From a flicker of an idea, we have gradually grown in scale and ambition over the past five years thanks to you. Coming into 2020, we knew it would be a year of big change for Keap—and that was before any of us knew the true meaning of 2020...
Travel back in time with us to calmer times of August 2019.
Our studio in Brooklyn was bursting at the seams in advance of the holidays. Amid a broader discussion about the long-term future of Keap, it was clear we needed to find a larger space to call home.
We started Keap to help prioritize connection in our own lives: to the natural world, to our loved ones, and to our own spirit. As we looked to the future, our minds filled up with visions beyond candles. We imagined a beautiful Keap store serving as a hub for our customers and local community to connect, offering candles, workshops, events, and more; perhaps — we are dreaming after all — with woodland trails and fields of fragrant flowers nearby! We pictured our candle studio as an innovative, green factory benefiting the local environment, and inspiring visitors. Above all, we saw a loving set of humans enjoying long-term, rewarding, and joyful jobs helping us do all this.
We could sense that certain aspects of this vision would be unfeasible in the heart of a metropolitan environment like Brooklyn, with rising commercial rents and little access to nature. So, late last year and not yet certain of where it would lead us, we set out in search of our new home.
Top of our list: a place with its own exciting vision of a just and regenerative economy, where we could see ourselves in 50 years. It wouldn’t hurt if it was also a place of stunning and inspiring natural beauty.
With that, we’re very excited to announce we will be moving our Keap studio to Kingston, NY, in late September. This will be our new home, on the edge of the Catskill Mountains, and the banks of the Hudson river. While it’s farewell to Brooklyn for now, our sense of love, connection and gratitude will remain forever, and we hope to be back in some form in future.
In the coming weeks, we’ll share more about our new space (which is still under construction!), as well as the people and place of Kingston. For now, we just want to thank you for your continued support. Everyone on our team has been aware of the change for a full year, and we’ve worked to ensure the transition accommodates everyone's personal plans. We’ll be closing our Brooklyn space to make the move in the latter half of September. See the FAQ below to see how this might affect late-September orders.
We anticipated making this move in the midst of a calm fall season, not during a global pandemic, but despite the challenges we are all still facing we are feeling grateful and excited to continue sharing with you as we enter this new chapter!
Keep the fire burning,
— Stephen & Harry
FAQs
If you have any questions not answered below, please respond to this email directly.
Will my September candle shipment be affected?
We plan to move as efficiently as possible such that our shipping suffers the least possible interruption. Therefore, we expect shipping delays in any orders placed between September 16th to 25th.
September 28th will be our first week operating out of our new Kingston HQ, and catching up on shipping will be our first priority. Thanks to the recent experience recovering from COVID-19, we expect we’ll be caught up very quickly.
What are my options if I have an order between 9/16-9/25?
We have a number of options:
- Do nothing: We'll still send your candle to you on the week of the 28th, after our move-in is complete.
- Change Shipping Date: we can help move your September shipment to another date before or after our move.
- Skip Shipment: we can help skip your September shipment if that is preferred.
Where will you be located? Can I come visit?
Our new space is located on Hurley Avenue, just outside the Stockade area of Kingston. While primarily our production space, we hope to be able to welcome people to the space in future. If you are planning on visiting Kingston, drop us a note at TheLab@KeapBK.com and we’ll let you know if visits are being permitted.
