About Hekili
We make tape for guys who actually do stuff. Gym stuff. Gun stuff. Tool stuff. Also, some gear we figured you'd want. Figuring out the rest as we go.
Here's what's going on: we couldn't find a grip tape brand with a personality, so we built one. Then we built a brand around it. Then we started blogging (or blabbering), added a gear line, and now you're on this page reading the result of dudes who probably should've been relaxing, watching TV, or grilling, but made a company instead.
About the name.
Hekili is the Hawaiian god of thunder.
When the company founder was stationed in Hawaii, his youngest son was born there. He considered bestowing the little guy with "Hekili" as a middle name, but realized being a Hawaiian god was probably way too much pressure.
Life on the islands was warm, with unhurried kindness, full of family, friends, and a sense of calm & beauty hard to put into words. So, when it came time to create a company with a strong personal connection, the brand was named out of respect for what Hawaii provided. The name is his way of saying thank you.
But let's be clear. It's not a Hawaiian brand. There's no hibiscus on anything. No aesthetic hijacking, no borrowed spirituality. Just an honest acknowledgment that a place shaped what a brand should feel like: warm, real, and not taking itself too seriously.
The guy who built it.
He's a retired U.S. Marine. He won't bring this up much (yeah, right...). Marines tend not to.
But it's in everything. The attention to detail, the crass but warm humor, or trying to fix gear that fails at exactly the wrong moment. He's also the kind of guy who only partially believes the old Marine Corps saying that you can “do so much, with so little, for so long – you can do anything with nothing forever.”
He doesn't appear publicly as the face of the brand. He's got a day job, for gosh sake. Plus, he's not in it for the fame.
The flagship product.
Thunder Tape. Tape for your gear, your tools, your gym stuff. Because guys need to: wrap stuff, grip stuff, fix stuff, and reinforce stuff.
We launched the product because the grip tape category was either generic and forgettable or trying so hard to look tactically cool. Choices were limited.
And since you've read this far, the flagship product allowed the brand to reconnect with good old thunderous Hekili. If you look closely, you'll see that the "R" in Thunder Tape isn't an R.
It's the meteorological symbol for thunderstorm, the mark that weather services use internationally to indicate where the storm is on the chart. Not a happy accident. It's in there on purpose. We figured those with attention to detail would eventually notice.
A note about who's writing this page.
Most of what you'll read here: the emails, the blog posts, the copy in the apparel section, is written by a narrator named Chuck.
Chuck isn't a real person. He's a voice. The brand needed a public-facing personality who wasn't the founder but had an emotional connection to the brand, and Chuck is the result. (Don’t worry, he’s not an AI bot taking over the world, either)
Chuck is self-aware, slightly anxious, builds projects to manage the anxiety, and has strong opinions about pizza. He signs the emails. He writes the occasional post. But the products: the tape, the gear, and more, that's real work by real people.
We figured you'd want to know.
— Chuck
Hekili LLC. Veteran-Owned Small Business. Built in America, mostly on weekends.