The first time Joel Tubre encountered the sound of a mechanical keyboard, he needed to know more.
“I’m a pretty big gamer,” Tubre says. “I was playing StarCraft II with a buddy of mine, and I heard a keyboard in the background through my headphones. I was like, ‘Man, what’s that keyboard you’re using? Why is it so loud?’”
His friend’s explanation triggered a fascination that blossomed into a business in April 2012.
At Mechanical Keyboards in Fairview, gamers, hobbyists or anyone wanting to make office life less drab can find shelves lined with keyboards to test. Some are sleek and streamlined, with keycaps in variegated shades of gray. Others crank up the whimsy with pastel keys and kitty ears. Bright keycaps in bowls and a just-for-looks gumball machine full of switches punctuate the kid-in-a-candy-store feel of the Mechanical Keyboards showroom.
“Some of these are so interesting,” employee Aaron Taylor says, gesturing at a wall containing some of the shop’s more fanciful inventory. “Bright colors. It’s such a niche hobby — everyone wants a specific thing.”
Most of Mechanical Keyboard’s sales take place online. It would be easy to overlook the non-descript building — and even easier to drive past the street it sits on. But Mechanical Keyboards draws in keyboard enthusiasts as destination shopping. Customers make the pilgrimage from as far as Atlanta just to visit the storefront, Tubre says. Others make the trek to Fairview as a sidequest during Nashville visits.
Customer Benji Waite drove two hours from Huntsville, Ala.
“My job turned into writing code at work,” Waite says. “When you're on a keyboard all day, you just kind of wonder, what if you can get something nicer than what they hand you?”
The customizability of mechanical keyboards appeals to Waite, he says
“I like to be able to take it apart pretty quick, and put it back together and try something else,” Waite says.
He left the store with “a handful of switches” after employee Amanda Davis helped him find what he needed.
“We get a lot of people that are hobbyists, and they want to do it piece by piece,” Davis says. “And we have a lot of beginners who don't exactly know what they want. … They're like, ‘I want to take it home and type on it today.’”
The store also sells kits with pre-selected parts to assemble.
“You can go really super deep into it, or you can just be like, ‘Hey, cool, pretty keyboard,’” Davis says.
Keyboard components are interchangeable, or “hot-swappable.” A change in keycaps customizes the look, while new switches change the sound and feel. A switch can sound thocky, with a deep and hollow sound, or clicky, with a higher tap. Clacky, creamy and silent switches are also popular. Heavy aluminum cases and foam sound absorption layers help complete the package. Countless YouTube videos featuring unboxing and assembly or hours of keyboard ASMR can give potential customers an idea of what they want. But in the showroom, customers can try a variety of combinations to determine what feels good — whether in terms of ergonomics or in the satisfying tactile feedback of resistance from each key.
Tubre is no stranger to niche retail markets. His previous business sold parts for Power Wheels and other motorized ride-on toys. His background in computer science and systems building gave him the knowledge to build a website cataloging and selling thousands of parts.
“People appreciated the fact that you could go to one website and kind of get, like, every single thing that you needed,” Tubre says.
He wanted to do the same with Mechanical Keyboards. Before mechanical keyboards became well known, shoppers mostly ordered them directly from different overseas manufacturers. Tubre wanted to change that.
“I kind of took the same philosophy of, let's carry everything … just make it a one-stop shop,” Tubre says. “Everything that you could ever need or want for a mechanical keyboard, let's have one giant database and catalog of items that you can come and buy.”
Even if a customer’s ultimate keyboard isn’t in the showroom, it’s probably in the 12,000 square foot warehouse behind it. Mechanical Keyboards also maintains a second location in Chandler, Ariz. This brings the showroom experience closer for West Coast customers, allows for faster shipping to that side of the country and prevents shipping delays in winter or other inclement weather.
“Having a little bit of backup comes in handy,” Tubre says. “When the roads are iced over in Tennessee, we can still fill orders out of Chandler. That part of the country is the most bulletproof in terms of weather events.”
Much like the store’s customer base, Tubre has his own idea about the perfect keyboard. He prefers it full-sized, finding the number pad indispensable for working with spreadsheets.
As for the sound?
“Believe it or not,” he says, “I lean toward silent.”