About Us

After years of machinist work at nearly every level of expertise, Bill Karas decided to branch out on his own and opened his own shop named Karas Kustoms. Initially, Karas Kustoms was a traditional business-to-business style machine shop, providing job-shop work for a few customers Bill has relationships with. As time went on and the business grew, he decided to hire a few employees and in doing so hired one with a degree in industrial design. With similar eyes in terms of style and function, a new era of manufacturing began for Karas Kustoms.

With influences from mid-century American architecture and design, post-war era product design, classic automotive and space race era aesthetics, Karas Kustoms began to branch out into designing, manufacturing, and selling our own products. The popularity of the Apple iPhone® prompted the creation of our first retail product, a machined iPhone case with the release of the iPhone 4. This became a hugely popular item which prompted the creation of our website, addition of machines, and expansion of our staff.

In 2010 and 2011, we began experimenting with the fledgling crowdfunding website, Kickstarter. These products were geared around Apple products and ended up being a bit before their time. Needless to say, our first few Kickstarter campaigns did not fully fund, but we remained resilient looking for opportunities to expand into other products and revenue streams.

The growth of crowdfunding site, Kickstarter, had reached a pivotal point with several massively successful projects being launched in 2012 which, in turn, caused a large influx of small makers to join the site. Seeing other machine shop style projects being launched, we decided to join the fray. Technically launched in December 2011, the Render K rollerball pen was our first step into the realm of crowdfunding a major machined project. Drawing from all of our influences, the Render K was meant to look like it could have been found in a machinist toolbox in the 1940’s. Much to our surprise, the project was hugely successful with over 1,000 backers bringing to life a new chapter for us.

Over the next several years, we’d launch several more successful Kickstarter campaigns which would expand our line of writing instruments to four distinct pens and a collaboration pen holder with Mike Dudek. The popularity of our products wasn’t just relegated to Kickstarter, and we began to expand our website to include our writing instruments and eventually phased out Apple accessories altogether. In late 2015, we made the difficult decision to launch a new product directly via our website with the newly redesigned Render K and it’s fountain pen sibling, the Fountain K. The initial launch was massively successful which pushed us to further launch our follow-up EDK directly via the website as well.

As we moved into 2017, we added pens specifically designed to be machined out of non-metal materials. The creation of the Signature Series and specifically the Decograph fountain pen, saw us push our expertise in both design and manufacturing to new heights. The Vertex fountain pen came right on the heels of the Decograph and was yet another step in the direction of modern design in both form and functionality. During this same time period, we took the opportunity to re-engineer almost all of our metal pens with the addition of o-rings to keep them from unscrewing in pockets, minor tweaks to pen clips and clickers, and some subtle changes on the Bolt.

The future of Karas Kustoms and Karas Pen Co is one that is driven by our desire to continue to push forward in our manufacturing and design while ensuring our current products stay as up-to-date as possible. The addition of new materials such as Ultem and titanium is one part of the latest leg of our journey. As we look into the future, we’re considering new designs, new products, and new materials; but we’re also contemplating resurrecting old products and returning to some long-phased out finishes. Ultimately, we’re starting a new chapter, and we’re looking forward to where the story leads us.