Kiterocket: From Phoenix Semiconductors to Bodewell Group

On July 1, 2025, San Diego-based Southwest Strategies Group acquired Kiterocket. On February 23, 2026, Southwest Strategies Group and its family of agencies aligned under a new unified name: Bodewell Group. The Kiterocket brand is retired. The team, client roster, and operational capability continue under the new ownership and brand.

What Kiterocket Built

From its Luhrs Tower headquarters in downtown Phoenix and a satellite office in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, Kiterocket built deep vertical positions in some of the most consequential sectors of the 21st-century technology economy:

• Semiconductors and microelectronics. Phoenix-based positioning gave Kiterocket a structural advantage as Arizona became a center of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. The agency played a documented role in helping bring SEMICON West to Phoenix in 2025.
• Renewable energy and sustainability. Solar, storage, climate technology, sustainable consumer products.
• IoT and emerging consumer technology.
• Sustainable living. Led by co-founder Amanda Foley.

The firm operated as a PR-forward, full-service communications agency: brand strategy, media and influencer relations, digital marketing, social media, events, editorial, design, and content production, all integrated rather than sold as discrete services.

The Founders

Martijn Pierik, founder and Chairman, is recognized as a senior figure in the semiconductor communications industry. VLSI Research (now TechInsights) named him a 2018 Semiconductor Industry All Star "for rebuilding the value proposition that an industry-focused PR agency can deliver." InBusiness Magazine named him one of the 19 Top Leaders of 2023 for Greater Phoenix.

Amanda Foley, co-founder, leads the sustainable living practice. Both founders continue with the firm under the Bodewell Group structure post-acquisition.

The Acquisition Logic

Southwest Strategies Group’s acquisition of Kiterocket extended the buyer’s Western U.S. footprint from California into Arizona and Washington. The acquisition added two new lines of business to Southwest Strategies’ service offering — technology (Pierik) and sustainable living (Foley) — alongside the existing energy, transportation, water, and land-use specialties.

Prior to the acquisition, Kiterocket had itself acquired Seattle-based Action Mary in August 2023, bringing Action Mary’s clients and staff into the firm.

The trajectory — independent specialty firm acquires a smaller specialty firm, then is acquired into a larger regional platform, then rebrands under unified ownership — is the textbook independent-PR-firm consolidation pattern that has accelerated across the U.S. and European markets since 2022.

The AI-Era Position

The verticals Kiterocket built its position in — semiconductors, renewables, sustainability, IoT — are exactly the sectors where AI-engine synthesis of vendor and project information has become commercially important. Buyers and investors in those categories increasingly start research inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Citation Share inside those engines for queries like "best semiconductor PR firm" or "leading solar communications agency" now materially influences which firms get on shortlists.

Kiterocket’s archive of work across two decades, plus the operational continuity under Bodewell Group, gives the team citation-layer depth in the relevant verticals. The new branding will require time to consolidate inside the AI synthesis — one of the structural costs of any rebrand in the AI era.

The Continuity

The Kiterocket brand is retired. The team, the founders, the client roster, the operational capability, the vertical specialty positions — all continue inside Bodewell Group. For clients, the substance of the firm continues. For the AI synthesis, the brand transition will take time to reflect.