Rob Licht: Custom saunas known the world over

Lansing resident Rob Licht has been building saunas for over 25 years, and over the past several years, he’s grown quite a name for himself in the trade under his business — Rob Licht Custom Saunas (roblichtcustomsaunas.com). As he described, it was a long road to get to where he is now, and he’s excited for what the future holds for his business and line of work.

Licht grew up in Trumansburg, about 10 miles as the crow flies from his business’s current location in Lansing. As he described, his history with saunas started with his skiing hobby back when he was a teenager.

“There was a cross country ski shop in Podunk, which goes right outside of Trumansburg, started by a Finn,” he said. “They had a sauna over there that was built by a much older Finn that was one of the oldest saunas in the county. It was built in 1935. And so, I was good friends with the family. And so, I started taking saunas over there when I was a teenager.”

In Finland, saunas are very popular, Licht said, and there’s a whole culture revolving around enjoying them together with other community members, which was what Licht was particularly drawn to.

After graduating from high school, Licht went off to college, eventually earning his master’s degree in fine arts from Cornell University. After that, he worked for 12 years as a professor at Ithaca College, and during those summers, he did building work for various trades. Throughout that entire journey, he never stopped thinking about saunas.

“Starting about 1995 was the first sauna I made,” he said. “And so, in the summers, I would make one or two a year working in the summertime when I wasn’t teaching. And then teaching ended around 2002, so I went full time into just doing trade work, doing building construction and fabrication.”

Not long after, Licht started making saunas on a far more frequent basis, which he said combined a wide array of skills he had learned through his trades work, such as welding, metalwork, masonry and woodwork.

“I dabble a lot in different trades,” he said. “Working on saunas, I was actually able to bring all of that together. So, there’s metal working, I weld a stove, … the woodworking, oftentimes there’s cement work, stucco, stonework. So, I was able to bring together all those skills that I had accumulated as a sculptor, as a builder, as a tradesman. And so, it’s kind of a perfect little niche.”

While at first, he was doing other work in addition to sauna building, as saunas became more and more popular, he shifted to doing that full time. But even then, he was building outdoor or in-home saunas, not the mobile saunas his business has become so well known for. That didn’t start until 2013, when he met his now partner, Scarlet Duba.

Duba approached Licht, asking him to build her a mobile sauna, a concept Licht had been contemplating for a while.

“My first sauna experience was at Williams Lake,” Duba said. “The sauna was right next to the dock. And so, all winter long, we had the sauna going. You can run in, and they will keep the water free from ice [so] you can jump in. And I just got hooked, and then when we moved, I didn’t have that anymore. And there was nothing like it. I tried all the gyms, nothing like it. And then, I couldn’t live without it. So, I found Rob.”

Duba wanted a mobile spa because she was renting at the time and had a lake house to which she was planning to bring the sauna — two common reasons others cite when telling Licht why they want a mobile sauna these days.

“It’s a really great way to be able to take it anywhere and have access to different sites, even take it camping,” he said. “It’s like having a little trailer. … And the only reason people are sitting in mobiles is because, sometimes there’s permit and zoning issues. So, someone might own a lakefront property, but there might be a setback of 150 feet. And so they want to actually put their sauna next to the water. So, you can park it there, then you can move it.”

After Duba showed off her sauna to friends, family and fellow community members, more people rushed in asking for one of their own, and that’s when Licht’s business really took off. Still, it would be a while before he ended up at his current Lansing location.

“For a couple of years, I was bouncing around because I had lost a shop,” he said. “And then, I had nowhere to work. So, for two years, I actually had a lot of my stuff in a storage unit, my tools were in a storage unit, and I’d have to go to the storage unit doing site work.”

Licht said he loves working in Lansing now, especially since he’s now a resident. He said the industrial area where his business sits is perfect for his line of work, as “we know we can make noise.”

Whereas lots of other businesses saw a significant downturn when the pandemic hit, Licht was in the perfect business to not only survive but thrive in the age of social distancing.

“Boom, the pandemic hit, and suddenly, it’s like, phone’s ringing off the hook,” he said. “Business just took off.”

While the pandemic increased demand for saunas, it also made it difficult to keep up. Especially in the last year, contractors and builders have had swamped schedules, as Tompkins Weekly has covered before, which means Licht has struggled with labor just like so many others.

“I can get people to help me, but either they’re not skilled or just not interested in working,” he said. “For what I do, … one day, we could be doing woodworking, could be doing welding, could be working with cement. There’s just so many different materials and processes that I employ. It’s hard to find someone who’s good at some of them.”

Still, the lack of available builders, being such a widespread problem, also led to new opportunities, like selling plans for saunas so folks could build them themselves.

“People all over the place are desperate for information about how to basically build your own,” Licht said. “Because of the pandemic, everyone started wanting their own sauna at home. And of course, all the builders, we’re incredibly busy. All the builders are just super, super busy. So, people are doing more DIY just out of frustration. … So that’s been great, being able to share my expertise all over the place.”

And it’s not just locals increasing the demand for Licht’s saunas and designs. Licht said he’s gotten calls from all over the world. Licht attributed his business’s popularity to a few factors, like the increased use of saunas in fields like medicine and sports and the unique experience his products offer compared to something like saunas found in gyms.

“The sauna is a hot room, but it’s not just a hot room,” he said. “It’s heated by rocks. And so, there’s a heater, but the heater heats the rocks, [and] the rocks heat the room. So really, the more rocks, the better. So, a lot of the gym saunas, a lot of the home saunas or motel/hotel saunas have just a small little container of rocks. So, with woodfire heat, or some of the new electric heaters, you have mass quantity of rocks, and then part of the experience is also being able to throw water on the rocks.”

To date, Licht has built over 100 saunas, most of which have gone to local residents. Check out his work at the previously listed website, on Instagram at @saunasbyrob or on Facebook at facebook.com/CustomSaunas.

Lansing at Large appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.