A photo near the entrance to one of his company's four warehouses shows a younger Ekman waking up in the back of a cluttered white 1981 Ford Econoline. He bought the van in 1990 from a junkyard in Corvallis for $1,550 and transplanted the interior of a broken Westfalia shortly after. The home-on-wheels paired well with his migratory lifestyle, which included traveling the Pacific Northwest as a product rep for brands like the North Face and Rip Curl, and living in the van in a friend's driveway for $60 a month during downtime. When he sold the van a year later to a surf shop owner for a $3,500 profit, Ekman realized converting used vans into budget campers had potential.