Welding started off as a hobby for Montgomery resident Brian Wilke, a trade he picked up from his father-in-law. But in 2006, Wilke, with the help of his wife, Angee, transformed his family’s automotive air conditioning business into Wilke’s Badass Pits, building custom fire pits, smokers and grills.
“I just find a pass
ion in what I do now versus the air conditioning (business),” he said. “It was fun for a while but you know you like to do things that are going to make you happy.”
Wilke said the company builds a unique product that can’t be bought at other stores.
“We can make them short, tall, big (or) skinny, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “We can build pretty much anything.”
He said one thing that he has learned from working in other businesses and by listening to people is that it is important to have a quality product rather than worrying about saving a few bucks because eventually someone else will end up building a better product.“(We) try to build a good product that’s going to last not something from overseas or you know basically down grade our product, we’ll never do that,” he said. “We’ll never make a lesser version of what we do to save on money or cost or anything like that.”