Jazz Wheelhouse
- Jun 21
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 21
Founders & Partnerships Director at ODX
As part of our Around The Campfire series, we sit down with Jazz Wheelhouse, Founder and Partnerships Director at ODX. Jazz has one of those CVs that makes you wonder if she ever sleeps: a converted 1978 fire engine, an LPG gas qualification, and The Gin Fayre, which she built from nothing into Scotland and the North of England's largest touring gin event. These days she runs Earles & Co alongside ODX, and she's channelling everything she knows into making this event the one the UK adventure travel community has been waiting for. We talked impulsive decisions, why the tat sellers aren't getting in, and what it felt like to walk into Abenteuer and Allrad and realise something was missing back home.
You’ve converted a decommissioned 1978 fire engine, qualified as an LPG gas fitter, built Scotland and the North’s largest touring gin event from nothing, become a fractional CMO, and are now on your third van. Most people pick a lane. What is it with you and starting things from scratch?
Impulsive is probably the most accurate word for it. I get a gut feeling things are going to work out and I just go. When I was 19 I wanted to be a journalist. Nobody would give me an internship, so I decided to make my own magazine and put Richard Branson on the cover of the launch issue. A Virgin Media flyer had dropped through my door that day, so I called the number on it and asked to speak to Richard. Naturally, they thought I was nuts, but I kept calling until I eventually reached his PA on Necker Island. I ended up with an interview as he boarded his private jet.
If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
The fire engine was the same. I saw it on Gumtree and bought it over the internet without viewing it, and the next day it was on my drive on a low-loader. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it when I bought it, but as soon as it landed, I knew it was going to be a camper. It was the first vehicle I converted, and it started my love for travel by road.
At the end of the day, it comes down to this: if I don’t know how to do something, I figure it out. I did the gas qualification because it was the same price as hiring someone, and discovered the person I’d previously paid had done it wrong anyway. I have the weirdest CV of probably anyone I know, but I will never be bored.
The Gin Fayre was 30 events and 25,000 attendees in just under 4 years - and the pandemic shut it down right at the moment it was working. That’s a genuinely brutal experience. How did losing that shape the way you’ve approached building ODX?
The Gin Fayre was born from getting sacked from a job I hated and needing to do something fast. I built it from nothing and I loved it, but running ten events a year across Scotland and the North takes a toll people don’t see. By the time the pandemic hit I’d already been dreaming about getting the fire engine on the road, and honestly, the events were getting in the way. When it closed, like a lot of people in events, I didn’t get government support. I just had to rebuild.
I swore I’d never run events again. And then ODX came along. I know how that sounds, but it just feels different - it matters in a way that’s hard to explain. So here I am, putting my heart and soul into it, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
You lead partnerships at ODX, which really means you’re the one deciding which brands belong in the room. What does a genuine fit actually look like - and what would make you say no, regardless of the budget on offer?
I’ve been to a lot of shows - overlanding, festivals, trade events - and there is always a certain kind of trader. I’m going to call them what they are: the tat sellers. People that have nothing to do with the community you’re trying to build, but they’re cheap and they fill a space. They are not coming to ODX.
We’re fifteen months out and I’m starting at the top. I’m talking to big brands, some that have never come to the UK before, because those are the names our community actually cares about - the ones UK overlanders hop on a ferry to go and see. The reason they haven’t come here before is simple: there hasn’t been a show worth coming to. I think ODX changes that.
There’s something in the way you work — hands-on, self-taught, always building the thing rather than waiting for someone else to build it first. Does ODX feel like another expression of that, or is this one different?
Yes, completely. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think, an app would make this easier, or their marketing is terrible, I could sort that. I love getting involved. But if I followed every idea I had, I’d never get anything done — and I’ve been that person. What I’ve learned is focus. Kay is very helpful with that. She’s my right hand woman, in life and in this event, and god knows I need it.
When I put my mind to something, I can build a fully formed plan overnight. I know exactly how I want ODX to look and feel, and I haven’t believed in something this much since The Gin Fayre. That’s how I know it’s right. Nobody else was building this, so I suppose I had the right idea at the right time — though if I’m honest, I’ve been sitting on it for a while.
In January 2027, you and Kay are hitting the road full-time again. ODX opens in September. You’re building an event that celebrates the exact life you’ve chosen to live - what do you most want someone attending for the first time to feel when they walk through the gate?
The first time I walked into Abenteuer and Allrad, the big overland show in Germany, I genuinely took a gasp of air. It wasn’t even the exhibitors that got me - it was the campsites. We spent two days walking around, looking at builds, talking to people. They were so welcoming to total strangers coming to peer at their rigs. The community was everything, and some of those builds were mind-blowing. Coming from UK shows, I thought: this is heaven on earth. I didn’t know this existed.
If I can get to even a fraction of that - the warmth, the sense of community, the feeling that you’ve stumbled into a place full of your kind of people - I’ll be happy. And I think our audience will be too.
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