms, Chen's team faces the threat of copycat products, even though he has registered the patents for his foldable homes in China.

"They disassemble the modules to study the designs and sell the duplicates in their own stores," Chen said.

The cost of pursuing legal action against the unlawful imitations is high. "Usually, we report to the local administration for industry and commerce but sometimes no results follow," he said.

To keep his competitive edge, Chen keeps coming up with innovative designs and testing new materials. Several prototypes are needed before a new foldable villa is launched online with each one costing more than 50,000 yuan.

"The expenses incurred for the experiments account for 50 percent of our profits, but 90 percent of those innovations don't bring back any direct economic benefits," Chen said.

However, he said that only through innovation can his company make a product that has true value.(Source: China Daily)