About / Bellingham, WA / Since 2016
The Story, and the Shell.
How and why Kimbo builds hand-riveted aluminum slide-in campers — hard-side truck bed campers, frameless, riveted, four-season ready, and serviceable for life.
The story behind Kimbo
Born from a love of the outdoors and the inside of a nuclear submarine.
The idea for Kimbo campers came from Mark King's love of the outdoors — and from the inside of the USS Alabama, a nuclear submarine his father led as Captain. Mark is an inventor and entrepreneur who has been designing wallets and outdoor gear with his company, Trayvax.
Never one to settle for average, Mark has been exploring simple living for years. Since 2013, at the start of Trayvax, his residence was a 19' Airstream — but after a couple of years, he started to think he could live with less.
He wanted a home that would let him stay untethered from the expense, maintenance, and excess of modern life, but nothing on the market fit his needs. So in 2016, the inventor and fabricator started building his own. After living in it for six months and 30,000 miles around the country, Mark brought his passion to market.
Years later, Mark moved to Boston to attend MIT Sloan and graduated from Harvard Business School in 2022. After graduation, he hand-built a log cabin in Vermont before returning to Bellingham to lead development of the Kimbo 8 — the next-generation full-size platform.
Founder
Mark King
Inventor, fabricator, full-time Kimbo resident.
A decade in
From one camper to six hundred.
01 / 2013
Living simple
Mark moves into a 19' Airstream while running Trayvax.
02 / 2016
First Kimbo built
An aluminum truck camper, fabricated from scratch in Bellingham.
03 / 2018
30,000 miles
Six months on the road. The market gap was real.
04 / 2022
Boston, then Vermont
Graduates from Harvard Business School after MIT Sloan. Hand-builds a log cabin in Vermont, then returns to Bellingham to lead Kimbo 8.
05 / Today
600+ delivered
Two platforms — Kimbo 6 and Kimbo 8 — built one at a time.
Come see one in Bellingham.
Visit the factory, meet the team, and step inside the shell.
Watch / Inside the workshop
How a Kimbo comes together.
From flat aluminum sheet to a finished camper rolling out of the Bellingham shop.