Exclusive Tents
50 employees 

Growing up in a city didn’t keep Paul Zway, a former game ranger and founder of Exclusive Tents, away from nature. As a child in South Africa, he had a menagerie that included a jackal, monitor lizards, an owl, and over 200 snakes. “My mother was a saint,” he recalls. 

Paul started Exclusive Tents in 2005 so that others could connect to nature without sacrificing luxury. “Glamping was unknown outside of Africa,” Paul says. “So we developed a market and a name for ourselves.” The Tucson-based company–a partnership since 2018 with the Johan Maree family–designs and creates quality tents that are four-season “alternate living structures.” Customers range from large resorts to celebrities to people using the tents as temporary homes during renovations. “Tent living is gaining traction. It gives people the ability to have a movable asset,” Paul says. He and his wife have themselves been living in a tent for nine years.

An avid traveler, Paul designed the business to be virtual and mobile. When sons Zane and Anders Zway and Brian Grisham joined the company, it was crucial to be able to collaborate from anywhere. “They all take off, into the desert, on site visits, but we work no matter where we are,” Paul explains. Brian conferences with clients via Google Meet, and the team works together with Google Docs and Sheets. To reach customers around the world–including the fast-growing U.S. glamping market–they’ve used Google Ads since 2006. “It brings us exposure and leads,” Brian says. “We’re able to get creative with keywords to find customers in different ways.” Their website now garners over 30,000 views a month, but the company’s priority remains connecting clients with nature and conserving the natural assets of a site. “Our whole thing,” Paul says, “is to effectively integrate your living space with your natural environment, without harming that natural environment.”