Kimberlite

Casey McKellar and Robin Petersen are both product design engineers, avid backpackers and outdoors people. They live in the Grand Rapids area, a part of Michigan that’s rich with natural opportunity: the nearly 1-million-acre Huron-Manistee National Forest; the Lake Michigan shoreline’s abundant parks, beaches, and sand dunes; and extensive networks of trails, both paved and natural, for hiking and bicycling. Almost 20% of residents of West Michigan participate in tent or rustic camping, and 12% take part in backpack camping.

McKellar and Petersen went to college together at Grand Valley State University in the product design and manufacturing engineering program. “Both of us were considered nontraditional students, meaning that we were older when we went to school,” said McKellar. Petersen had a family to care for, while McKellar was working full time at another job while going to engineering school. “I don't know if outsiders is the right word, but we didn't really fit in with everybody else.”

They found it made sense to study together and hang out, and the two became good friends. They made plans to find jobs, work for five years, then come back together and start a company.

“The dynamic between the two of us works well,” said McKellar. “Robin is a very creative person that can come up with 50 ideas for different ways to solve any problem. I’m somebody that can do all of the analysis and make it into a manufacturable product.”

Getting Out of the Dirt

The idea for a manufacturable product came sooner than expected.

“One day I was out in the woods with my daughter, hanging out in hammocks,” said Petersen. “I was preparing a meal on the ground, and I got this overwhelming sense that there's a much better way to do it. Casey and I realized it’s an issue that really hasn’t been resolved in the camping industry. You go out to a location with all your gear, and the stove goes right on the ground and all your cooking is performed in the dirt. We wanted to get ourselves personally out of the dirt.”

Petersen and McKellar manufactured some prototypes to make their own lives better when spending time outdoors. As they played with them, they realized they had something special and named it the Kimberlite Tree Table. The synergy of place, profession and passion had led them to an innovation that is authentically Michigan.

At its core, their signature product is an outdoor surface. While there are plenty of outdoor surfaces on the market, Kimberlite is the first that is ultra-lightweight, weighing less than a pound and a half; modular, meaning it has more than one configuration and can be extended through accessories; and backpack-packable, disassembling down into a small volume.

“We're not the first people to attach a table to a tree, but we’re the first to make one you can have on the ground and the tree. The versatility is really the difference maker,” said Petersen.

“The tree table is a base product to a larger ecosystem,” said McKellar. “There's an ever-expanding suite of compatible accessories that lock directly into the aluminum surface. We make a stove canister attachment that secures unstable equipment, cutting board attachments for meal prep, a windscreen to shield your stove, and a raised lantern hook to keep your kitchen area lit at night. There are snap-in hooks and a hanging basket for organization, too. And all that is just for starters.”

Bumps in the Trail

Their product design day jobs gave the two founders the skills needed to get started, but moving from idea to business was still a challenge. “We know how to source products. We know how to design products. That stuff was all easy. The hard part is running the business,” said McKellar. Both wanted to be able to control their own financial destinies, so they decided not to seek any investments in the new company that would require giving up equity.

“Supply chain is tough, and getting the timing down is hard, especially because we’re a seasonal product. Because we don't have investors, we don't have the resources to quit our jobs. It's a lot of late nights and coffee shops,” said Petersen.

The founders were recently involved in the Start Garden 100, an annual Grand Rapids startup competition and incubator supported by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), and received a $20,000 investment as one of ten winners at Demo Day in September 2025. “Thank goodness for those folks, because engineers tend to think, ‘How hard could it be to be an entrepreneur?’ We were shown very quickly how hard it is. Working with them for three months allowed us to wrap our minds around what it takes to become an entrepreneur,” said McKellar.

Other resources around the state have been essential to their progress as well, notably the Michigan Outdoor Recreation Industry Office headed by Brad Garmon, which moved into the MEDC in 2022. “Brad has been a great sounding board and connector, and we took free classes at the [MEDC-funded] Small Business Development Center (SBDC),” said Petersen. “Innovate Marquette [an MEDC-funded SmartZone] has been great in helping us prepare a pitch deck. The Grand Rapids Chamber has helped with our supply chain and go-to-market plan, even though we’re not members just yet.”

Michigan is a great market opportunity for outdoor products like Kimberlite. According to DNR and MEDC survey research, 1.2 million Michigan residents participate in tent or “rustic” camping, and nearly 900,000 specifically do the kind of backpack-based camping that Kimberlite is designed for. Nationally, the market for ultra-light backpacking gear is growing rapidly, with one report giving a conservative estimate of a 7% annual growth rate, and Kimberlite joins other innovative small Michigan companies like Superior Wilderness Designs, Chicken Tramper and UGQ that are finding success in this segment.

Coming Soon to a Store Near You

Today, Kimberlite has secured funding for tooling and an initial advertising campaign, and plans to do a pre-sale that would pay for the bill of materials, or cost of goods sold for both an initial run and a restock. “We have our manufacturers for the different pieces and parts that we need identified. We have a partner facility in Jenison, SQI, for assembly, warehousing, logistics, and distribution. We have a partnership with a great company in downtown Grand Rapids called Grand Apps, and they have been instrumental in our branding, marketing plan and website development,” said McKellar.

“From the product side, it’s all set. We’re putting the finishing touches on packaging and getting ready for launch. We’re about to hit ‘Go’ and release it to the public. Our presale launch is going to kick off in late November and our sales direct to consumer will begin in April 2026.”

They plan to double up on inventory, start selling directly to consumers, and then eventually go into retail distribution channels through stores such as REI, Cabela’s and Jay’s Sporting Goods. “We want Kimberlite to be seen as a provider of premium quality products that would not look out of place next to North Face, Jetboil or Helinox,” said McKellar. “We want to be synonymous with quality outdoor goods, and representatives of Michigan, because we plan to make and assemble and ship from Michigan for as long as the company’s around.”