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Retrospekt co-owner and CEO Adam Fuerst
Fuerst didn’t really plan the business.
So why not give it a try?"
That selection process, by the way, is fairly specific.
Retrospekt co-owner and CEO Adam Fuerst
Refurbishing consumer electronics is about as difficult as you might expect.
In addition to cleaning out the corrosion, Retrospekt might replace the housing.
“But the brains of the units, we keep original.
So we’re not like remaking the dot matrix screen for [the Gameboy],” he said.
The refurb team dissembles the products, bench-tests everything, and repairs them at a component level.
They can, when necessary, even create replacement components, often by scavenging other refurbishment stock.
A lot of work goes into every gadget reclamation project.(Image credit: Retrospekt)
It’s a"nothing goes to waste" mentality that fits with Retrospekt’s larger purpose.
Retrospket applies the same care to other product categories.
For a recentPolaroid 600 Barbie-themed camera, the company used all original internals and created new pink outer shells.
(Image credit: Retrospekt)
Other refurb products in high demand include those iPods.
I asked about the original iPod, but the company can’t find enough replacement parts.
And without source parts, Retrospekt might be building something that diverges from the original product experience.
(Image credit: Retrospekt)
He told me the company is fulfilling a desire to “experience retro stuff.
They [customers] don’t want a pale imitation of the 80s.
They want the 80s or they want the 90s.
This 35-year-old Nintendo Game Boy looks like new, but its refurbished.(Image credit: Future)
They don’t want a replica of it.
They want the real thing.”
Those too, it turns out, are reclamations.
(Image credit: Future)
“We take them apart.
The Game Boys sell for around $150 a piece, and the games are $29 a piece.
Affordability, like everything else Retrospekt does, is no accident.
(Image credit: Future)
or will you give me anything for it?”
In some ways Rertospekt is a counterbalance to our decades of unbridled consumerism.
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(Image credit: Future)
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For special cases like this see-through one on the Game Boy color, Retrospekt will try to preserve the original case.(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
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