In July, as Nexus 7s were still struggling their way out of boxes, Geek Native popped over to Etsy to dig up 7 handcrafted covers for the tablet. We saw some great designs.
But what if Etsy isn’t your thing? What if you wanted a fashionable retailer, a gadget expert, to lovingly design and make a thoroughly professional Nexus 7 case for you? What if you didn’t want an adapted Kindle Fire case?
Geek Native reached out to Proporta.com with the question; “Will you be producing a Nexus 7 case?”
Great. Good news. Geek Native got cheeky – and asked for more and Proporta kindly agreed. We’ve landed a short Q&A interview with Lynnette Prigmore , Head of Product at Proporta.
We even have photographs of the design and build process. Now, we’re not getting to reveal the design and build process for the still secret Nexus 7 cases – but these photographs show iPad cases and covers instead. You probably know someone who needs an iPad case.
Q. When/how do you decide the time is right to create a case design for a device? Is it purely a commercial decision based on how well the gadget is selling?
A: This is our trickiest challenge, but one we’re pretty used to after 16 years in the game. We assess a number of things and how well the gadget is selling can be part of it, but often our retailers and customers want the accessory at the same time as they buy their gadget so we don’t always have this information to hand. If this is the case then we look at customer pre-interest, how well a predecessor or similar gadget has performed and add a little bit of gut feel too.
Q. Are you surprised at how well the Nexus 7 is selling?
A: Not at all, given the marketing efforts and price point they’ve positioned the Nexus 7 at. It’s made this sort of gadget much more accessible to anyone who wasn’t too keen on forking out hundreds of £s on a tablet device.
Q. How long does it take to design a case for a tablet?
A: A lot depends on the style of the device and what materials we choose to use, but in our industry we have to move pretty fast so we usually have key times of the year where we put a range of designs together and then we can gain a much faster turnaround – At our busiest times this can be just a matter of hours. We have an excellent in house design team!
Q. What sort of inspiration do you draw on when thinking about tablet case design?
A: We look at the market and what else is available out there, we survey our proporta.com customers and also use the different devices as much as possible in order to gain a real feel for the device and its needs in terms of accessories from the customer perspective.
Q. What do you think of the handmade/ hand-craft community on sites like Etsy that make hundreds of alternative smartphone and tablet cases?
A: We received great feedback on a collection of iPhone case designs from a partner brand, Lalita, which took inspiration from vintage ties and scarves and matched these to the linings in the cases. All Proporta “cut and sew” cases are handmade from leathers and faux leathers and we know that this level of craftmanship is very important to our consumers.
Special thanks to Proporta for being good sports, providing pictures and answers to questions. You can check out Proporta’s current Nexus 7 range at their site today.
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