We Are Rewind Interview: What Happens When You Bring Back The Walkman?
We are confidently told that “The future of music is streaming”, whether that is to your smartphone, tablet, laptop, TV streaming stick, or any other connected device. Pay your monthly subscription, and listen to (almost) every track ever recorded. It’s convenient, it’s digital, and it’s a predictable recurring revenue stream for the industry.
Yet it lacks something the older generations grew up with. The physical nature of music and the sense of ownership that it gave you. What if you could have the physical without the headaches of the past? What if you could blend the experience of the 20th century with the abundance and convenience of the 21st century?
That’s where We Are Rewind sits just now. This French startup is “bringing back the walkman” by manufacturing and selling 21st-century portable cassette players and boomboxes. I sat down with founder Romain Boudruche to find out how his small project became the tip of the spear to disrupt a market many belive had alreay died,
And part of the blame lies with Marvel’s Kevin Feige.
We Are Rewind On The Return of The Walkman
“I looked on the internet and found this article that mentioned cassettes were back,” Boudruche told me. “It was due to ‘The Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie.” This Marvel franchise film featured a character who used a walkman in space and, as Forbes contributor Hugh McIntyre notes, the release of its soundtrack on cassette jump-started a moribund music format.
That bump led Boudruche and his business partner, Matthieu Mazières, to spot the obvious hole in the market. On one side were cheap $30 plastic players that threatened to eat the magnetic tapes and memories of old. On the other side where vintage Sony Walkmans that were both prohibitively expensive and in constant need of repair.
Boudruche recalled, “I was thinking maybe we could find this ‘in-between’ and make something not plastic, something closer to the original TPS-L2 from Sony, and maybe add some modern features to it."
The initial crowdfunding goal was modest, enough for a few thousand units to satisfy a mall niche. “I had this small goal, something like 10,000 Euros,” he recalled. “It was extremely fast; we reached close to 20,000 Euros.” The market had both spoken and shown that it was larger than expected.
Why Has The World Forgotten How To Make Cassette Players?
Making a retro device is easy; making a good retro device is harder. The mechanical components for high-quality playback - the mechanisms, heads, motors, capstans, pinch rollers - are relics of the past. What is available today, some 22 years after Sony’s last model reached the US market, is often cheap, generic, and based around a single available design. As Addison Del Mastro discovered, “Virtually any cassette-playing machine being made today uses one of these.”
Wrapping a good-looking case around a poor engine was not an option for We Are Rewind.
“It was definitely an important point, because it was not just the idea to have this poor mechanism and put a beautiful case and box on top of that. That was not the point,” Boudruche insisted. The solution was a piece of engineering that could improve the available design by improving the flywheel. This is the component that regulates tape speed and “wow and flutter,” which shifts the tone and tempo when a player is nudged.
The result was a brass flywheel instead of a plastic one. This heavy piece of metal makes a genuine difference to the sound quality, lifting the We Are Rewind player above the competition.
However, the reality of global manufacturing revealed a monkey’s paw. It has proven impossible to protect the innovation globally. Once manufacturing began in China, the new flywheel began appearing in competing players.
How Does We Are Rewind Make Itself Stand Out?
We Are Rewind’s primary asset is not the brass flywheel; it is the brand and the associations.
“If everyone is using the same thing, at least we can make something about the marketing, position who we are and what we want to represent,” Boudruche says. “This is what the difference is now, it’s not mostly what is inside, but what is outside."
This focus on cultural cachet has led to some ambitious collaborations, including a special edition of Duran Duran’s “Pop Trash” that comes with the cassette and the player, an Elvis-branded cassette and player, and an unreleased special edition of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side Of The Moon” coming this May.
Does Boudruche have an ultimate collaboration he’d love to see? “I had this crazy idea for a totally white cassette player with a special box, and a special edition of The Beatles’ “White Album”."
After The Walkman Comes The Boombox
Next up, after a reimagined walkman, is a reimagined boombox. The Blaster Curtis once again mixes retro style and modern features, with many of its decisions driven by issues with its portable cassette player. The feedback was brutal, especially around the non-replaceable battery, but Boudruche listened.
“The first idea for the Blaster was definitely to have Bluetooth and a rechargeable battery, but mostly to have a replaceable battery,” he confirmed. “We had a big review [from Techmoan] who said this is incredible that the company didn’t think to make the battery replaceable, and it has stuck with us for the past four years."
Beyond addressing feedback, the boombox blends form and function, with the VU meters front and centre. The analogue needs to bounce to the music to be vital to the physical experience. “This is what we want with physical format, to see things moving."
What’s Next For We Are Rewind?
Looking ahead, Boudruche is expecting thirty percent annual growth for the cassette market, far more than pure nostalgia alone can offer. A large part of the growth comes down to the expense of producing and buying vinyl records. “Cassettes are going to be more successful,” he argues. Tapes can be bought for aroun $10, while vinyls are roughly $30-$40 in the current market.
Closer to home, We Are Rewind faces the reality of being a small cog in the vast consumer technology space. The €449 price of the boombox drew criticism when it was announced, something that Boudruche finds baffling. “I am surprised at how many complaints we received from people who probably won a €1,000 iPhone. We are not making this enormous margin, and we are a mall company. This is not like we are Marshall buying a hundred thousand units."
We Are Rewind exists not because of a grand tech strategy, but because it offers an emotional experience built around physical artefacts; something that streaming services, by their very nature, cannot match. This small French company proves that intentional design and a connection to culture can find their own wins, even against the weight of the almost inevitable all-digital future.
From: Forbes
By: Ewan Spence