Retro Tech pt. 2

A couple of weeks ago, Francis Zierer and I talked to Kori Fuerst, the cofounder of Retrospekt.

Retrospekt is a consumer electronics company that specializes in retro tech. They both refurbish and restore retro tech and produce some of it. They also sell other people and companies’ retro tech and adjacent products, like music and film.

We covered high fashion collaborations, how many VHS tapes are in a pallet, and possible disruptions to the retro tech supply chain. The conversation was so interesting, we decided to break it out into two parts! You’re reading part two right now.

Click here to listen to the podcast episode instead. Or keep scrolling for a curation of Dirt’s favorite things available from Retrospekt. — Daisy Alioto

Francis Zierer: What's your most personally prized piece of old tech that you've collected over the years? 

Kori Fuerst: I love a lot of the original Polaroid engineering models like the classic Polaroid 600 camera. And I love clear technology, too. That’s why we made our first cassette player clear. That's such a vibe and hallmark of an era.  

FZ: Maybe there will be a resurgence in clear tech too.  

KF: Yeah, let's see all the guts inside making it work. But the clear electronics history is so interesting. It's actually rooted in prisons. Prisons needed clear electronics to prevent contraband coming in through electronics. We have a clear CRT TV here that has the inmate’s name engraved into it.  

Daisy Alioto: Speaking of resurgence, my mom still has a lot of her CDs. I have a visceral memory of them entering the car in a plastic case but ending up everywhere. Then of course the case cracks… 

KF: They usually still play. I think we all have the memory too of the CD mixtape, and cassette mixtapes too, if you have a certain mixtape so ingrained in your head, if you listen to it so many times, you pair unrelated songs in that order, like sometimes I'll still hear a song and I can hear a playlist that I had, whatever song would play next. There's a lot of memory built into that.

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FZ: Part of the appeal of retro tech is finding the old thing and having it and knowing that when it breaks I can get another one. But someday I won't be able to get one.

KF: It meets a need though. There are a lot of people in this world who don't like second-hand or used things and that's okay too. To me, as long as more people are shooting on film and creating a demand for the film itself, film's not going to go away.

Truthfully, that's what worried us about Polaroid. Like if something happened or a Polaroid film truly was no longer available. This was more of a concern in the early days when the company was newer. It's one of those things where if you don't have the film, you can't use the cameras. And suddenly they're all defunct again. 

DA: So what's next in terms of scale? Is there a point at which you won’t want to grow Retrospekt further?

KF: I think right now there's a lot going on in the world that is putting some of our plans on pause until we're more sure what's going to happen. One of the last standing cassette player manufacturers is in China. So trying to figure out how to navigate that with the tariffs.

We have a really good, efficient system for refurbishing Polaroid cameras with minimal yield loss. I want to clean up what we're already doing and do all of it well. We were talking about the Gameboys, that's a very small portion of our website right now. How can we always keep inventory in stock?  iPods are something that we eventually just sell completely out of. Typewriters are a similar thing. There's more days than not we're sold out of typewriters.

And then in terms of a dream project, I really want to make a VCR. It's now been 10 years since there's been a new commercially available VCR on the market. I'm sure someone's going to beat us to it. It's a personal interest. It's going to be expensive. We've talked to some people. There's a few components inside that there's just no one manufacturing anymore, specifically the drum. So figuring out if we want to do that, because I feel like that is a huge void, like this thing that's regaining popularity and you can't even get a new player to play them. There's opportunity there.

But that would be a huge undertaking, probably multi-year project. And then who knows? I'm often surprised at what we stumble into next. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was never put out on cassette despite coming out in the late nineties. And so we worked with Merge Records and asked like, “Hey, can we put this on cassette?” They were agreeable to it and we sold them out super quick. And that was really fun. That felt cool, putting an album that should have been on cassette back on cassette again. 🎧

DIRT x RETROSPEKT

Something old, something new…

Sideways VHS tape ($15), Original Tamagotchi (Gen. 1) Purple-Pink Virtual Pet ($25), To Sir, With Love VHS ($8), Polaroid SX-70 Model 2 ($379), Apple iPod Shuffle (2nd Generation) ($79), Guess E-4000 Black Triangular Portable Cassette Player ($249), Transparent Clear Blank T-130 VHS Tape ($15), Ever After VHS tape ($6), Okay Kaya - SAP LP Opaque Tan Vinyl Record ($11)

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