Marketing Idea: Brand Collaboration Chassis and Lids To Extend Mainboard Life

[XenoCow]

Inspired by the conundrum of 3rd party mainboard manufacturing that @James3 brought up in his comment here, I was thinking about how 3rd parties could make products, meaningfully for Framework laptops. Then I thought about who might want to make something aesthetic rather than electronic for the laptop owners which leads me to…

Brand Collaborations! I could imagine that limited run chases and lids could be made in collaboration with brands that might want to spend some of that money on marketing in interesting domains. I imagine such deals could be with fashion brands like Louis Vuitton:

Or with toy companies like LEGO:

Etc. etc…

Edit Mar 14, '26
If it’s not clear from the pictures, the difference between these lids and chases and standard ones with vinyl wraps is that these would be made of interesting materials like the pleather or Lego grid shown. You might also imagine fluffy, plastic textured, squishy, different metals, or whatever other shapes and materials would suit the brand images.

These brands get to do a marketing stunt about supporting an Earth-friendly company, and Framework gets more household name recognition. Seems like a good deal to me.

I’d imagine that to ensure that Framework stays true to its mission, that these brand collaboration products would be sold primarily as the outer shells only so that if you want to switch to one, you’d have to bring your own internal parts. You could even have celebrity versions and make a commercial / marketing video where that person shows how easy it is to repair by upgrading a standard laptop to the collaboration version. That being said, I think it would also be wise to sell some of the branded ones as pre-builts to entice first-time buyers too.

Anyways. Since I believe in Framework’s mission (and have a minor financial incentive for them becoming more popular Cough SNACK Drawers Cough) I thought I’d share this musing with you all. I hope it happens one day.

P.S. These example companies don’t necessarily represent my support for them. They were just what popped into my head.

P.P.S. If this post belongs in the General section instead, please feel free to move it there, moderators.

[XenoCow]

I just saw these veneer covers for the laptops being discussed in the List of company or individually driven projects thread. This product is 90% of the kind of thing I was referring to here in this thread. The only difference is that this product doesn’t include the base parts, it’s just a cover. In this thread, I imagined that the 3rd party would produce whole enclosures with the interesting / branded forms or materials.

[Squiggler]

Ah, by chase, I wonder if you mean chassis? A chase is a pursuit (noun) or the act of pursuing (verb); a chassis is a mechanical structure that can be built upon.

[XenoCow]

You are indeed right. My undiagnosed, mild Lexdyxia seems to have struck again. It’s unfortunately too late to update the title. This will be the second forum title I’ve written here to haunt me with its misspelling. ):

[Squiggler]

No worries! I think because of my contribution level I am able to edit it. You should be able to amend the instance in the body copy.

I had to look this up, notwithstanding my being a native English speaker: the singular and plural are both the same word, but they are pronounced differently.

[XenoCow]

Oh, thank you very much!

I’d very much like to edit the body too, but that also appears to be outside my ability. You’d think I would have a higher contribution level after being around since before launch…