Be nice, rewind! Their names are Romain and Mathieu, they are 34 years old, met in Toulouse and we wanted to set up a project with friends. The first was not wealthy, but the second had some money to invest in a company.
Both dreamed of something around nostalgia! Thus begins the crazy story of We Are Rewind. Or how two “little French people” decided three years ago to relaunch the Walkman which seemed to have died out in 2004! And believe it… 20 minutes went to meet them and tested the walkman… of the future.
Encouraging sales
By holding it in hand, the We Are Rewind walkman exudes quality. With its metal shell in iridescent colors (in orange, blue or grey), the device design refined instantly appeals to nostalgia. THE eighties The years of Jean-Jacques Goldman, Michael Jackson, Eurythmics, Daniel Balavoine or Toto thus invite themselves without knocking. Years Stranger Things Also !
“I realized that after vinyl, the audio cassette was coming back, but that the only portable players on the market were either rotten players sold for 20 euros on Amazon, or high-end devices offered between 800 and 1,000 euros” , explains Romain Boudruche. With his sidekick Mathieu Mazières, this young designer-editor in advertising felt the vein. The “good job”? Perhaps not quite, the sales of audio cassettes only pointing their muzzle (100,000 sales in the United States in 2020). But artists like Eminem, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd released their latest album on audio cassette. Encouraging.
A vintage player in tune with the times
“Two French engineers recommended by one of the last manufacturers of audio cassettes, the Avranches company Recording the Masters, helped us with the technique. These former Thomson employees, who have more than 40 years of experience, have enabled us to design a product that really holds up from an audio point of view”, says Romain with satisfaction.
A loan of 70,000 euros and the boost of a campaign of crowdfunding on Kickstarter (which collected 18,800 euros out of the 10,000 hoped for) made it possible to finance the manufacture of 6,000 walkmans. To embrace the spirit of the times, We Are Rewind is battery-free, but runs on a 12-hour battery that recharges via USB-C. It is also Bluetooth 5.0. And can finally record in stereo. The device is supplied without headphones.
Analog sound and nostalgia
Moment revival! To test We Are Rewind, head to the cellar and an old box where we religiously keep about thirty analog cassettes. There are the recordings of our first interviews as a young journalist, but also some ” mixtapes (the equivalent of playlists current) once copied from vinyl. 60, 90, even 120 minute cassettes rub shoulders which, for the record, had to be turned over in their player halfway through. There was one album per side. The Bic pen was welcome when by misfortune (it happened sometimes), the tape unwound in the player and it had to be rewound in its case.
Let’s move on to the interviews, with a lot of breath to listen to, which still leave some emotional memories when we find a cassette on which is written “Serge Gainsbourg”. We are happy that these interviews have survived the test of time. More surprisingly, the musical recordings found are astonishing in their quality. Our tapes do not seem to have degraded for 30 years…
The one from the album Goodbye Marylou by Michel Polnareff is a real pleasure to listen to on the We Are Rewind walkman to which we have associated the Marshall Monitor II ANC headphones. No doubt, the analog sound was something! There is with him a warmth, a dynamic, a presence that digital has never been able to find… “Many of our buyers are nostalgic for this sound, with such a particular texture. For me, it’s above all the object that excites me”, laughs Romain Boudruche… who was born at the time of the CD.
A ghetto balster in the boxes
Sold for 149 euros, which is a fair price, the We Are Rewind player will no doubt appeal to those who have kept their old cassettes in their cupboards. The youngest will be able to have fun too, while perhaps waiting to see their favorite artists offer their sounds on this medium. Why not? Many have become vinyl fans, even though they had never known it. After 5,000 copies sold, optimism dominates among the designers of the 21st century Walkman. “For the time being, our outlets are mainly in Asia and the United States where the market is more important”, specifies Romain. Who does not despair of seeing France embrace the phenomenon. “We are in contact with various labels for which we would like to create limited edition boxes with a walkman and a cassette, for example”.
In the meantime, the We Are Rewind team is nurturing new projects, such as those for vintage headphones and other walkmans. And even that of a ghetto blaster ! For Romain Boudruche and Mathieu Mazières, a single watchword: “we want to stay in the eighties style”.