Meet Andy Huss of Kansas City

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andy Huss.

Hi Andy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Kansas City is the sports architecture capital of the world. Matt Keys, our fearless leader, worked at all the big ones. 6 ish years ago, Matt left his job at sports firm A and went to a local K-12 education firm. At the time he wanted to spend more time with his family and see his kids grow up. So he started to grow a sports market at this firm. Sports design is in his blood. His right hand man Trent followed him from sports firm A and helped start to grow the sports market. At this time they realized a niche and untapped market: Small College Athletics. Large sports architecture firms require high budget projects so they don’t really go for Small College Athletics jobs. But Small College Athletics clients still want to do projects, improve their facilities, and enhance student/athlete experience on their campuses. At the K-12 firm Matt started to grow his sports market in the Small College Athletics World and grow his team of sports architects. The only problem was that we were at a design firm only. We realized that we were just like every other design only firm out there. We would draw something up, get a third party estimator to estimate the cost, and then come bid day it was a crap shoot to get the project bid on budget or not. So a few of us left and joined a sports design-build contractor to become a full service design-build with architects and contractors under the same roof. This model practically sells itself. an expert team of sports architects backed by a promise to build exactly what you see in the visualizations. It is so successful that it caught the attention of a huge multi-billion dollar manufacturing company, Tarkett and their many umbrella companies that make up Tarkett Sports. They offered our group of 8 people to start our own company “Ampere”. the differentiator is now that we have a third branch to offer being the manufacturing side. we now single source design, construction, and manufacturing to offer owners a full package. ampyourdesign.com

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been a fun road. over the course of 3 years we built a top talent team specialized in sports design architecture. we truly work hard/play hard but the number one thing we believe in is our people and the loyalty we have to each other. some of the struggles have been finding the right construction partners to hitch our wagons to.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We bring good design to an underserved and underfunded market. Anyone can design great buildings with $20M, $50M, $100M. But the fun in what we do is how do we design something impactful for only $3M? $1M? How can we provide the owner with as much information to make an informed decision? What sets us apart is we understand this market better than anyone else. We base our designs in reality and fiscal responsibility and we work with our trusted contractors and manufacturers to inform decisions and communication.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
We have learned to challenge everything. Why is no other architecture firm doing what we do? It’s so simple but that doesn’t make it easy. We have learned that the typical model of selling design services is a broken process for owners and everybody loses at the end of the day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ampyourdesign.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ampyourdesign
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ampyourdesign/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ampyourdesign