Keyboard Builders' Digest /
Closing down Pikatea - A Farewell
Jack and Bethany discuss their company history as they close Pikatea, their 5+ year keyboard and macropad store.
Published December 11, 2024
Introduction
Hello and Merry Christmas everyone! I'm Jack, and my wife (Bethany) and I have had the amazing privilege of running our store, Pikatea, making and selling macropads and keyboards to the wonderful keyboard community for the past 5 years. You may know me from my popular under-mounted macropads (GB5 and FK1) or some of my wackier-than-usual keyboards (FinnGus, Longboi, Funky60, Board Board, Richard). I'm the type of person who can and does turn anything into a keyboard.
Recently, we started a new chapter of our lives with our twin boys being born. They mean the world to us and have shifted our priorities to the point we have decided to close our store. I want to explain why we are closing in more detail, thank you for your support, talk about Iowa keyboard meetups, and take a little "trip down memory lane" by telling you our story from start to finish.
Our last day to order a product of ours is December 20th, so check us out if you are interested.
So, why are we closing?
We are closing for a few reasons, some more obvious than others. In April we were blessed with twin boys, Lucas and Timothy. As you can imagine, they take up a large portion of our time and have shifted our priorities. They mean the world to us and I don't find as much joy in making macropads at 3 am when I could be catching up on sleep. The baby phase is only temporary (that is until we have more!), but there are other factors beyond just time. I refuse to be an "absent" father physically, and equally important mentally, as they grow up.
Another equally valid reason is profits. Or should I say, lack of profits. We joke about it because Bethany legitimately has a degree in "non-profit" organizational management. From 2020 to 2022, we had enough profit within Pikatea to pay our rent and bills and save up for a house down payment. At the start of 2022, I started noticing a sharp decline in sales so I decided to step back and downsize. I took a full-time position as an automation engineer and continued to make macropads on the weekends and in the afternoons. Since then, it's been mostly a downward trend in sales. There are a lot of factors in this, some in my control and some outside of my control.
Another reason is risk, the stress it brings, and the headspace it takes. Running a business is risky and it's surprisingly easy to screw something up and put yourself into a hole that's hard or impossible to get out of. If I make a manufacturing mistake and it costs too much to fix, that could mean having to take out a loan and I don't want to put myself and my family into that situation. This can be very stressful and occupy the majority of my thoughts throughout the day. I've always struggled with this from the beginning. My wife is gracious and understanding, but it can be taxing on relationships and sleep.
With the combination of little profits, babies, risk, and stress, it doesn't add up to continue. As much as I love designing, making, and selling keyboard and macropad products, I want to be there for my wife and my kids. It's time to hang up my soldering iron.
Thank you
Bethany and I want to thank every one of you who has ordered something and supported us. I've always had the mindset that Pikatea isn't about the money or the profits or I would have quit a long time ago. To me, success within my company is about getting quality products into your hands and enjoying them. The biggest part I will miss is the encouraging messages I've received from customers which brighten my day. The long days and nights that sometimes are required to get the product out the door on time pale in comparison to the joy I receive interacting with the community and having the space to be creative.
Meetups?
In 2022, we had our first keyboard meetup! What started small in our garage, has grown quite a bit. We still plan to host Iowa keyboard meetups every year in the spring. It will feel about the same as in previous years! I plan to create a website dedicated to the Iowa keyboard meetups when I can find time. Here's a photo from our first and second meetup!
I also plan to attend most of the Midwest region meetups and a few others throughout the year so if you see me, say hi!
A trip down memory lane
Finally, I want to wrap this up by sharing with you our story, starting from the beginning. It's a little long but I'd encourage you to give it a read.
I needed a macropad. I thought about buying a macropad to put on my desk but I did not like the idea of taking up more desk space. Being a poor junior in college, I also didn't want to spend money. I had an Arduino Pro Micro so I decided to just make my own!
The prototype was born!
At the time, Via did not support encoders and VIAL wasn't around. Because I only had a few buttons and a knob, I opted to just create the firmware within the Arduino IDE. I used an SD card so that the macros could still be configured on the device without software! Many people enjoyed this feature so we kept it around, even after VIAL entered the scene.
Bethany and I started dating in September 2019. We met because she had a couch that she and her roommates broke as they were moving into their apartment. I had the tools to fix it and I took my sweet sweet time. My dad always said, "If they don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy!"
Our first group buy (GB) launched on March 6th 2020. We priced them at $50 and sold about 120 units. We sold out a lot faster than I was expecting. I still remember the rush of excitement! A special thank you to those who took a chance on my first group buy.
With many orders to ship out, I lofted my bed to make more space, and I started making macropads. I created a bunch of jigs and tooling to help the process move along and stay organized! I thought the first group buy was a success considering it was during the pandemic and parts needed for assembly got delayed a few months.
I asked Bethany to marry me and she said yes!
We launched our second GB with the help of RandomFrankP who included my product in a video. We had over 900 orders! It was certainly time to scale up. This was a challenging time with lots of moving parts but looking back it had lots of great memories. I worked out of the garage of the house I was temporarily living in before Bethany and I moved into a new apartment after getting married. It was my first time purchasing large quantities of inventory and I remember the anxiety it gave me.
The process for manufacturing the previous version was not feasible for 900 orders. I worked on creating a circuit board that had most of the components assembled. A challenge I had to overcome was connecting the encoder which is 5mm from the plate to the circuit board when the switches are only 3mm from the plate. You'll notice I notched the PCB so the encoder would fit in place. After bending the encoder pins a little, they can be soldered. I didn't have to worry about the strength of the joint because the encoder was fully supported by the plate.
Bethany and I got married!
After moving into our new apartment, we immediately got to work fulfilling the large, 900 order GB! (The couch also "magically" got fixed for good when we moved in)
We had a small and tiny apartment which included a single-stall garage that was not insulated. In the winter, it became very cold so I sub-divided the space and used 3 space heaters on 3 separate circuits just to heat it enough so that I wouldn't freeze. It was pretty sketchy but I didn't have many options. Here's a poorly stitched 360 view, but it gets the point across.
I was still finishing school but racks and racks of macropads were still getting made. This was during COVID so all my classes were online and I was soldering through most of them.
Here I am manually flashing each PCB which took forever. Each macropad would take about 2 minutes. I had this jig set up so that I could do other stuff while it was flashing. I would add keycaps and knobs to the next macropad while the current one was being flashed. Bethany and I watched so many British Baking Shows too. You might also notice the spreadsheet. Bethany was keeping the GB organized and planned out by making these helpful sheets.
This is one of my favorite photos of this period. It captures the chaotic mess that entrepreneurship often involves. We set ourselves up in a tough position because we had Christmas coming up and macropads to deliver as promised. We did 10-hour days for about a month straight. It was a ton of effort but we did it together so it made it fun. Because it was so cold out in the garage, we took over the living room and hallway.
Inventory was hard to track for custom-made orders so I started working on software to help manage it. The online platform I was using was Shopify. Shopify is great but doesn't work well if you are both the vendor and manufacturer. Shopify only tracks finished products. It cannot track the individual components that make up that finished product. This is why I started creating my inventory software. It would read the orders from an exported sheet and automatically calculate the required components based on the order details. The first version was extremely basic and only tracked inventory and provided forecasting for one finished product. Later versions included receipt printing, a web interface, automatic part pick lists, assembly notifications, a flashing interface, and much more.
By popular request, we developed a 3-key and 7-key version. We also updated the PCB and removed the SD card because Vial was handling encoder remapping. We still had to flash all the PCBs so I built a dedicated flashing station with a Raspberry Pi and touch screen. I also found a way to bring the flashing time from 2 minutes to 28 seconds.
We finally moved into an apartment that had an insulated 2-car garage! I started designing a desk to suit the business needs. We also brought home cats from the animal shelter, Finn and Gus! This space allowed us to grow and expand. We had both just graduated, so I was able to work on macropads and keyboards full time. It was fun!
At this point, I was laser-focused on improving my process and cranking out macropads. We were able to get the 3D printers set up in an organized way. I started designing full-sized boards in the background, the first being the KP69.
After watching me make a couple of thousand macropads, Bethany felt confident to make one completely on her own with no help and she did a wonderful job! Soldering and all!
Our cats Finn and Gus loved hanging out with me while I worked in the garage all day.
It was at this moment I had the inspiration to create the FinnGus, our popular cat-shaped keyboard! The FinnGus was so big that it had to be printed in 3 parts. This started the journey of making weird and oddly shaped keyboards. I found that I could leverage 3D printing to effectively make these keyboards without huge investments in custom-machined parts. Sure, 3D printing can have its downsides, but for a low volume amount of production, it's great!
Around this time, I started streaming and sharing the production of my macropads and keyboards on Twitch. It kept me entertained and helped to grow our community! I miss streaming twice a week during the day. Lots of people would watch while they worked. The shop was mostly fully set up and feeling pretty comfortable too.
I also started printing out Twitch subscriber names and stapling them to the wall! We had our very first Subathon and it was an absolute blast and a half! For those who were there, thanks for making it extra special!
Shortly after the Subathon, I created the Funky60 layout. We have this available right now in our store. This is the last chance to get one! The spacebar on top is actually for backspace.
We hosted the first Iowa keyboard meetup! There weren't a lot of people but it was great meeting people local that are interested in mechanical keyboards!
We finally bought a house and this was our new garage/shop area. It took a while to get fully set up, especially because we moved right in the middle of the R26 macropad group buy. Our focus was on a temporary setup to get that fulfilled. I also started a full-time job as an automation engineer. It was a hard transition but worth it.
If it wasn't for the full-time job, the bank probably would have said no to us getting a mortgage.
We started constructing the final shop. The one shop to rule all shops. It took a lot of effort but I'm really happy with how it turned out. We gutted the ceiling, constructed the walls, ran electrical, and painted.
We hosted the second Iowa keyboard meetup! This time at a brewery and with a lot more people! Lots and lots of fun.
A friend of mine reached out and asked if we could work on a long keyboard. I created the 7ft Long Boi as a way to help promote the slightly smaller 30in version. I ended up taking this to KeebLife! It was so much fun meeting all of the friends I'd made within the keyboard community!
(We also have these available in the store before we close!)
Bethany and I had some awesome news! We were expecting two boys! TWO!!!
At this point, I stepped back and wasn't focusing on Pikatea much. The Longboi group buy was in full swing. In the back of my head, I knew it could be soon to close up shop. I started making plans on how to do it the right way.
Linus from Linus Tech Tips reached out and wanted my 7ft Long Boi for a video so of course I sent him one! Here it is before being sent off.
We hosted the 3rd Iowa keyboard meetup! Lots more people joined this year and I got to see many familiar and new faces. This was 4 days before our twins were born. (We had no idea of course!) Talk about close timing!
And here they are! They came a little earlier than expected so we stayed in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) for just over a month. They've been occupying much of our time for the last 7 months. I'm excited to put the same amount of energy I put into Pikatea over the years into my kids as they grow up.
That's pretty much it! Here is a list of some fun stats!
- 5750ft (Just over a mile!) of receipt paper printed
- 8282 total orders so far
- About 60,000 or so switches soldered
- Total RMA rate of 2%
- Approx 4 lbs of solder used.
- 86 kilograms (about 2 miles) of filament used.
- 29 projects started, 15 considered finished.
- About 10,000 knobs sold
- 887 Twitch subs, 519 hours, 1503 followers, averaging 26 viewers per stream
- 11/10 of fun had
Thank you to each person who has purchased a product from us and made this possible. I know it might not seem like much for you but it allowed me to pursue a dream and passion of mine. I'm proud of the way things went and I have no regrets about how I did it. I'm extremely grateful for all the people who helped make it possible. Thank you.
| Jack Kester (26) |
|---|---|
| Handle | JackPikatea |
| Location | Johnston, IA, US |
| Occupation | Manufacturing Engineer |
| Joined (the hobby) | 2016 ("Campine" was my first board!) |
| Niche | Macropads and Knobs |
| Fav. switch | Blue Bonnets |
| Fav. keycap profile | Cherry |
| Other hobbies | 3D Printing, Running, Lego |
| Links | pikatea.com |
Published on Wed 11th Dec 2024. Featured in KBD #181.
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