ASHLAND – Ashland resident Kenny Oberholtzer, 85, loves to have his grandchildren and great grandchildren over to his house. His large backyard gives them a chance to run around, play and jump on the trampoline he installed.
Oberholtzer ran into a problem, however. It turned out that mowing a lawn with a trampoline in the way was much harder than it looked. His son, Kurt Oberholtzer, along with other family members would have to move the trampoline over so they could get underneath it.
Although he wasn’t the kind of person to ask for help and was used to doing things on his own, Kenny Oberholtzer asked his son to build a contraption to make it less of a hassle.
As it turned out, it wasn’t easy to come up with an idea. For an entire year, Kurt Oberholtzer came up with different concepts until he finally invented a roller for the trampoline. The success of his contraption led to him and his daughter making a business out of it.
Much like a wheelbarrow, the Tram-Rolr lifts one side of a trampoline and the weight shifts to a wide roller that helps the trampoline glide across the lawn.
In 2020, trampoline purchases spiked due to the pandemic and families needing social-distanced outdoor activities. Kurt Oberholtzer’s daughter Kenzie Oberholtzer thought it was the perfect time to launch their business.
“People couldn’t travel (and) go on vacation, so they had staycations. People were educating their kids at home… So trampoline sales have gone nuts. And this just happened to work out to be perfect timing with this whole COVID pandemic,” Kurt Oberholtzer said.
The Oberholtzer family are used to doing things with their own hands. Kenny Oberholtzer grew up on a farm and his father was an architect who built houses.
“I was brought up to do it yourself. That way you have some money, you can take a fishing trip and fish,” he said, followed by a hardy laugh.
He brought his children up to be the same way. When Kurt Oberholtzer was a kid, he didn’t know that people would pay others to come to their house to fix plumbing and electricity.
“We’ve always put roofs on our houses and Dad was in the store and lock-it business for years,” he said “…And, as a family, we put shingle roofs on these buildings and installed the garage doors and the partitions. We did it all.”
Kurt Oberholtzer doesn’t plan on stopping now that his family has started making a profit off of his inventions. He and his daughter already have plans to continue to grow their business beyond Tram-Rolr. Thanks to his father, he now has a new passion to make more niche inventions that many would overlook at first glance.
“This has been a complete family effort. Dad’s the one that challenged me to come up with my own thing,” he said “…The kids have been involved and family… and (we) had different people try (tram-rolr’s) out, so it’s not just me—it’s everybody.”
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