Redtail Overland evolves from rooftop tents to luxury $600k Skyloft Vans built in Boulder

Annie and Ty Tatro founded Redtail Overland in 2019 to make a better rooftop tent. Six years later, the couple is building $600,000 vans.

“It was cool on our SUV, but you still couldn’t stand up. You couldn’t go to the bathroom. You couldn’t cook a meal,” Ty said of the original product. “If it was rainy, it was better than the tent was. But it still left a little bit to be desired.”

The attachment, which the couple calls the Skyloft, is a carbon fiber-shelled triangle with windows, insulation, electricity and the like. It was originally a pop-up tent on steroids.

They made and sold four of them before pivoting. The first two sold for $25,000 and the last two $35,000. At the time, Annie said they also had about 30 other orders in at the time. But because it cost them twice as much as they expected to make the Skyloft, they were at a crossroads.

“The only way to get the price down to a level that we thought it should be was to massively scale this with several hundred units a year or we needed to send it offshore and have it made in a different country that has cheaper labor,” Ty said.

“We would have had to get investment to do either of those routes, which we weren’t necessarily opposed to,” he continued. “But we just invented this thing, and the market for this didn’t really exist. There was no market research on it, no data.”

At the same time, one of the early Skyloft customers asked Redtail to install it on their van. Similarly to how the Tatro’s build out their vehicles today, they had to cut an opening through the roof to allow adventure seekers to access it within the cab.

After the pair saw how it looked and the ease of use, Redtail Overland had a new direction. The Skyloft Van was born.

“When we put it on the van it was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’m talking about,’” Ty recalled. “We can have this penthouse loft and look at all these beautiful views but then also have all the amenities that a van gives you.”

That was around two years ago. Since then, Redtail has shipped out four vans, ranging from $565,000 to $600,000 depending on add-ons. The Tatros and team of 10 others put a Mercedes-Benz chassis through four phases, installing in-house carpentry, upholstery and, of course, the Skyloft on top.

Though the sticker price is shocking to some, the Tatros invoke the “Field of Dreams” mantra they learned while making an even more expensive outdoor vehicle.

The couple met while working for the EarthRoamer, the Dacano-based maker of $1 million behemoth expeditioners. During his more than a decade working there, Ty rose to president, while Annie became a marketing and sales executive in her six years with the firm. They both left in 2019.

“We approached it from this philosophy that it’s going to cost what it costs,” Annie said. “Our careers have told us that when we build things like this without a budget that we’re able to make something really cool and really unique and that no one else is doing.”

“If you build it, they will come,” Ty added. “So we built this wild thing.”

They hope to iron out the process at 1750 55th St. in Boulder over the next several years before deciding if they want to grow more. The 8,000-square-foot space Redtail works out of is enough to make around eight vans a year, and they already are booked through 2026.

Annie, who manages the sales side of Redtail, plans to open up the phones for 2027 orders at the end of this month or early October.

She’s unsure how much, if at all prices, will rise with the 2027 model. RedTail imports a significant amount of inventory, and costs rose around 6% across the board in its most recent order.