12:00a.m. 7th May 2008

Janelle Hasler and her son Michael, with one of the Jarrah caravans produced at their Cooroy factory. Photo: Geoff Potter/N20399

The words “can’t be done” are not in Janelle Hasler’s vocabulary.

So it was probably no surprise that when a salesperson at a leading caravan centre in Brisbane told her and husband Terry almost two years ago they wouldn’t find the van they wanted anywhere in the country, her reaction was: “Let’s build one ourselves”.

Not only that, she suggested they go into business and make them for other people as well.

“It took Terry about 15 minutes to think about it. Then he said, “I’m ready for a change ... let’s do it’,” Janelle said.

Terry had been a builder most of his life to that stage and Janelle was volunteering at Tewantin High School.

After six months of planning, in February 2007, they opened Cooroy Caravan and Trailer Centre in a shed on Jarrah Street in Cooroy.

Janelle acknowledged there was more than a hint of anxiety about how things would pan out.

“We’d costed the parts down to the cent, but that was the extent of our business plan,” she admitted.

“Our point of difference was going to be custom-building the vans ... I guess we thought we might sell two or three a year.”

The first customer was from South Brisbane and the van, manufactured under the Jarrah Caravans brand, took about four months to build.

Unfortunately the Haslers made the mistake of leaving the finished product on display in front of their shed. They were devastated to arrive at work one morning to find the van vandalised. The electricals had been stolen, timber panelling taken and the floor needed to be replaced.

Thankfully that was the end of the bad news.

The business has now finished and delivered two more vans, and has an extraordinary 16 more on order worth about $1.5 million, to be delivered before the end of the year.

Terry and Janelle have negotiated with the owner of the shed to custom-build an additional bigger one on a vacant block he owns next door. Staff numbers are now up to 11, including son Michael, which has helped cut construction times in half.

The good news is the orders have shown so sign of slowing down.

“People are still coming in and ordering despite knowing they can’t have one until next year,” Janelle said.

“We had a couple in from WA last week and someone from Tasmania before that ... we’re just really, really stoked about how it’s going.

“I would expect we’ll double our orders again by the end of the year.”

Janelle put the success down to people wanting a van tailor-made to their needs.

“We don’t want to build two vans the same. We had two brothers-in-law come in – their wives (who were sisters) had both died – they wanted a big fridge for the beer and fish, and somewhere to put the crab pots. We had to design and build the van around that,” she said.

“It’s been difficult and very stressful to start with, but we were always confident in the product.

“To see the look on people’s faces when they see the finished product makes it all worthwhile.”