Home Grown Business

By Greg Stiles, Reporter
April 23, 2007

Editor’s note: This is one in a weekly series of profiles on locally owned and operated businesses in Southern Oregon.

What do you do and how long have you been doing it?

We design and manufacture shelter, playground, event and greenhouse domes. We make about 200 domes a year. We’ve been doing this since 1979 and began the business in 1980.

How long have you lived in the Rogue Valley?

I moved here from Madre Grande Monastery in the Mountains above San Diego in 1980.

What inspired you to go into this line of work?

I took a dome-building class at Pima Junior College in Tucson, Ariz. I made teepees when I was at UC-Santa Cruz. I was learning to make shelters and put the knowledge of my dome-and-teepee building together with the inspiration of my fellow monastery people. I moved here with a couple of friends to the Colestin Valley and decided to inaugurate our work as a business. At the time, I was a midwife and looking for something to do and we were good at it. We had figured out the process by the time we had housed the whole monastery. Originally, there were three off us who founded the company, but Jan and Jim Cannon moved away after a year and I’ve grown the company ever since, with a lot of help from my friends.

What decision or action would you change if you could do it again?

I would’ve started from the beginning making dome sizes using (eastern) sacred architectural calculations, creating harmonic resonance. Right now I’m having to backtrack because my measurements were in feet and inches, rather than fine-tuned measurements like those used in India thousands of years ago.

What’s the toughest business decision you’ve made?

When I’ve had to fire someone and I have had to fire people for dishonesty in the past.

Who are your competitors?

I’ve sold domes to people in other countries and then they try to start their own company. I could name four or five globally — Zen Domes in Germany is one.

How do you define success for your business?

When my clients and employees are happy and the business is not in debt. I don’t borrow money and we’ve grown from a little family business to a corporation doing $2 million to $3 million in annual sales.

What are your goals?

We’re starting a global outreach, connecting with dealers and doing some licensing. We’re gearing up to make frames in other countries — Portugal, Mexico, Japan, Russia, France, Australia and South Africa among others — because they are too heavy to ship and eventually when their marketplaces are developed we’ll make the covers there as well. My oldest son, Christopher Lejeune, helped found our sister company, Obscura Digital, which does media projections inside the domes. So we have major corporate clients — Sony, Pioneer, Mercedes — all the car dealers — and do movie sets. I have seven kids, who are part owners and help with the business, if they are old enough. In terms of succession it will be mostly employees.

What training or education did you need?

I took a dome building class, but geometry studies were useful. When I was in college they paid me to run student activities, one of which was a simulated societies game.

What’s your advice for budding entrepreneurs?

I would say take advantage of the online international community for communication because it’s the best way to communicate about your project to the rest of the world.

History of Pacific Domes

“Necessity is the Mother of invention”

R. Buckminster Fuller: In the 1940’s, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician and cosmologist, R. Buckminster Fuller set his intention to solve mankind’s housing problem. Through replicating “nature’s own co-ordinate system” found in all spheres from planets to molecules, and through the understanding that gravitational forces are spherical (not linear), the geodesic dome was born. His designs superseded the structural integrity of any architectural structure yet made. In 1970, the American Institute of Architects awarded “Bucky” a gold metal, acclaiming the geodesic dome as “the strongest, lightest and most efficient means of enclosing space known to man”.

Pacific High school: In 1969 a dome building project began to house 60 students and teachers at an “alternative” high school in the California hills. Utilizing Bucky’s designs, 17 domes were made, experimenting with as many materials as possible; plywood, aluminum, sheet metal, fiberglass, Ferro-cement, cedar shingles, asphalt shingles, and even nitrogen-inflated vinyl pillows. This project became a focus for the counterculture’s dome building movement of the late ’60s/’70s.

The Domebooks: By 1970 it was obvious that there was enough interest and information to compose a publication about dome building. The Whole Earth Catalog’s production facility was utilized to create Domebook One and later, in 1971, Domebook 2. These books birthed a global movement utilizing Bucky’s dome technology. In 1973, Shelter was compiled. It is a “how to book” on hand built housing, with a chapter called Domebook 3. Some of the people from Pacific High school were also involved in the manifestation of the Domebooks.

Pacific Domes: In 1979, Madre Grande Monastery in Southern California had a shelter need for its members. A dozen domes were made, using steel tubing and sail cloth covers. As the beautiful setting was in the high mountains, windows for view and woodstove outlets were designed into the covers creating an ideal shelter system. A year later many of us moved to Southern Oregon. As the domes were successful and the back to land movement still strong, in 1980 a business was born! Over the past years, the need for larger and larger domes has maintained a constant growth. The larger domes have opened up the uses to include both shelters and Event structures. Due to the extreme portability, Pacific Domes are the strongest portable structure known to man. Thanks to the internet, this technology is spreading around the globe.