Kid-A co-founders, Andy Silcock (left) and Adam Toms (right).
Vodafone’s accessories partner, Kid-A, isn’t your standard phone case manufacturer. In fact, they’re not a phone case manufacturer at all. Although, that hasn’t stopped them from trying to make the “most circular phone case in the world”.
“The objective is to change the market, not make a phone case,” state Kid-A co-founders, Adam Toms and Andy Silcock, almost in unison.
The pair are speaking from the company’s Winchester office, in a boardroom adorned by framed artwork that reflects their Radiohead-inspired name – a group which also vehemently prioritised impact over output.
“First and foremost, however, we describe ourselves as a managed services agency,” continues Toms. “We manage the accessories category on behalf of Vodafone.”
“By taking care of all the commercial relationships, we ensure Vodafone still has a direct relationship with the brands that matter, but without having to set up loads of contracts or keep track of loads of suppliers.”
Fortunately, Vodafone is an organisation both know well, having met while working there back in 2014. After separately moving on to new opportunities, their paths crossed once again in the smartphone accessories space – a market projected to exceed £5 billion by 2030 but which, historically, hasn’t always attracted the same attention as some other categories.
Quickly spotting a gap in the market, especially when it came to how mobile operator networks interact with suppliers and distributors, the pair decided to launch Kid-A.
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Unlike other companies in this industry, however, Kid-A doesn’t buy and hold stock to then simply sell it into telco companies like Vodafone. Rather, much like Uber, Airbnb or eBay, Kid-A uses its platform to help facilitate services and interactions between a business and its customers.
“It’s a model that’s proved popular because it keeps things simple,” says Toms, “and it enables us to focus on how you get these products into the hands of customers, rather than just on the shelves of the network.”
Vodafone made Kid-A responsible for the accessories category in March 2020, which includes portfolio selection, ranging, lifecycle management and commercials. Since then, they have overseen a significant increase in margin performance and a material reduction in working capital.
“The dream for me is to deliver on our promises to Vodafone, which is to decarbonise the accessories category, while continuing to deliver results.”
Though, for Silcock and Toms, success isn’t purely measured by the bottom line. Because, like Vodafone, sustainability is also a critical marker of performance.
“The dream for me,” says Silcock, “is to deliver on our promises to Vodafone, which is to decarbonise the accessories category, while continuing to deliver results.”
One of the first companies to become a Certified B Corporation within the industry, Kid-A has also been verified by The Science Based Targets initiative, having committed to reducing its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions 42% by 2030, and become net zero by 2050, from its 2022 base year.
Likewise, Vodafone UK has already reduced its own operational carbon emissions ( which, between Scope 1 and 2 account for roughly 1-2% of total emissions) by 93% since its baseline year, as set out in its recent Carbon Reduction Plan.
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For Kid-A, this climate consciousness has led to the creation of EATS. – an offshoot phone accessory brand that aims to help Kid-A, in Toms’ words, “lead the market, drive change, and show the art of the possible”.
Made in Sweden from reused plastic plates and cups – and packaged by individuals with a physical, neurological or mental disability as part of a government-backed labour initiative – EATS. phone cases prioritise making the right kind of impact.
Much of this hinges on the inclusion of a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) value – in this case, just 0.093kg – which measures the product’s carbon footprint from Sweden all the way to Vodafone’s distribution centre in Nuneaton, marking an industry first.
The EATS. phone case has a removable MagSafe, making it easier to be recycled.
Finally, to ensure circularity, the design includes an extractable MagSafe component that can be removed easily and reused, allowing the case to re-enter a grinder and become another phone case following the end of its initial life.
“What tends to happen is, when a case reaches the end of its useful life, it invariably ends up in landfill,” says Silcock. “This is due to the limited recyclability of cases, as they are traditionally comprised of a variety of complex plastics and materials.
“But we think there’s a better way of doing it. We want ours to all come back, so they can return to Sweden and get made into new phone cases. That way, you can build up a relationship with the customer by giving them some kind of discount when they send their own case back.”
Making sustainable more attainable
It’s not just customer relationships Kid-A is trying to change, however – it’s customer perceptions.
“The first step towards all of this is education and understanding,” explains Toms. “I firmly expect in the next few years, for instance, that everyone is going to know the price of something in money as well as the cost of something in carbon.
Reduce, Reuse, Refurbished: second-hand behaviours on the rise
If 50% of Brits switched to a refurbished device in 2024, an astonishing 63,750,000kg of carbon could be saved, enough to power the equivalent of 88,174 family homes across the UK for a year.
“They are going to be equally important purchasing decisions for everyone – and we love the fact that this is the first phone case to do that.”
With a projected one billion plastic phone cases sold each year, each of which contain roughly 20 grams of plastic, Kid-A is trying to turn the tide when it comes to a more sustainable marketplace. And, in the process, the company is helping Vodafone to make good on its own climate goals.
“What Vodafone has enabled us to do has been incredible,” says Silcock. “They took a chance on an unknown kid – a Cinderella story – and it shows their appetite for change.
“And what that’s done has allowed us to show the market that Vodafone is a disruptor, through genuine innovation of an untried model that has worked.”
EATS. phone cases are exclusively available through Vodafone for the new Apple iPhone range, and can be pre-ordered through Vodafone’s third party accessories site, GetGoFone.
Business customers can pre-order the new iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max now with Vodafone Business.
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