“Go big or go home” is a mantra among business leaders. Yet Ken Burns, the CEO of Tallmadge-based TinyCircuits, urges his team to think small.
Nestled inside a 12,000-square-foot warehouse, TinyCircuits makes tech products that are so tiny, employees examine newly assembled circuit boards under a microscope.
How itty-bitty are the components that go on the circuit boards? In the palm of your hand, they look like grains of salt.
When these minuscule pieces are transformed into products by nine full-time employees and sold through the TinyCircuits’ website and on Amazon, the local business brings in about $2 million in annual revenue.
It’s all the vision of Burns, a graduate of St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and the University of Akron. He founded TinyCircuits in 2011. The business started inside downtown Akron’s Canal Place before outgrowing the space and moving to Tallmadge.
“We like to do cool stuff,” Burns said.
About 60% of its web sales are from customers in the United States — sales on Amazon are to U.S. customers only. The company also has distributors in Japan, where tiny electronics are trending.
One of TinyCircuits’ early products was Tiny Arcade, a mini arcade that customers built without the need for a soldering gun or glue. Soon after, retro gamers and children were writing code to play their own games.
To support the coding community, TinyCircuits hosts a forum on its website where customers can share games, ask questions and offer design tips.
Remember Thumby?
Back in 2021, Thumby, TinyCircuits’ miniature gaming console preloaded with five games, enamored Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website. Approximately 4,500 backers pledged more than $205,000.
“For me personally, the coolest aspect of this console is not that you can play games but that you can easily make more yourself.” -Crankshaft Tech (March 2022)
“I could see myself buying this for no other reason than ‘man, I bet those people are pretty cool to even bother with such a thing’ Like, I want to support them so they continue making even smaller useless devices that I love lol.” -Reddit user
TinyCircuits has since made more than 60,000 units. Not bad for a device the size of a thumb.
“The other cool thing is you can actually create your own games for it too,” Burns said. “You plug it in the computer, and you can use the Python programming language to create games, so kids and people like to play around with it and learn how to code.”
The next generation of Thumby
Thumby Color began last year as a Kickstarter campaign. It features a more powerful processor than the original and a color screen that is 128 by 128 pixels. As of late August, the company had manufactured about 4,000 Thumby Colors.
The product is expected to launch this month on Amazon.
“This stuff is very gift-focused,” Burns said.
TinyCircuits will hire two part-time employees this fall to keep up with demand around Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Other notable TinyCircuits products are the TinyTV2 and TinyTV Mini. Modeled after 1960s-era woodgrain-cabinet console televisions, TinyTVs come fully assembled, loaded with 10 videos and ready to use. Oh, and there’s a remote control.
There’s also a free TinyTV Converter tool that converts MP4 files and loads them onto TinyTVs using a USB-C or streams videos from a connected computer over USB-C.
This product, Burns said, has attracted a niche group of customers: dollhouse builders. (To see how miniature artist Whitney LaBrie used TinyTV2 to make her “Back to the Future” dollhouse, click here.)
“I’ve gone to events where average customers used to be in their 20s to 30s, and older women will come over and say, ‘Oh, I want this for my dollhouse. This is the cutest thing,’ So that’s just really cool to see,” Burns said.
“And parents will send me videos of their kids, sitting there, watching their TinyTV on the bus. There’s a general appeal. It’s just a cute little thing.”
Creating some not so tiny
While TinyCircuits imports electronic components from Asia, Burns has formed a long-term partnership with David Wolfe Design, a plastic injection-mold business in Akron. The company, located on Moe Drive, creates plastic cases for Thumby products and TinyTVs.
“We work with them on the design of this, and it’s just nice having somebody local,” Burns said.
Always looking for innovative ways to use tech circuitry, TinyCircuits also designs the circuit boards for and assembles the Tempo Walk, a not-tiny product for Augusta, Georgia-based Club Car.
When a golfer places a transmitter on the back of their belt, the Tempo Walk follows four feet behind. This “hands-free, autonomous caddie” also carries clubs and a bag, keeps drinks chilled with a built-in cooler and cup holders, plays music with a Bluetooth speaker and offers a USB charger. Its rechargeable battery lasts 36 holes of play.
It’s sold exclusively to golf courses.
“I’ve worked with this particular company for 16 or 17 years, and they kind of followed me to TinyCircuits,” Burns said. “We have a pretty special relationship with the guys that sell these.”
Looking ahead, Burns plans to focus on two aspects of his business: launching a new TinyCircuits product every year and providing contract manufacturing for other businesses.
Said Burns: “There’s a lot of interest in people re-shoring products, an opportunity to manufacture things here in Ohio that, in the past, would be manufactured in China or someplace.”