As this article is written, Chad Henry of Chad Henry Fire Pits is giving notice of departure from his former position as business development manager with Coca-Cola. He’s had a great run with them, more than two decades, but knows it’s time to embrace his growing fire pit business more fully and give it the full-time attention it needs.
Operating as Live Oak Fabrications LLC, Henry’s fire pit business — which includes building barbecue smokers, custom wood heaters and “pretty much anything anyone thinks of” — started by accident, back when Henry was brainstorming ways to keep high school soft drink machines more secure. In 2004, he built a workshop and started creating security cages for drink machines, which turned out to be “100% effective.” After sugary soft drinks became less popular, Henry found a new use for the shop: building fire pits. The first one was for his mother, and the next thing he knew, other people wanted one, too. “Never in a million years did I think it had the potential to become what it has,” Henry mused.
Soon after he’d impressed his loved ones with his new craft, a close friend advised Henry to try and get his product into an outdoor goods retail shop in Oak Park, Georgia. The idea took off easily — though the owner was selling a similar product, he chose to switch to Henry’s. This was in 2013. A few years later, Henry and another friend loaded about 16 pits onto a trailer and hit the open road, in search of more interested retail establishments. “We went around the state of Georgia, and we wound up in six or seven locations that day,” Henry recalled. “Most of those locations we still have today.”
These days, Chad Henry’s business continues to gain momentum. He picked up more locations last year, and the sky's the limit now that he’s quitting his nine-to-five.
The company builds patio pits for those who’d rather sit around the fire and traditional pits, plus cooking attachments. Their business philosophy is simple: to create products that will last throughout the years, using brand-new bowls for the pits, which Henry said “never need replacing; kids and grandkids will use them as they are passed down.”
And for those who are looking for something more custom, Henry can address those ideas as well. “We are not one size fits all — we can create pretty much anything you want,” he said. “All the customers have to do is bring us the idea and give us something to go on. We make it happen.”