Some companies are built by design. Others just sort of happen. That was the case with Conquest Manufacturing.
“Our company was originally called Challenger Home Builders, and was established in 1956 by my wife’s grandfather George Sawatzky,” president and co-owner Vaughn Stephenson recalls.
“Back in those days, George, his boys and son-in-laws kind of did everything to make a living. One of the things they did was road construction. Their crews needed a place to stay when they were doing jobs, so George bought old trailers for them to live in over the summer.”
Once construction season ended, Sawatzky sold the trailers – for three times what he originally paid for them. That sparked a brainwave. “It didn’t look that difficult, so they started making the units on their own. Things just kind of evolved from there,” Stephenson says.
