In a Nutshell - the art of designing smartphone accessories

In a nutshell, the world of cellphone accessories and Smartphone designs size formats are constantly changing. Apple's new iPhone 6 is said to be longer, while both the Samsung Galaxy 5 and the HTC One M8 are both longer than their predecessors. 

At Nutshell our more than 17 years experience in designing holsters and cases in New Zealand to meet the global cellphone accessories marketplace and accommodate the ever changing size formats in smartphone designs is a challenge that we are happy to accept. 

Our custom smartphone accessories are leather smartphone holsters, tailor made to fit the smartphones they are designed for.

iPhone 4 bumpers (Photo credit: Nicolas Fleury)

Looking back over our long association with PDAs, cellphone accessories and Smart phone cases and and our users; we have touched about every sector and segment of society; from the ultra-rich to the geeky poor. 

In a  nutshell there's hardly a town in the United States does not have one Nutshell in its midst; some soul still protecting their valuable mobile in one of our little leather smartphone holsters that really are works of art,. Pretty they may not be, but do the job - they certainly do.

In the developing world of Smartphone accessories designs there are many many different ways of crafting leather smartphone holsters. It is not just about the finish, or the material itself. The finish you expect to be as good as possible, and the material used has to live up to the need to protect the device and provide a long and satisfactory user experience. 

That's the challenge, the designs for cellphone accessories and Smartphone accessories need to be constantly changing to stay one jump ahead of the opposition.

Based as we are - around the back of the planet in a small group of islands called New Zealand in the South Pacific, we have the luxury of eyeing the Smartphone designs that are generated by our competitors in other parts of the world. Many build their leather smartphone holsters specifically to meet the needs of a single device, without any regard to the user's future needs and expectations.

In a nutshell, we disagree. We build our tuff as nuts cases and nutshell smartphone holsters to provide a lifetime of service, without regard to any single smartphone or other mobile device; our cellphone accessories and smartphone accessories are built to last and will hold many like-sized devices (one at a time obviously). 

Quite simply we believe that while others sell you a case to protect your current device, we sell you an investment in the future; providing your next smartphone, and the one after that are roughly the same size, they should comfortably fit into one of our leather Smartphone holsters.

And in a nutshell we also believe that beauty should always be more than skin deep. In a world where cheapness and expediency are too often taken as the most important items on the designer's check list, we believe the use of top quality fittings and high class materials counts for way more than a cheap price sticker. 

As we continue to strive to succeed in a world full of cheap and nasty knock offs, in a nutshell we intend to incorporate a growing array of new materials, like carbon fibers and natural antistatic fibers into our products so that we maintain our philosophy that perfection is not always cheap, but to carry the tuff as nuts label it will always be the best.

Getting IT right

Just posted a couple of segmented email messages out to our customer database in the past couple of weeks....one about the cases we offer for the new iPhone 5 and the other a general release (to non-apple users) about Nutshell cases that we have matched to a slew of new mobile Smartphones that have hit, or are about to hit, the markets.

Unfortunately, while we got a lot of positive responses back for the new cases for the iPhone 5, we managed to get it quite wrong - and have had to go back to the drawing board. We assumed many folk would be putting their latest handheld into a security/protective cases as soon as they got it...only to be told, in no uncertain terms, that that was NOT always the case. And that there are lots and lots and lots of people out there who are so enamored with their latest Apple device there is NO WAY they are ever going to wrap it in some nondescript protective covering.

That really told us, and had us scrambling to get it RIGHT!

So right now we have three new knives in production specifically for the iPhone 5; one is for a case with a flap and one with the case with a tab - that can hold the "naked" phone snugly without any sort of protection in place.  And a third is for a new "sideways" pouch that is the same as the existing pouch we offer for the "naked" iPhone 4...only it is 10 mm longer - to cater for the increased length of the iPhone 5.

The new holsters will share the new case number of #268...while the new pouch for the iPhone 5 will be known as the #214.

(What are knives? They are the sharp steel forms that cut the leather that covers the Nutshell products.)

We expect to have these knives available 'any day now' - and look forward to getting lots and lots of positive feedback...and lots and lots of orders...as a result.

Well, you certainly cannot say we do not try.

What was that old saying?
" ...you can please some of the people some of the time....but never all of the people all of the time."

Very true...and that means, from a marketing perspective...never taking anything for granted. Not even after 15 years of closely following the developing mobile handheld market and daring to think that maybe you know what it is people will want, before they know it themselves. A very dangerous assumption.  But we know our customers will, as always, forgive us.

Don't forget, Christmas is just around the corner...what are you going to get them this year?

:-)