Another week, another Casetify collaboration.
Over the past few years, the Hong-Kong based tech accessories company has kept a firm finger on culture’s collective pulse, resulting in a seemingly unending flow of buzzy phone case collections.
Earlier this week, the brand unveiled a collaboration with K-pop superstars BLACKPINK. Just days later, it announced a team-up with Gen Z sensation Olivia Rodrigo.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CXQBIYzJNPi/
Casetify’s roster of recent partnerships also includes: Squid Game, Vegemite (yes, the Australian spread), Hysteric Glamour, BTS, KFC, Hajime Sorayama, Parasite, and even this very website.
Founded in 2011 by Wesley Ng, Casetify got its start peddling phone cases customized with photos from shoppers’ Instagram feeds — at the time, an unfilled niche.
The brand quickly gained recognition for its personalized approach to tech accessory design. “Customers see their phones as an extension of self, something really personal to them,” Ng said in an interview from 2020.
“It only makes sense that they’d want to dress their phone in something equally as expressive and personalized.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTB-WE7BRsf/
Casetify’s success makes sense, given smartphones’ ubiquitous presence in our daily lives.
What’s more unusual, though, is the lightening-quick speed at which the brand seems to churn out collaboration after collaboration. As soon as almost anything enters the zeitgeist, Casetify co-signs it.
The brand’s longevity suggests that a good deal of business comes from return customers.
As someone who rarely buys a new phone case (and has never strayed from the most basic of all models, an entirely clear case), I can’t quite process the idea of owning multiple protectors. The concept of changing one’s phone case on a weekly, or even daily basis — which some people do, according to an online forum — is even more mind-boggling.
Upon further digging, it seems phone case collecting is an actual thing.
https://youtu.be/hm-crO1L1ww
On TikTok, users post videos showing off their hoards of iPhone covers under the hashtag #phonecasecollection. YouTubers get in on the action, too. A video by creator Kenna Marie (521,000 subscribers) titled “WILDFLOWER CASES COLLECTION!” boasts over 270,000 views.
Another YouTuber, Adrienne Finch (398k subscribers), details every single phone case she owns (a lot, in case that wasn’t clear) in a video aptly titled “EVERY PHONE CASE I OWN!”
https://youtu.be/AcJR5DxGkDw
Clearly, Casetify is poised for continued success.
Supreme and Casetify are two markedly different companies, but the pair’s penchant for zhuzhing up quotidian objects (phone cases, T-shirts, toothpaste) via Millennial and Gen Z-friendly collabs is a clear through-line.
Both companies operate on the hype-driven scarcity model that streetwear loves. In fact, Casetify dropped $250 Vetements-branded cases back in 2019, a testament to the ability of buzzy branding to drive consumers to spend hundreds of dollars on mark-up.
Now that I think about it — when will we see a Casetify x Supreme drop?
