™Our Story
Our story
We got bored. This is what we did about it.
byChapters™ is run by three friends from the South West who've known each other for more than twenty years. This is how a couple of book nooks turned into a business.
Busy days, empty evenings
We met at school. These days our jobs are busy, bright and never quite switch off. We've always been the sort of people who fix things and make things, but work doesn't leave much room for it.
By the evening there wasn't much left. Hours went on the television or the phone, and honestly, we were bored. We'd sold a few bits online over the years, but nothing any of us fully committed to.
Then we built a book nook. Two, in fact: the Terracotta & Ivy Greenhouse and European Melody, a small music room. We loved them, and one of us still has them at home. Straight away we had more ideas than evenings.
Where it started
Why book nooks
We'd always loved building blocks, but book nooks got to us in a different way. A nook is a small scene that sits between the books on a shelf: a shop, a library, a museum after hours. It takes your full attention for hours at a time, and at the end there's something on the shelf that wasn't there before.
It also brings out a creative side of us that our jobs don't often have room for.
Ours mark a birthday, a first flat, a long winter and an anniversary. When we look at them, we remember when we built them as much as what we built.
One of our first two
We wanted to tell a story without talking.
Where the name byChapters comes fromHow it actually works
We all still have our day jobs, so byChapters happens around them: evenings, weekends and whatever's left. Finding the time is a constant battle. We've split the business three ways, and each of us looks after our own part of it.
Every kit on the site has been built by one of us first. Early on we stocked one that wasn't good enough, and it taught us quickly what good and bad look like. If the instructions confuse us, the pieces don't fit or the lights feel like an afterthought, it doesn't go on the site.
The hardest part is that we want everything to be perfect, and we also have day jobs. The best part has been working with factories and designers and getting properly stuck in. It doesn't feel like work, which helps, because it mostly happens after work.
Built by one of us first
How we do things
- A reply from one of us.Questions are answered by one of us, usually quickly, and whoever answers has built the kit you're asking about.
- Fewer, better kits.A small range, chosen slowly. We'd rather sell fewer kits we're sure about than lots we aren't.
- Honest about where they come from.Our current kits come from specialist makers we've chosen. Our own byChapters designs are planned for 2027, and we're working out how to make them with less waste and more fairly for the people involved. We won't claim more than we've done.
- Properly looked after.Packed in the South West and sent by Royal Mail Tracked 24, free on orders of £25 or more. In-stock kits ordered before 3pm on a working day leave the same day. Sixty days to return an unopened kit. Parts replaced free, with no time limit and no forms designed to make you give up.
What's next
We set ourselves milestones when we started. We've ticked off a few, and there's a long list still to go.
Next up are our own designs, planned for 2027. One of the first ideas we had, the moment we saw a book nook, was a build with Bristol street art in it. It's still one we want to make.
We'd like some of the others to come from you. myChapters is where you can suggest a kit you wish existed, or back someone else's idea. We read every one.
And if you build one of ours, we'd like to see it.
- Based in the South WestTest-built, packed and answered from the same corner of England.
- Friends since schoolMore than twenty years, and now colleagues as well.
- 60-day returns, free partsChange your mind on an unopened kit; missing or broken parts replaced free.
- Share your chapterEvery kit page has a place for photos of your finished build.
A few chapters so far
byChapters is a trading name of Bored Group Ltd.