The workshop
Built by hand in Vancouver.
Three years in the making. Every machine assembled by hand, by the person who started it.
It started as an experiment
Three years ago I spent three weekends watching reviews of manual espresso machines. Every one had the same complaint: the machines had to be preheated. On the last Saturday morning of July 2023, before a camping trip, I sat down with a pencil to see if I could design a machine that does not need preheating.
I wasn't starting a company. I had no workshop, no tools and no experience building physical products. My background was in finance, then product management for software, and I had an accounting job at the time. It was an experiment: could I build this?
Somewhere along the way I realized this is the only thing I want to do. Build machines, and the tools that build them. So I put everything into it: my own money, my time, and every resource I have.
Nine months to the first shot. Two more years to get it right.
Nine months in, the first prototype pulled its first espresso. It was cold. The next one reached a few bars. Then 4.5. I thought launch was months away, and so did everyone around me.
It wasn't. Every iteration after that took longer, and cost more, than the one before. The gears, the seals, the bearings: each was redesigned and remade, again and again. I learned to cast and machine the gears, machine the stainless steel inner cylinder and many other parts myself. There was no launch date, and no promise that anyone would ever buy it.
It took more than two years, because I wouldn't launch until I was sure of two things: that I could build every machine the same way, and that each one would do what I say it does. I could have launched a long time ago. I'm glad I didn't.
Every part, a better tool
Once the idea was clear, I hired Vahid, a mechanical design engineer, to turn my sketches into engineering. He came for a project and stayed as my co-founder. Every drawing since is his, including the ones that let us order parts from outside shops at the quality Kilo needs.
Meanwhile I taught myself to make the rest. The first tool I bought was a 3D printer, then a Dremel, and I never stopped. The workshop has moved with every home, and every move it got better. Each time I made a part, I built a jig or a tool so the next one would come out more repeatable, and a little better.
Made by hand, where it matters
I make the gears, certain seals, the handle, the drip tray and the stand myself, in the workshop, on a lathe, a manual mill and a desktop CNC, with jigs I built for each step. Then I assemble every machine myself, by hand, and make sure it works before it leaves the workshop.
The aluminum housing is machined outside, by a shop with the equipment it needs. Commodity bolts and screws are bought in. Nothing here claims to be entirely hand-made, only the parts that benefit from it.
Built to be repaired
As a kid in the 1990s, I visited my grandmother's house, where appliances from the 1960s and '70s still worked. That stuck with me.
Kilo is built against the idea that a thing should wear out on a schedule. It's designed to be repaired rather than replaced.
I take no outside investors. That means no growth clock, and no pressure to design in a reason to buy the next one.
One maker, never alone
I build every Kilo, but none of this happened alone.
Vahid, my co-founder, engineered it with me and has his heart in it as much as I do. Barbora, a designer, shaped parts of it, including the drip tray cover. Daria, my wife, has been part of this from the first day: she ran our social media early on, and carried far more than that while I was in the workshop.
And a lot of people helped along the way: with advice, with testing, with a kind word at the right time. Thank you. This machine is yours too.
In numbers
The workshop, measured
Years in development
Pair of hands assembles every Kilo
Outside investors
The most I'll build. Maybe far fewer.
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