What do we mean by “Designed in Kenya”?

The BRCK is designed and developed here in Nairobi, Kenya. As you might expect, this is a very different experience than doing it in China, US or EU. While creating physical products is always hard. Doing it in Africa is harder. This is due to the difficulties around rapid prototyping, shipping costs and accessibility of components. However, it’s also the best way to understand the real problems and challenges that the BRCK is here to solve. Reg Orton, BRCK CTO, is on this short video explaining some of what this means:

BRCK: Designed in Kenya from BRCK on Vimeo.

Some key thoughts on this from our end:

• We are not an off the shelf solution and rebranding
• We are pushing the limits of what is possible to do without
• Retail price point dictates smart design and challenging design
• We want our engineers close to the problem to really understand the requirements. This makes things harder than if we were designing in China
• We are developing a far better product by doing custom design
• Our volumes are lower in this market segment than if we were designing an ordinary router device.
• We are developing a company here, not a fly by night product. We want our v2 and v3 products to be heads above everyone else.
• Doing this allows us to rethink a lot of the assumptions that existing products use.

2 responses to “What do we mean by “Designed in Kenya”?”

1. Blackouts, dust and poor connectivity — why Kenya’s BRCK router requires a different approach — Tech News and Analysis says:

   February 4, 2014 at 11:33 am

   […] as a hub for “internet of things” sensors. BRCK got crowdfunded last year and a recent blog post from the team explains some of the challenges of engineering such a device in […]

2. Alvin Misoi says:

   November 19, 2014 at 8:59 am

   Interesting very good product the go to market strategy here should be partnerships and consumer marketing @alvinkiks