Introduction

Read part 1 of our Nomad interview with Neil Villadoild here who provided us first-hand what the work culture at Nomad looks like and how this translates to their everyday work schedule. 

Part 2 of our conversation with Nomad this week encompasses everything to do with products, their famous tanneries and how customer feedback affects their new product lines.

Dive into part 2 of our Nomad interview below. Shop Nomad Goods here at Megamac!

Nomad’s Products

Josephine Nuamah (JN) from Megamac and Neil Villadolid (NV) from Nomad Goods.  

NV: I'm not super involved with the design and the mock-up of our iPhones, but I can still talk on that subject. When you ask how long it takes to create an iPhone case, it's a little bit of a blurry answer. It's not super black and white. What I mean by that is, Nomad created a case long before I was here. I think it was the iPhone 6s that was our first case. Every year after that, we tweak our cases. We make small upgrades with the buttons, the TPU bumper etc. So every year, we're slowly improving on that case. So I think that, the final product that we have now for the iPhone 14 cases, it's been six or seven years of small tweaks that have gone into creating what we have now, which is really cool to see.

Another thing is we are coming out with alternative style cases that we haven't been making for seven years and it really takes a while. It takes a lot of samples and back and forth with factories and designs to really get it right. When iPhone 13 drops, we're immediately looking and starting work on iPhone 14. We look at our iPhone 13 case and we're like, “what did we like?”, “what did we not like?”, “what do we want to do differently?” and start working on it. It is really getting the design, colour and the material. Once we get all that, which takes a while, then we are able to go with production.

JN: Do you get any inside information on when products are going to be released and what that might be at all? 

NV: I mean, we get the same information that everyone else gets. Like if you're in tune to the world, there's so many rumours that are getting thrown out there and we're getting that same information as everyone else. But if you know the people in the rumour world, there are some people that are more credible than others. Mark Gurman for example. But we always keep an eye on websites like MacRumors, 9to5, Business Insider etc. Also, once news breaks, you can always expect to see that information on Twitter immediately. YouTube is a great source to not necessarily break leaks, but to dive into leaks. Wait until they release an iPhone 15 mock-up, and you're like, all right, they've nailed it the past five years in a row now so we can probably trust them. So that's how we base it off of, but then again, it's like you can never know until it's actually out there in the world what it's going to be like. It's a little scary.

JN: How do you think that being in Santa Barbara affects or influences the business and products? 

NV: I think it really does influence our business a lot. Part of our branding is like this California-esk vibe. The photos that we take are shot a lot of the time at the California beaches or in the California mountains. The photographers that we work with are a lot of the time from California. There's just this vibe you know: the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the locations that we shoot at, whether it's intentional or not. It is California and it is Santa Barbara. I think that leaks into our company and our brand. The photographers we work with are from Santa Barbara, so we have Santa Barbara wallpapers. I think that it's something that while we do want to lean into it, it's something that just happens subconsciously because we are here. If you look at our sport case colours, there's the Marine Blue, Dune and Ash Green. All of those colours were really taken from our environment around like Marine Blue - the Pacific Ocean. The Rolling Hills in Calabasas, the Dunes, the brown tannish colour from the dry drought that California had. So even the colours of our sport cases and sport bands are influenced by Santa Barbara and California.

JN: Do you ever take on any feedback from customers or even just from marketing about different colours/styles that some people may want to see with Nomad cases? 

NV: Yeah, a hundred percent. Our customers know us best and our customers are very vocal so we do listen to them. We listen to press a lot about moving the leather up a little bit, or maybe having the bumper stick out a little bit more. Then we also listen to wholesale accounts too. We take all this feedback and digest it and see what's possible, what we can prioritise, what we do not want and then we implement that. For example, our Horween leather case, it's what we're known for. It's our bread and butter. It's, I think in my opinion, the best thing that we make. But, Horween, it's a raw, authentic leather and it scratches easily. Some people love it but some people don't like how easily dinged up it gets and that's been a point of feedback for a while. So we took that feedback, we understood that feedback, and we offered a new leather that's a little bit more durable. It's more scratch resistant and so it helps some people who don't want that super patina phone case.

JN: How does Nomad choose the Tanneries that supply the leather cases you guys use on your iPhone? 

NV: We have two Tanners I mentioned before, but Horween is what we're known for is what people come to Nomad for. Horween is this amazing iconic tannery in Chicago, Illinois here in the United States. When we started working with them and started using their materials, that was before I even started working at Nomad. I believe it was for our first products that we used Horween for like the first Apple Watch bands. I wasn't here when we did that, but I have talked to our co-founders a bunch about, you know, why Horween. The answer is, when they set out to look and make a leather band, they wanted the best of the best. They wanted it to smell like leather, to feel like leather, to patina like leather and that's Horween. It's the best leather in the world. So when they set out to make leather accessories, they said, we're going to use the best and Horween the best.

The other one is, Ecco tannery. Why did we start using Ecco? Well, it was feedback from customers. The two biggest feedback that customers had about our Horween leather was it scratches too easily and it's too expensive. When you do use the best of the best like Horween, it is going to be a little bit more expensive than other leathers. So we got that feedback, we listened to them, and then we set out to find the tannery that provides quality leather, but at a slightly lower price point for customers to give them that option.

JN: Has there been much discussion about introducing a vegan case line. So many companies are including a vegan option with the growing trend so is that something Nomad are planning at all? 

NV: Yeah, a hundred percent. That has been a big project for the past year and a half, two years of trying to find these alternative leathers. From what I've learned, it's very difficult. The ones that we have tried, it's really hard to work with and we don't want to just grab some alternative leather and slap it on the phone case. We need to make sure it lives up to our quality standards. It's durable, it works well and we're still working on it. It’s definitely a big project that we're working on. We haven't quite found it yet, but that's something that we would love to do in the future.

JN: Do you have a favourite Nomad product? 

NV: I think it's our leather cases. I have an iPhone 12, so this is the English Tan colour. You can see the patina on it but I think my favourite phone case would be our Modern Leather Horween iPhone case. It’s just a classic Nomad phone case and you can spot one from a mile away even though there's no logos on it - when you see it, you know that it's a Nomad phone case. It just feels good, smells good and patinas super well. The new iPhone 12 and above have the MagSafe magnets in it, so it's compatible with all MagSafe stuff and I don't think you can beat that. Like I said, they spent seven/eight years tweaking it and it’s so good now. 

NV: It was my very first time attending CES. CES is very interesting. Everyone had their stories of what to expect, but you don't know what to expect until you get there. I had a great time. It was only a small crew of Nomads that went this year. Maia and Sophia from the Wholesale team, our co-founder Noah Dentzel and our product team so each department had its own goals while they were at CES. Our product team met with a bunch of factories, our wholesale team met with accounts, and me on the marketing side, I had the opportunity to meet with various creators, press and influencers.

One cool thing that we saw at CES was Qi 2 which is the new wireless standard. This was previously Qi which was the wireless standard so we were able to play with that and see it in actual products so that was a really cool opportunity. We’re playing with Qi 2 internally right now, and we'll probably have some stuff in the near future.

JN: Do you think that there's going to be some post iPhone device from Apple, as there are rumours of potentially an AI/VR headset. How are you guys thinking about those and bearing them in mind in terms of working on some products around them in the future? 

NV: I am not sure what we're going to do, but it seems like these non-mainstream products are what do super well for a customer base. When Air Tags were released, it's not something like an iPhone or an Apple Watch, but we came out with some accessories and people really liked those. Another example is the Apple TV remote. We made a leather wrap for that and again, it's not the most sexy product but people really seem to like that. I think these niche devices that Apple come out with seem to also have niche products that go with them. In terms of an AR headset, I'm not exactly sure what we could do for that, but I see that in the same realm as those other niche products. I'm not sure what, if anything, we would do, but I'm excited for that opportunity.

JN: How are you guys dealing with the demands now regarding the iPhone cases and Watch straps? 

NV: It’s been tough to say the least. When the Apple Watch Ultra was released in September, I think the demand for watch bands caught us off guard. We went out of stock so quickly on many of our popular bands and we had trouble bringing stock in which lined up with the holiday season. We had some backorder dates that we unfortunately missed on some of them which upset the customers. I know our customer service team was swamped on their side because of the demand. I think one cool thing that sheds some light on the Nomad team itself is, like everything at Nomad, our customer service team is small. They just got so overwhelmed with queries, shipping questions and when products are going to be back in stock. As the inbox was so heavy and they were so overwhelmed, everyone in the Nomad team: from the product team, marketing team and design team all hopped in and spent a week or so just helping our CS team handle all of these emails. I think that while it was a little bit of a bummer to see us out of stock on so much stuff, it was really cool to see the team rally behind where we could help them out. It's a good problem to have such a high demand, but it's a bummer when you can't keep up with that.

JN: We’ve seen that you've released the design lab which we think is a cool idea, very unique. Did you have any input in that? 

NV: It's such a unique idea and that idea I feel like has been thrown around internally for almost two years. I wasn't personally super hands on in the design and information of it, but I was a big advocate for it. I think almost everyone on the team was. It really does help customers pick out what watchband they want because a lot of our photos only show the Apple Watch Series 8 or the Apple Watch Ultra and not everyone has those watches. So, it's like, “I have the Apple Watch SE, how will this band look on that?” and our photos don't have that. Now, the Design Lab has that. So I think that it is a really helpful tool for customers and I'm happy that finally we have it up after what seems like years of conversation.

JN: Do you have any new cool colours coming out for either the iPhone cases or watch straps that you could give us some insight on? 

NV: Yeah, so we actually just launched a new sport band Electric Blue. We'll have a few more limited-edition colours coming out throughout the year with sport bands. 

Follow us on IG or Twitter for Part 3 as we delve deeper with marketing coordinator Neil, his Nomad journey and what his role entails.  

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