Founded in 2011, the popular Hong Kong-based tech accessories brand lends a touch of individuality to your gadgets
Casetify entrepreneur Wesley Ng sat down with Tatler to reveal how Gen Z and millennial consumer trends drive his business and how his company empowers hundreds of creatives around the world.
How does your business make a difference?
We make a difference in our users’ daily lives; we impact the livelihoods of many artists; and our work impacts the environment too. Casetify thinks about phone cases as blank canvases. A phone case is where a person can show their individuality, their passion and personality. To achieve that, we partner with creative people around the world to find designs that connect with our users. Casetify supports more than 300 designers on our platform by sharing profits with them each time a user buys a case with their design. Apart from self-expression, most of our phone cases are made with up to 90 per cent upcycled plastic that we collect through our re-Casetify programme [which collects old phone cases and upcycles them and operates in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and the US].
Read more: Appier co-founder Winnie Lee is speaking a more ‘human’ language in the tech world
What do you put your success down to?
Firstly, originality: the product I created when I started Casetify was quite different from other options in the market. I didn’t let that stop me. I went in with the mindset that it’s best to stay unique. Secondly, reacting with blazing speed to the demands of our consumers. In the social-media era, trends come and go very fast. But at Casetify we are always there to spot them and bring to market exciting products around them. It keeps us very fresh and current.
What are the top three ingredients for a successful business?
There’s no universal recipe, but here’s what I think: a lot of people can have ideas to solve problems, but not everybody has the right energy and mindset to execute them as an entrepreneur. Starting a company is hard and all kinds of challenges will emerge daily. So, motivation, grit and persistence are very important. Once the idea and energy are there, the second ingredient is to know your customer, understand what they want, and make their problems your own problems to solve. Because that’s why they pay us money—they trust a business to deliver a solution. The third thing I would highlight is collaboration. Great things cannot happen without the help of others. Looking around you and seeing whether you can bring a few people together to do something even bigger will involve work, but it can also be a defining moment in a business.