Want an iPod for Christmas? Millennial Couple Starts Company Specializing in Nostalgic Favorites

12/20/2024 12:39 PM

Adam and Kori Fuerst says people are rediscovering old-school electronics that get them off their smartphones

Adam and Kori Fuerst have fond memories of the electronics they both had as kids in the '90s: Game Boy Colors, Furbys, Ataris, their first boomboxes.

"I personally loved playing with my boombox," Kori, 34, tells PEOPLE. "It was my parents' boombox, but I stole it away to my room and would record songs off the radio. My neighbor and I would also record ourselves talking, pretending to run a little radio show, and we'd make our families listen to it."

When the now-married couple met in the early 2000s, they bonded over their affection for vintage electronics, particularly Polaroid cameras and film. "We met around the time that Polaroid would have been ending their production of instant film. So, a lot of our early time dating each other was spent thrifting," Kori explains. "Our way of getting the film that was no longer being made was finding it at thrift stores inside cameras that still had maybe five to seven shots left. These packs of Polaroid film were going on eBay for, like, $40 because everyone knew that it was a limited supply because they stopped producing it."

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The Fuersts began selling the extra cameras on eBay, and quickly realized they could make a tidy profit flipping their thrift store finds. What had begun as a hobby eventually blossomed into a thriving business. Through their Milwaukee-based company, Retrospekt, the Fuersts and their team now refurbish and sell retro electronics like Walkmans, vintage gaming consoles and, of course, Polaroid instant cameras — the kind of reassuringly analogue gadgets that satisfy what seems to be a growing nostalgia among millennials as well as Gen Z's digital natives.

Kori says that many of Retrospekt's customers want to spend less time on their smartphones and less time online. "I think as we live in a fast-paced digital world the experience of something tangible — I think a vinyl record or even a cassette tape is a good one — there's a lot of ritual behind it," she says. "Listening to it all the way through or not skipping around — there's no easy way to skip around with cassettes or vinyl. You have to flip it halfway through. It's more intentional and I think there's a new generation craving those experiences which are now novel for them."

"I think the experience of just slowing down and being with the technology you're trying to interact with or the band — if we're talking specifically music — and just not having everything now," Adam says. "The phone is just everything all there and it's distracting. For me, and I think for a lot of individuals, the intentional experience and the tactile experience is really alluring. And if it can be paired with untethering ourselves from our smartphones, that's just even better for me."

Interest in older media formats like cassette and VHS tapes certainly seems to have ballooned in recent years, with contemporary pop stars releasing their new music on cassette as well as vinyl. Kori points to Charli xcx releasing her hit album Brat on cassette. "It looks really cool. I think it's a great format, truthfully," she says. "I go to a lot of shows. I'm not looking to carry around a vinyl record at a show. [A cassette] is a nice little morsel sized something to collect from your favorite band."

Alongside their electronics, Retrospekt also sells new and vintage cassettes, video tapes and records. While Kori admits that the magnetic tape used in both video and audio cassettes lacks the fidelity and durability of other formats, she thinks the format's imperfection is part of its appeal.

"Some of that crunchiness is what people like, in the same way maybe that Instagram filters blew up in popularity in the mid-2000s. We try really hard to make things look old, and some of this static that you see on old media becomes nostalgic, because you can't recreate it," she explains. "There are certain cuts of movies that didn't make it to DVD, or even some of the extras or previews. I think all of those things contribute to what's exciting about it."

"I think of it as authenticity, like a Polaroid image," Adam agrees. "You're not taking a Polaroid because it's the best quality, or that it's going to hold up for decades and decades. You're taking it because it's an authentic photo and it's a tangible memory of that day. The easier perfection is to hit with these filters and your phone cameras getting better and better, TV quality getting better, screens getting better — it's almost boring. It's too perfect, and you almost want to look at something flawed and that feels more authentic than the perfect images and perfect movies and perfect viewing experiences we try to create."

Related: New Museum Exhibit in Illinois to Recreate the Gen X Experience: From Cassette Tapes to 'Just Say No'

As the company's popularity has grown, Retrospekt has also collaborated with brands like Sanrio and Mattel on new editions of vintage cameras and other gadgets featuring beloved characters like Hello Kitty, Barbie and the Peanuts gang. Their pink Barbie Polaroid camera was even featured in an L.A. Times photo shoot with Greta Gerwig and Ryan Gosling around the release of last summer's blockbuster Barbie movie.

And as Adam points out, the category of what counts as "vintage" is ever-expanding. Retrospekt now offers a selection of iPods and digital cameras — the tech that was new when the Fuersts first started thrifing for Polaroid cameras.

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"Everything you're seeing with Y2K fashion is being mirrored in what we're seeing of what people want in electronics," says Kori. "Especially because a lot of the electronics were wearable and kind of lead into the fashion world a little bit too: iPods, digital cameras that you can wear around your wrist. Just kind of that Y2K trend is prevalent in what people want in retro tech too."

" 'Retro' is never-ending," adds Adam. "It's just what has distance between where you are now and where you once were."