For Pimoroni’s second birthday, we finally outgrew the old spring-storage workshop in Neepsend.

After hunting for a while, we found a new home near the train station in Sheffield. The new Pirate Ship is almost 8,000 sq ft of workshop and office that works pretty well for us, especially since it’s close to Street Food Chef and the Rutland Arms.

We’ve been here a year now and can say we’ve finally settled in. In fact we’ve almost filled the place, since we’ve continued growing at the same pace as the two previous years. This is pretty amazing, and means we’re now providing employment to more than 20 people.

People! Having jobs! Because of your awesome support for Pimoroni! This amazes us :D

We now have Rick who runs the packing department. Matt and Kelly are the new shop team. Connor has joined Production to spend more time with laser cutters, and we of course have Phil “Gadgetoid” joining Jon and Paul in development.

We also had our first work experience peeps this summer, with Ben Dunicliff and Amy Mather spending a week helping out the Pirates.

As well as expanding the Robot Lab and Lasertorium to make Flotilla (getting really close to being finished) and our awesome HATs, our shop has grown as Raspberry Pi and Making get more popular. The Raspi 2 launch was a really intense couple of weeks and everyone worked their heinie off to make sure people got their stuff as quickly as possible.

We’ve also managed to do some events again somehow, and appear at Maker Faires around the world, Deer Shed Festival, Picademy, and of course the occasional MegaJam, Cam Jam and Birthday Party.

Our plan is to continue the trend and keep making awesome things, and growing to become as awesome in Europe as Adafruit and Sparkfun are in the USA! We still barely have time to breathe on the average Pimoroni day. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’ve saved up a few special things for our birthday to celebrate, and so, from today, as well as getting a whopping 15% off (with code PICADE), you can also order these shiny new things:

Picade

After finally delivering the Picade a year after the Kickstarter ended we were happy never to see another one for a while. We felt we let the community down a bit, as people were always asking when it was going to be released.

Our guilt finally got the better of us, and so we dusted off the plans, refined the PCB and got serious about it.

The results is the Picade you can actually buy. It has a kickass PCB made by Ragworm (who else!) which has a novel 3-colour solder-mask/silk on top, the first we’ve made or seen.

We’ve also made a smaller ‘Console’ version, which is perfect for a Raspi 2 and your HDMI screen. It houses the PCB, Pi, audio and controls in a neat, more portable box.

Piano HAT

Zack Igielman got talking to us after making his PiPiano on IndieGoGo. He wanted to make it a thing, but didn’t particularly want to spend time going through the production process, which we can really appreciate. Hardware is hard.

We gave it the full Pimoroni art-treatment, and the result is the Piano HAT. Possibly our shiniest board.

Pibow Tangerine

We made some custom Pibows for the Ubuntu Orange Matchbox. Lovely people. We liked the colour so much we decided to release it as an official Pibow colour: the Pibow Tangerine (rhymes with Yellow Submarine).

Coupe Royale

The purple A+ Coupé has made the jump to join the other Coupés for the Raspi 2 and B+. Everyone loves purple.

We also have a couple of other little surprises coming over the next few days, just to keep you interested :D

Again, thanks for believing in us and supporting us! We’ll keep making awesome stuff in piratical fashion. Arrrr!

– The Pirates of Pimoroni