Mous’s co-founder on the mission to create the unbreakable phone case

How to get people excited about phone cases is the question London-based start-up Mous grapple with every day.

“Cases are either really protective and bulky, or they are super stylish and flimsy [so] your phone would break if you dropped it,” explains Mous' co-founder and head of brand and creative, Lucy Hutchinson.

When you’re spending upwards of £1,000 on a brand new shiny smartphone you definitely want it to survive the odd knock or two.

This is a problem Mous set out to solve, creating a phone case that is both protective and - here's the buzzword - stylish; one which people actually like.

It's been two years since they embarked on their journey. Here's how it all began...

The Mous story: how the company started

Back in 2016, Hutchinson was working for the top branding agency Someone when her old university friend, James Griffith, approached her about a business idea. He and his business partner, Josh Shires, had created an ultra-slim but very protective phone case, and they wanted to launch a crowdfunding campaign.

“That was the biggest challenge, how do we get people to pre-order and be excited about a phone case?” she explains. “From that moment, I was hooked.”

Acting as a consultant for the brand, Hutchinson watched as the Indiegogo campaign swooped up from £0 to nearly £2 million. With 50,000 backers, Mous became the most funded phone case ever released on a crowd-funding platform.

Hutchinson then came aboard full-time as head of creative, because young companies, she says, should be all about branding. “We always wanted to be quite disruptive, to come into a market that people think is sleepy and turn it on its head. That's where branding really comes into play,” she explains.

What makes Mous cases so good?

Whilst a start-up aiming to 'disrupt' might be nothing new, what Mous did was actually quite ground-breaking. The founders created their own patent-pending material, Airoshock - a high-impact material which lines all the cases to give them their impressive protective strength.

“It’s amazing that the team have been able to do that and it’s another bit to add to our brand and what we can be known for,” says Hutchinson.

As might be expected, Mous loves a guerrilla marketing campaign. For the launch of the iPhone X, for instance, Griffith asked someone to throw his new - very expensive - Mous-cased iPhone on the floor just to prove it wouldn’t break.

It didn't.

The team recently carried out another spectacular drop test for the launch of the iPhone XS - chucking the new phone 30 feet down the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Hutchinson says these stunts are scary but they are a lot of fun as well.

“We believe in our product and test it extensively but you never know if it will work. It was nerve-wracking but brilliant to prove to people live in front of crowds that it does work.”

It’s crazy stunts like these which have not only made the headlines and but contributed hugely to Mous's sales. But of course, none of that would be possible, if the product itself wasn't really, really good.

Mous isn’t just about problem-solving for phones. It's currently building an accessories range - a card wallet case, a wall mount - to solve other everyday problems as well.

“We work at a WeWork space and we were losing our key cards all the time, and it was costing us loads of money. So we designed the magnetic card wallet, which fits the case, to solve that problem,” explains Hutchinson.

“We’re inspired by real people and real problems,” she adds.

Where is the company going next?

Now Mous has the new iPhone XS launch done and dusted, Hutchinson says the company is focusing on adding to the accessories range whilst getting more Mous products into retail stores.

It might seem strange that an online brand is partially moving its shopping experience offline, but it’s merely another way to reach customers.

“Retail really excites me because it’s more space to play with,” says Hutchinson.

You can find Mous’s products in Selfridge’s Smartech store on Oxford Street, amongst the drones and Snapchat glasses. However, they have set their sights high, and one day, hope to make it into Apple...

But whilst Mous might be all about growth right now, it's about growth in the rightest of ways: good company culture, says Hutchinson, is paramount. “We’re all pretty weird and wonderful and it feels exciting to say we want to have this kind of culture here: about being flexible, open-minded and creative," she explains.

"It’s amazing that we’re the ones building this from the ground up.”