Vito Russo

Vito is the founder, CEO, company visionary, and the self-elected team cook at VanHomes.

After more than a decade of working in the hospitality industry in the family pizza business, which later grew to become a franchise chain, Vito continued to follow his entrepreneurial spirit. From starting the original Gosford Showground Sunday Markets to bringing Go-Ped motorised scooters to Australia, to joining forces with his brother importing and exporting Exotic, Prestige and Performance cars around the world - Vito has played a hand in many different business ventures.

Following this and having family in the building and engineering industry, Vito also found himself working in the building industry, focusing on designing and building family homes. Vito's passion for designing and building stuck with him, and he soon found himself creating the dream of VanHomes in late 2008.

I realised I have always had a passion for building and creating things.  At the same time, I was looking at building a granny flat for my Mum, and even with my past building experience I still came across all types of obstacles and red tape making me think there has to be an easier way to build a granny flat.

Eventually, with encouragement from his wife to follow his passion, Vito created VanHomes. He used VanHomes to solve his own need of building a granny flat for his Mum, and saw the opportunity to expand this to make housing more readily accessible for families across Australia. 

Vito soon found that VanHomes was incredibly unique in how it created such a positive impact on his customer's lives. In some cases, it was a solution to their housing needs that they felt was impossible to achieve. This continues to provide Vito with a level of job satisfaction that he had never experienced before.

His early business experience in the hospitality industry where customer service is paramount and working with the family in business has created the cornerstone of the VanHomes company culture where it prides itself in offering a product and customer service that goes above and beyond customers' expectations and where all VanHomes team members are treated like family. 

Having transitioned from the early days of being on the factory floor "working on the tools" building the VanHomes himself, Vito now works in the office, ensuring VanHomes continued growth and success. Despite this, Vito still likes getting back on the factory floor as much as he can. 

When not being the CEO at VanHomes, Vito enjoys his time entertaining family and friends, going for bush walks with his wife, spending time building Go-Carts and Cubby houses with his two youngest children, teaching his oldest son the ropes in business, or just chilling out designing the next thing to build.