- Based in Edinburgh, Mark Boyd (pictured below) is the man behind Nostalgia Cases, selling mobile phone covers in a huge range of different retro kit designs. We were delighted to get the change to talk to Mark about the business’s origins, current success and future plans. Read on to find out how to gain a 10 percent discount for MoJ readers!
When did the idea come to you?
In spring this year I came up with the idea for Nostalgia Cases. I’ve dabbled in the print-on-demand (POD) space for the last couple of years, largely focusing my time on t-shirts.
I had been exploring different products that I could work with and phone cases have always interested me. I’m a massive football fan who loves retro kits, and combining those passions with my POD experience made complete sense – so Nostalgia Cases was born!
From that point, how many hurdles had to be cleared to bring it to fruition?
The main hurdle was the fact that I had no retro shirt designs!
Before we could launch, I wanted to ensure we had at least a couple of cases available for each team in the top three tiers in both England and Scotland. I had designers working for me already from the t-shirt business so I set them to work on getting around 200 designs ready to go.
I deliberated for quite a while on the name of the business, but in the end it was kind of obvious: these cases instil a sense of nostalgia, so why not call the business Nostalgia Cases?! Now, around six months down the line, I’m still very much in love with the name, so I feel I made a good choice, it’s memorable and it does what it says on the tin.
It took four designers working full-time for a few weeks to get the initial batch of case designs in place. Once I had those ready to go, it was full steam ahead and I got the site launched pretty quickly.
There seems to be a real retro buzz, is that because people are drained by the ever-changing modern kits?
Kits used to stay in place for two or three seasons, sometimes even longer. As such, retro kits are more likely to be tied to memorable moments for any given club, as there was more time to gather those moments!
Fans of teams that are not doing as well now as they were in, say, the 1990s, love to look back on those times fondly. The retro kits therefore can give that warm fuzzy feeling, thinking back to cup wins, promotions or exciting European runs. I also feel that the retro designs are a little bit more ‘cool’ – they also show that you’ve been a fan for life, and not just since your team started winning!
What are your favourite kits of those that you’ve done?
We’ve designed some really bad-ass kits. If I had to whittle down to three favourites, it would be these:
- Newcastle 1996-97 goalkeeper shirt: This one and the Rangers kit from the same season are my joint favourite designs. They both depict their team’s city at sunset and they look very cool on cases.
- Greenock Morton 1993-95 home shirt: This was the first tartan design we worked on. It looks great online and even better on the cases.
- Dundee United 1984-87 home shirt: I think this may be one of the smartest adidas kits of all time. I’m not a Dundee United fan, but this is one badass shirt.
How wide do you hope to extend the range?
We’ve grown from 200 designs to 600 designs in around five months. Our next target is 1000 designs. We’re looking to increase the range of teams that we cover and also bring in cases for new sports.
We want to give our customers the best experience possible when shopping on our site. Part of this is making it easy for them to find their favourite kits. In order to do this, we need to be continually beefing out the ranges for every club! So I expect we’ll never stop expanding the range.
Tell us more about your ‘request a case‘ service.
We allow customers to request any team/year/kit and we don’t charge them any extra for doing so. We’ve got a full-time designer who works on our requests so they tend to go out just as fast as the cases listed on our site!
This service helps us to expand our range with cases that we know people actually want. Celtic has been our most popular team for requests, with us now listing over 20 cases for the Bhoys!
Are all phone sizes covered?
We have 100 phone models listed, covering most popular models from Apple, Google, Huawei, LG, OnePlus, Samsung and Sony. If a customer finds we don’t have their model listed, please do reach out to us to ask. We’re constantly expanding our range and add a few new models each month.
What’s next for Nostalgia Cases?
We’re looking to expand our range of clubs and our range of sports.
We’re also looking at some other products we can add to the range – think shower-curtains, duvet sets, passport cases and mugs! We’ve got a few other exciting developments in the works, but we cant talk about them just yet I’m afraid! Watch this space…
- Now for the best bit – enter the code ‘MUSEUMOFJERSEYS’ at checkout on www.nostalgiacases.co.uk to avail of a 10 percent discount! To keep up to date with new releases and offers, you can follow on Twitter @nostalgiacases
