We started because corporate
gifting was broken.

Eight years into his corporate marketing career, Kade Kimber had sent plenty of gifts on behalf of the companies he worked for. Branded tchotchkes. Generic gift cards. The occasional fruit basket no one asked for.

He watched companies spend real money on gestures that fell flat, were quickly forgotten, or worse, said nothing meaningful about the relationships they were meant to support. He knew there was a better way. He just needed a place to begin.

That starting point came from an unexpected source. In 2013, Kade was working on a personal Christmas project: a custom ornament he had imagined but couldn't find anywhere. So he set out to make it himself, learning glass etching and sandblasting along the way.

One day, while visiting a boutique, he showed a photo of the ornament to the owner. She asked if he would consider selling them in her shop. He walked in to make a purchase and walked out having signed a lease for retail space inside the boutique.

At the same time, he was experimenting with applying those same techniques to create custom drinkware. Around then, a chance encounter with a top-performing realtor made everything click. The starting point for better corporate gifting was already in his hands.

He renamed the business Oak City Gifts and focused on using etched glassware to create standout pieces. A magazine editor spotted the glassware in the boutique and featured it in a local publication, which caught the attention of a buyer for the U.S. Women's Open. Just three months after opening, he was creating etched glassware gifts for players at that year's tournament.

As he expanded into corporate gifting and word began to spread, the response was immediate. These weren't gifts people threw away. They were gifts people kept, displayed, and talked about. For the first time in his career, he saw gifting actually work.

He handled the early sandblasting work on his back patio, no matter the weather. His first major corporate order pushed him into a storage unit. Then a larger space. Then another. Eventually, a warehouse.

For a decade, Kade ran the business alongside his corporate career, growing it entirely through word of mouth into a six-figure company. In 2024, he made it official and left corporate to run it full time. What began as a local gifting concept had grown into something much bigger. Oak City Gifts no longer fit, so the company became Kimber & Oak.

Today, Kade and his team work out of their Raleigh warehouse and studio, partnering with some of the world's leading brands to design gifting programs built around strategy, not obligation.