We were lucky to catch up with Edgar Matias recently and have shared our conversation below.

Edgar, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

BEK stands for the first chief royal sculptor during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. It was always admirable the way those sculptors came up with such perfect pieces that last forever. Robots nowadays can replicate pieces 1000 times with the exact level of details, making art accessible to most of the people.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

The idea of creating the studio came to my mind in 2018, I always loved the way designers like Karim Rashid and Phillippe Starck create functional furniture using organic shapes and fusing design and art. By that time I wasn’t handy at all, haha literally I had not even a hammer at home, always my strong point was the digital world, I’m able to reproduce almost any physical object in 3d. So doing research I found it interesting how in Europe they reprogram robotic arms for milling purposes, and it was when the bulb lit in my mind. So after several meetings with close friends and wife, we decide to take the risk and buy the robot with almost all our savings.
Our business is dedicated to the manufacture of sculptures from robotic cutting or 3D printing, using a 3D Scanner we transform tiny pieces into large formats of sculptures. We work with materials such as Styrofoam, high-density urethane, resin, and plastic.

Most of our clients are artists that need an enlargement for their sculptures for landscaping or the urbanistic decor.
Marine repair shops we collaborate a lot doing 3d scanning for restoring missing parts of the boats.
Companies with product development departments require our 3d print services for prototyping.

One of the things we feel happy about this project is that along this journey we were not only a shop that solves client problems, but we also educated our clients on how to use cutting-edge technology to optimize and make more profitable their business.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Well, I think COVID was one of the most challenging chapters in our life not just personal but in the business. In late 2019 I decided to leave my full-time job to engage 100% with BEK, I worked hard all that year to create the bases for this jump of faith. I had 3 recurrent clients asking for sculptures over and over again. The cash flow was optimal for at least getting paid with a minimum salary. When January started, I started feeling this wave of fear and uncertainty about the virus, 2 months later my recurrent clients and the new ones canceled all the projects, and my wife was laid off from her job. I was freaked out so I decided to find another full-time job to live very tight and at the same time be able to pay at least the rent of the shop. By June that was almost unsustainable for the long term, so we decided to pack everything in a rental container and wait, but in my mind, I knew that once my dream was packed in that container that will never be reinstalled again, so I prayed and hustled to find at least one order that could save the situation and the next month rent payment. By that moment we already were overdue for two months, and almost with the eviction letter signed by the landlord. and right there at the end of the tunnel, we found the light. An artist from California placed a big order for art toys, the biggest we ever had in the history of BEK and he paid all in front. even though we ate all the profit paying debts and overdue rent payments, It felt like a miracle and it was, we survived the COVID.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We created the Instagram account and the webpage, I did it by myself, and with previous knowledge of web design when I was in Cuba, it wasn’t too hard. Youtube was my school to learn how to reach my target customers, use hashtags, take good photography, and start getting followers. Nowadays with have more than 1600 followers and 90 % of the requests come from Instagram.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bekmilling.com
• Instagram: @bekmilling
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bek-milling-solutions-inc-7914b0183/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwsh6IuV8v5w5uo_GC7kj2A

Image Credits
Photography: Miguel Valdes