Illustrated vintage GTO, a player wearing a Couch guitar strap, and a vintage car's blue vinyl interior

What IS Vintage Vinyl?

Couch’s vision over 20 years ago – to take old discarded vinyl and give it new life as your guitar strap, wallet, or camera strap – is a cornerstone of what Couch is about in making you the world’s best guitar strap. Much of the vinyl we use and love at Couch comes from the 1950s through the 2000's. It’s common for our vintage vinyl to be irreplaceable. The patterns, colors and history of each piece or roll is truly from another era, and each Couch item we make is uniquely inspired by it.

Shelves of rolled vintage vinyl, a Couch team member checking a patterned roll, and cutting reference notes pinned to the wall

How Do We Find Our Vintage Vinyl?

We find this vinyl at old auto upholstery warehouses where it had been gathering dust for decades. We’ve scoured the nation looking for our favorites and have also accumulated over 40,000 yards of highly unique, irreplaceable vintage fabrics on hand ready to make your strap.

When It’s Gone It’s Gone

Each Couch vintage-vinyl, USA-made, cruelty-free item is by nature limited edition. When it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Typically vintage runs go from about 40 pieces to a couple hundred of any color or style. This material otherwise would likely never have been used, so it’s so cool to make something useful and unique out of it with a story and get it to you at a killer price. No one else can do it but Couch, but remember, when it’s gone it’s gone, so if you see something you like, get it while you can.

Why Vintage Vinyl?

First and foremost, we love things vintage because to us they often look cool, simple as that. Thrift stores, garage sales and the like have always given us things from other eras that offer us a unique way to express ourselves. Applying that concept to our industrial designs, it also feels great to take something eventually headed to a landfill and fill it with the vision, technical skill and hard work it takes to make it uniquely Couch.

Shelves of “The Detroit Books” reference binders organized by year, and someone paging through vinyl swatch samples

How Do You Know It’s Vintage?

Many of these textiles, particularly the automotive ones, were historically made by 3rd party manufacturers like Goodyear and Naugahyde. Often date-stamped on the back, we can coordinate the exact cars, or at least years, they were used either from images, common knowledge, and most often The Detroit Books. These are the penultimate annual reference guides coordinating each swatch of vinyl and fabric with a specific car make and model. And that’s where these vinyls get their name. As experts, we also have a basic understanding of “vinyl archeology” and can attribute a certain color, pattern or production process to a decade pretty precisely. We’ve been doing this for years!

How Do You Know It’s Couch?

If it’s vintage, sweatshop free, made in the USA, cruelty free, and shipped factory floor to your door, then it’s Couch. We make the world’s best guitar straps since 1999. Factory Floor To Your Door at a fair price. Cruelty free, sweatshop free and often up-cycled.

Rock,
Couch.

All our Vintage Vinyl Guitar Straps can be found on our site in these categories. When in doubt, the description will always confirm a product’s vintage authenticity.

Vintage Auto Vinyl Guitar Straps
Racer X Guitar Straps
Deadstock Luggage Guitar Straps