Our Story

From a home garage to the factory floor

It started at home in 2019 with one small laser machine. A quarter of a million orders later, it's still us making your pieces.

It started in a garage

The Crafty Bonobo started in 2019. I bought a small laser machine from China, set it up in the garage at home, and began engraving Christmas Eve boxes. One machine, one pair of hands, and a lot of late nights.

People loved them. Then lockdown hit, word spread quickly, and before long the orders were coming in faster than I could pack them. At one point, the whole house was filled with Royal Mail sacks waiting to go out.

We outgrew it — twice

Before long, two machines became too many for the garage. So we built a wooden extension onto it by hand, doubling the space and carrying on.

When even that wasn't enough, we moved into a proper unit — and eventually into the workshop and showroom we run today: multiple machines, a dedicated team, and most importantly, family.

That's the part I'm proudest of. The people making your piece are the same people who genuinely care whether it's right.

In Pictures

The real story, not a stock photo

From a garage in 2019 to our own workshop today — every photo here is the real thing. And yes, that's Mum in roughly every other one. Someone loves the camera. 📸

Mum and the team packing the very first orders in the garage
2019 — where it began, packed by hand in the garage
Royal Mail sacks of orders filling the house
When the orders took over the house
Mum in the workshop in front of the laser cutters at Crafty HQ
The workshop today — our laser cutters at Crafty HQ
A wave from the workshop floor by the laser machines
A wave from the workshop floor
The showroom wall of personalised LED name signs
The showroom — a wall of what we make
Showroom display of street signs and man cave signs
Street signs, man caves & more on display
Mum posing in a giant Heinz bottle costume by the neon signs
Told you — that's Mum, in a giant ketchup bottle 😄
The Crafty Christmas Corner display with tree
The Crafty Christmas Corner

Still the same hands

No dropshipping. No overseas printing. Every order is designed, laser-cut, and hand-finished by our team here in the UK. Every piece is checked before it leaves us — if it's not something we'd proudly have in our own home, it doesn't ship.

More than 250,000 orders later, that standard hasn't changed. And it never will.

— Jordan & The Crafty Bonobo Family

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