FIrst of all, I want to thank everyone that has supported us, words cannot express how grateful I am to each and everyone of you. Initially Bespoke Baka started as a contingency plan when I noticed my previous employer stability was in question. Now I had been making cables way before than, previous for Lutro0, then a freelanced, then for Titan Rig, and finally as Bespoke Baka
I am glad I had the foresight and started the groundwork for Bespoke Baka thinking I had 4 to 6 months before I would get laid off at said business....
Did I say 4 to 6 months?
Weeks.....it was weeks
Suddenly I was fighting a very uphill battle to just make ends meet, and with that it would be a year before I landed a job with stability. One with benefits, PTO and most importantly a consistent paycheck. That was a very long year and came close to losing it all many times, resorting to selling plasma, taking on commission work I really didn't want to, cashing out my 401k from a previous employer and even selling off some of my rare and cherished collectables.
But with all that, I survived, in rough shape, but I survived....barely
A huge thank you to Alex over at Thor Zone for our partnership with the launches of the NANOQ and Tetra cases to offer cable kits to their many customers. As well as Andrew over at Fractal for supporting us with cases to get those critical lengths needed for the ultra compact Terra chassis and their Era 2 chassis. Daniel over at Singularity for continued support with providing cables for those utilizing his powerboard system. Unintentionally, Linus for resurrecting the XFORMA MKII project and Nils owner over at MDPC-X not only for his support and friendship over the last 10+ years but for his invitation to start offering MDPC-X through the store!
That last update is HUGE, I have been bugging Nil's forever to allow me to sell MDPC-X and late last year him and I went over the details.
So I will be offering the SMALL CLASSIC sleeving in 25ft and 100ft lengths on the store. Stock will be limited in the beginning as we work on building up our stock. For full spools, those will still need to be purchased directly from Nils. Our focus will be to stock up on the most used colors (Blackest Black, White-X, Titanium, Platinum-X etc.) This is a pretty large investment so please be patient while we work on the logistics of acquiring more stock.
The XFORMA MKII project, so initially I thought 3-4 months would be plenty of time to tie up the loose ends of missing accessories. Well I was not only wrong, I was very wrong and I apologize for that. I will make another blog post for what's in limbo and what we are working on for that project.
Lastly ORDER TIMES, initially we had a 2-3 week turn around average, and that worked for the first year. Then we had the best problem to have, a large increase in sales, so we had to increase it to 4-5 weeks and lately 5-6 weeks. I took some time over the holidays to see what could be done to help with this and ultimately it came down to organization, rather lack of it.
My office is also were I work on cables and things quickly pile up. This has caused issues with orders being duplicated, or not realizing they got label's made and packed but they just got left on the desk and not taken with the other orders, then material wise, either not having material I thought I had, or ordering more when I already had the material, which could've been allocated for something else. So I pumped the brakes and have made an effort to separate my office from my workspace. Over the last two weeks I have cleaned out one of my spare bedrooms that had become a storage/ dumping ground and have worked on making it proper workspace with stations for each step of the process. This has meant limited to no sleep some nights but the short term discomfort will make for a better customer experience. So with that I apologize if your order has gone longer than expected, I am doing my best and it is only me. Hopefully soon I will be able to get more consistent help with orders.
With all that said, thank each and everyone of y'all for the support so far! 2026 will be even bigger and better. Big things are planned with Youtube later this year just need to get things organized first before we expand to video content for the site.
-Joe Mercado
Owner of Bespoke Baka.