Dumb phones, smart business: Meet the 28-year-old entrepreneur selling retro tech to Gen Z

• Flip phones, portable CD players, and point-and-shoot cameras — what’s old is new again.
• Meet the 28-year-old founder of Kickback, a brand that sells retro-inspired and refurbished gadgets.
• London Jackson runs a full-time business around nostalgia for the earlier days of tech.

London Glorfield isn’t a Luddite — he just wants tech products to feel a little less soul-sucking.

“Tech is a sea of sameness right now,” Glorfield, who goes by London Jackson professionally, told Business Insider in an interview. “It’s so boring.”

Young people are hungry for retro tech, especially in the AI era. Analog has taken on a new meaning. It’s often not used literally, but instead as a blanket term for any tech that feels slower than what we’ve grown accustomed to. Digital point-and-shoot cameras? Analog. CD player? Analog. Wired headphones? Analog.

“I call it dumb tech,” Jackson, a 28-year-old based in New York, said. He’s built a business around it called Kickback, which he cofounded in 2024, after years of working as a musician.

The business started with cassette tapes, then a record player (which sells for $500), and then a portable CD player (which goes for $99 and has been stocked at Urban Outfitters and the MoMA Design Store). Kickback’s business is one part re-imagined retro tech and another part refurbished gadgets. For the latter, Kickback works with a network of resellers and takes up to a 40% cut.

Late last year, Jackson dropped a limited collection of refurbished Motorola Razrs, a cellphone you may remember from the 2000s. The phones are sleek and colorful, and they bring back memories — at least for me — of flipping the phone open to hit speed dial.

The collection — 100 phones — sold out within minutes. A set of MP3 players also sold out.

Most recently, Kickback launched a line of $70 point-and-shoot cameras modeled after 2000s designs, in a collaboration with the musician Brent Faiyaz.

“It’s just as much of a fashion flex as it is a way to unplug,” Jackson said of the company’s products.

Nostalgia is paying off.

In 2025, Kickback’s total revenue surpassed $750,000, and it sold over 7,000 products, according to documentation provided by Jackson. Kickback brought in a gross profit of roughly $460,000.

Nostalgia as a marketing engine

Yearning for the early 2000s is shaping Kickback’s design choices and marketing.

Whether it’s rebooting Y2K gadgets or reviving the aesthetic of disposable film cameras, nostalgic marketing messaging is all about bringing people back to an offline world.

“It allows us to tell the story of this elusive, simpler time,” Jackson said.

“I don’t actually know if it was simpler,” he added. “I was a baby. But when I look back at a time without constant notifications and constantly being expected to be online … that sounds like a vacation. To me, that sounds like a luxury.”

Ironically, being online is also part of the business. Jackson’s own presence on Instagram and TikTok is the crux of Kickback’s marketing strategy.

Jackson is one of many young founders turning to the content creation engine. Between posts about brand building and design aesthetic, Jackson promotes Kickback’s products — like its portable CD player — by talking about wanting to get offline.

“I’m trying to spend less time on my phone, man,” he said in a February video.

Old tech, new business

Selling physical products direct-to-consumer isn’t a gold rush, though it has become Jackson’s full-time job.

“There’s months where I’ve had to tap into savings,” he said. “It’s totally changed month to month, and that’s something we’re really trying to stabilize this year.”

Kickback raised about $300,000 in venture capital funding in 2025.

Jackson wants to grow Kickback’s team. So far, he has primarily run the business by working with third-party factories, a designer based in Copenhagen, and a network of refurbishers. In April, he hired a chief operating officer.

“This cultural shift away from wanting to be on your phone all the time has been hugely beneficial to us,” Jackson said.