Phone repair store VS iPhone repair store

[comment]

I was thinking of opening a repair store dealing with all cell phones in general, but then I started doing research.. Just in the last 4 years there have been more than 100 unique HTC phones released, and even more Nokias, Samsungs, and other brands. Costs would be through the roof if I tried to stock all of those parts. No one wants to hear "yeah, we can order you a screen and call you when it gets here". People want to bring a phone in, wait for the 30 minute repair, and then get out the door.

Now, an iPhone repair business would be very easy to start and very cheap to run. Only problem is its sort of a popular business model. In one city alone there are 3.. IN THE MALL. In another city there are 4 iphone repair stores.

general Cell phone repair stores in these cities combined? 2.

Competition for iPhone repair is crazy, but competition for nokia, htc, samsung, blackberry, etc. Barely any.

Anyone have any experience with the business? Or any advice or things to say.

I should mention, I do have all the education needed to repair any phone given to me. hiring people wouldn't be too difficult.

I was thinking of just stocking parts for the 10 or 20 most popular phones in America, and as the business grows I start expanding to less and less popular phones..

 

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[DrkSide]

I will apply some of the knowledge that I have learned in my short stint here:

Why are you opening the store? It sounds like you are doing this because you already know how but does your area NEED another store? What are you going to do different than the competition?

The barrier for entry in this market is very low. Minus the capital for the parts anyone can get look up online how to replace screens and other parts. This means that along with the stores you are competing with you are competing with every joe blow that can post on craigslist/facebook that they repair phones. I was in the computer repair business for quite some time and this was a problem that I faced constantly.

What is your avenue to scale the business?

It sounds to me like you are simply creating a job for yourself.

 

[fukrs]

AW: Phone repair store VS iPhone repair store

I run a in iPhone Android repair store in Germany and repair most of the time Android phones and than iPhone and ipads . 2 years ago it was mostly iPhone's. I would recommend an Online shop to get more customers.

If you run a local store you won't get fastlane

Check out the German stores to get inspired

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[Bruce]

A phone repair shop in my city recently got taken down by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). Apparently repairing phones with Chinese parts is illegal. The parts sold on ebay etc generally have trademarks on them to look like the real OEM parts, therefore are considered counterfeit.

They ended up going to court and getting sued for a few hundred thousand.

Make sure you check if it's legal to repair phones without affiliation with the manufacturers or something.

 

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[comment]

I will apply some of the knowledge that I have learned in my short stint here:

Why are you opening the store? It sounds like you are doing this because you already know how but does your area NEED another store? What are you going to do different than the competition?

The barrier for entry in this market is very low. Minus the capital for the parts anyone can get look up online how to replace screens and other parts. This means that along with the stores you are competing with you are competing with every joe blow that can post on craigslist/facebook that they repair phones. I was in the computer repair business for quite some time and this was a problem that I faced constantly.

What is your avenue to scale the business?

It sounds to me like you are simply creating a job for yourself.

My area does not have a single cell repair store. My city is not that big, it has a population of 49,639. A survey was done and showed 90% of Americans have cell phones. If you take a VERY rough estimate, that is around 44,675 potential customers in my city who can break their phone. I was also thinking of maybe putting my store in a mall or something where people just walk by and see it rather than having to search out someone who can repair phones.

The barrier for entry in this market really is not that low. While anyone can look up how to replace phone parts, anyone can also look up how to program a CMS system and build a website. If I gave my phone to joe blow on the sidewalk, chances are he couldnt properly repair it. Now, it IS easy to learn how, but you also have to account for the fact that not everyone thinks that. What I mean is most people think repairing a phone is an insanely difficult task that only top-tier nerds can do, so they dont even look into it, and a lot of the people that can repair phones obviously dont care much about opening a business. The barrier to entry isnt super high, but I dont think it matters much here.

Avenue to scale? I can open more locations in different areas and offer franchising.

The competition isnt really competition. Around here it's all iPhone repairs. People with Androids have no choice to either repair it themselves, or buy a repair service from a Verizon store for a stupid amount of money. A lot of people dont bother with phone insurance either.

I walked into a bunch of iphone repair stores and asked what they charged for a screen repair; average answer was $80.

I then asked how many customers they got today ( i was very subtle about these questions) they all said 10 or 15.

That doesn't sound like a lot, but the least you'll ever make on an iphone repair is $10, and a very very common screen repair is $80 (you'll make $50 profit on a screen repair)

15 customers in a day could mean $150 or as good as $750.

Assuming your hours are somewhere around 10 - 7 pm (9 hours) that means you have roughly one or two customers per hour and you can potentially make 750/day everyday. Of course you can also make 150/day everyday, but that's only if every customer wants to repair a low cost item like speakers, and those dont even break often. With ~44,000 cell phones in my city, that gives me a big customer base for a business like this. Of course a city like Miami or Tampa would be better, you dont need a huge city for this to work since you dont need a bunch of customers to make profit.

 

[comment]

any other input?

 

[fukrs]

AW: Phone repair store VS iPhone repair store

It's simply not a fastlane business.
Grab the book again and re-read!


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[smartman]

I think you could make this a more favorable endeavor if you simply worked from home. The overhead of a brick and mortar store, 2-5 year retail lease plus being chained to the hours of the business, do not provide you with the freedom to fluidly move to other opportunities if they were to present themselves. You can create a solid income by just simply being "they guy that fixes iphones" for people. I would suggest fixing a few for free for your friends, to make sure you know the product inside and out, then make craigslist advertisements for the service. Utilize facebook with posts like "hey guys, i am repairing screens for iphones for $___ if you or anyone you know needs it." Ask some family and friends to share the post on their walls as well. Make sure you are cheaper than the brick and mortars by at least 10-15 dollars. This way everything is on your terms. You will have to make a fairly low investment of maybe 300-400 dollars to have enough gsm and cdma screens on stock to be able to fix them same day. You will figure out how many you will need to keep on stock after a few weeks. I certainly hope this post does not seem like I am talking down to you, as most of what I have said is very common sense. Best of luck.

 

[Rawr]

there is competition on craiglist, I do iphone unlocks and let me put it this way, if you just do unlocks you can make a little fun beer money

if you do repairs, and have a location, and do unlocks, you can do some decent volume, guys i've talked to did 30-100 unlocks weekly

 

[liite]

I know of someone who started selling iphone repair kits on ebay. They came with the screen, all the tools and a video he made kf how to change the screen. He eventually stocked lots of different types of screens for various popular models. He was one of he first to offer this service and his twist of having a video was great. He didn't have to compete with price as he offered a full diy from home package. Doing this from home would be great as smartman said.

You have to consider the cost of a store, electricity, stock, signage, possible employees, insurance etc. If your doing 50 a week for $30 profit thats $1500 per week or $6000 a month. Minus all your expenses. And thats if you manage 50 per week. How many people in your demographic have an iphone and then how many of those people have ever cracked or broken there screen?

Perhaps you need to put together some sort of survey to find out if there is a demand. Even then if I was to open up a store I would specialise in all aspects of out of Warranty repairs for all popular makes. As well as stocking accessories.
)

 

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[smartman]

for broad number crunching-
6000 per month
-1000 lease(best case scenario)
-500 utilities
-????? insurance
-????? employee costs

before those two costs that I do not have on hand, you are already at 4500 per monthx12= 54k income for what will essentially be more than a full time job. This is not a passive income, and although a honest earning, this will not make you disgustingly rich and able to drive lambos into strip clubs.

 

[comment]

The one problem I have with this forum is everyone is too stuck to the fastlane book and obsessed with "going fastlane". I'm sorry, but chances are no one who reads that book is going to make a million/year passive income just because of the book. Look at the guys that own chains of brick and mortar stores and are making millions/year because they scaled their business.

The fastlane book has plenty of great points and advice, but some people on here dismiss anything making less than 200k/year as "slowlane" and "taking up too much time". A business like this would require little training and be very easy to hire soemone to manage. I would not have to step in too much after a few months of ownership.

Also, you guys missed that this isnt just iPhones. It's every phone that can possibly have a malfunction or break. I remember when CPR Cellphone Repair was starting off, now they have stores all over the country and the owner is probably lounging in his million dollar home in Star Beach with Oprah.

I just wanted to know if you guys had first had experience or have seen some phone repair businesses come or go. Rather this idea is fastlane or not is moot. Of course it isnt "fastlane", but most ideas arent. I hate to say it, but most millionaires still work a ton of hours. Very few of them actually just sit back and watch money roll in, and if you spend all your time searchnig for the idea that lets you do that, you might not find it till you're already in that retirement home you're wanting to avoid.

Now as for costs, I need to check what a small building costs around here. I assume 800/month excluding utilities. I know that's what it was 2 years ago, not sure if its changed much. So assuming is $1,200/MONTH for a building, we can also assume I can get 20 repairs per day at a minimum of $10 (were talking all worst case numbres here) Thats $200/day and $6,000/month. That's 5,400/month APPROXIMATELY profit. probably less, but if someone else is managing the store, its about 60k/year, which is as you said, a good income. Now if I have someone manging the store and I'm only there for 3 or 4 hours per day, that's what I call WORTH IT. Remember, these are all worst case numbers. A $10 phone repair is usually speakers or volume or software. Most screen repairs are $30 profit right in your pocket. I wont keep going on with approximations and assumed numbers, but a single store with 20 customers per day (did a survey, its the average) can make 50-60/year with a few hours into it per day

A second location and a second manager and that number doubles... a third location and it triples.. a fourth.. and so on. I appreciate you guys critiquing my idea, especially you who owns a store in germany. In America unlocking phones just recently became illegal, but as long as phones, concrete, and water exist, there are people all over this city and state being clumsy and mucking up a phone.

You're all right, it isnt necessarily fastlane, but in my opinion it's better than sitting around and spending 5 years finding a fastlane idea that may or may not work, and in the chance this business were to become real and scale to say, 10 stores, that's 600k/year and pretty damn fastlane at that point..

Anyway, I'm still open to comments, I appreciate them all and all the help, especially those of you with first hand experience in the business!! Thanks so much guys.

EDIT: I didn't want this post to sound aggressive or that I was talking down to anyone, I'm just saying, the book is awesome for your mindset, but if you follow it word by word as a guidebook for business, you might not go anywhere because you'll be too busy ruling out good ideas because they arent "perfect" or "ideal". The perfect ideas are the guys on the forbes billionaire list, and i think only 445 people in america have had "perfect" ideas. Trying to be the next could take you a lifetime, and that's counter productive. Instead of trying to be a multi billionaire or a millionaire with more money than you know what to do with, try finding an idea that will get you what you want in life. If you want a decent sized house, a BMW, and the ability to live comfortably, you dont NEED millions per year, you need maybe 100-300k per year. A lot of money, but i know some people on here will rule out an idea making that amount of money because they dont think its "fastlane" enough. You dont need billions, you need enough to fuel the way you want to live. Calculate what you want in life, your hobbies, what you want to live in, drive, where you want to go, and make an estimation of what that will cost you yearly (and of course add in those unexpected expenses), and go for that number. Dont dismiss a 100k/year idea because you're looking for that 10 million/year idea. Action is what makes money, not ideas.

 

[Rawr]

That is why I dealt only with unlocks. It is fastlane in a sense that I didn't have to go anywhere, I can do 1 or 20000 per day and have decent margins, you don't fully control it but you are in a pretty good control. The problem again is competition. One guy I know continuously made 10k a month doing it part time, that's nothing to sneeze at. Now? It is a fraction of that and only going decent because of repeat big clients. Repairs will take more time and investment and take out the passivity, so you have to adjust and see if it makes sense. In that regard I don't think any of us can answer your question for your specific market.

 

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[biophase]

Now as for costs, I need to check what a small building costs around here. I assume 800/month excluding utilities. I know that's what it was 2 years ago, not sure if its changed much. So assuming is $1,200/MONTH for a building, we can also assume I can get 20 repairs per day at a minimum of $10 (were talking all worst case numbres here) Thats $200/day and $6,000/month. That's 5,400/month APPROXIMATELY profit. probably less, but if someone else is managing the store, its about 60k/year, which is as you said, a good income. Now if I have someone manging the store and I'm only there for 3 or 4 hours per day, that's what I call WORTH IT. Remember, these are all worst case numbers. A $10 phone repair is usually speakers or volume or software. Most screen repairs are $30 profit right in your pocket. I wont keep going on with approximations and assumed numbers, but a single store with 20 customers per day (did a survey, its the average) can make 50-60/year with a few hours into it per day

A second location and a second manager and that number doubles... a third location and it triples.. a fourth.. and so on. I appreciate you guys critiquing my idea, especially you who owns a store in germany. In America unlocking phones just recently became illegal, but as long as phones, concrete, and water exist, there are people all over this city and state being clumsy and mucking up a phone.

You're all right, it isnt necessarily fastlane, but in my opinion it's better than sitting around and spending 5 years finding a fastlane idea that may or may not work, and in the chance this business were to become real and scale to say, 10 stores, that's 600k/year and pretty damn fastlane at that point..

Anyway, I'm still open to comments, I appreciate them all and all the help, especially those of you with first hand experience in the business!! Thanks so much guys. Dont dismiss a 100k/year idea because you're looking for that 10 million/year idea. Action is what makes money, not ideas.

Comment,

People are just giving their opinions here about your idea. While opening up B&M is not bad and many people do it, I feel that after reading the Fastlane book that you should pick another avenue. You have knowledge that others did not have as they were signing their leases and creating their non-scaling and low income businesses.

The point is, why create a business that has so much risk, so much labor work for such a small upside. Now you may think that $60k is great. But your numbers are so off.

Let's assume you are making your worse case:
$200 net income per day on repairs. You are open 30 days a month. $6,000 net income before expenses.

Rent $1000/mo
Electric $250/mo
Internet $100/mo
Phone $40/mo
Miscellaneous Expenses $100/mo

(Believe me there are going to be a shitload more miscellaneous expenses then $100 that you never thought of each month)

Insurance $1000/yr
Worker's Comp Insurance $500/yr

Now you are making $52,000/yr. This is you making $52,000 a year leaving your house at 9am and getting home at 9pm, 7 days a week. I assume your store is open 10am-8pm everyday. Your effective pay is $11.86/hr.

So you hire an employee at $8/hr to work full time, 240 hours a month. There goes $2400/mo (after taxes and SS).

Now you can sit at home and manage your biz and make $23,200/yr.

Is all that time and risk worth it? All we are saying is that if you are going to put that much effort and time into something, why not start with something with more potential?

If you do go through with this, you can easily supplement your income with iphone cases and accessories.

If you make a mistake in this manner, you will be stuck sitting your a$$ behind the counter for 2 years losing alot of money.

 

[comment]

Comment,

People are just giving their opinions here about your idea. While opening up B&M is not bad and many people do it, I feel that after reading the Fastlane book that you should pick another avenue. You have knowledge that others did not have as they were signing their leases and creating their non-scaling and low income businesses.

The point is, why create a business that has so much risk, so much labor work for such a small upside. Now you may think that $60k is great. But your numbers are so off.

Let's assume you are making your worse case:
$200 net income per day on repairs. You are open 30 days a month. $6,000 net income before expenses.

Rent $1000/mo
Electric $250/mo
Internet $100/mo
Phone $40/mo
Miscellaneous Expenses $100/mo

(Believe me there are going to be a shitload more miscellaneous expenses then $100 that you never thought of each month)

Insurance $1000/yr
Worker's Comp Insurance $500/yr

Now you are making $52,000/yr. This is you making $52,000 a year leaving your house at 9am and getting home at 9pm, 7 days a week. I assume your store is open 10am-8pm everyday. Your effective pay is $11.86/hr.

So you hire an employee at $8/hr to work full time, 240 hours a month. There goes $2400/mo (after taxes and SS).

Now you can sit at home and manage your biz and make $23,200/yr.

Is all that time and risk worth it? All we are saying is that if you are going to put that much effort and time into something, why not start with something with more potential?

If you do go through with this, you can easily supplement your income with iphone cases and accessories.

If you make a mistake in this manner, you will be stuck sitting your a$$ behind the counter for 2 years losing alot of money.

THANK YOU. Best reply so far. Of course, my worst case numbers are very very "worst case". A $10 repair is usually volume or speakers, the most common repair is obviously a broken screen, and the price to repair a screen is usually $80, and the price to buy a screen is usually $30. so $50 profit * 20 customers = $1,000/day.

Of course, 20 screen repairs every day and nothing else will not happen. It's really difficult to do the math for a business like this, because 1000/day suddenly makes it very, very worth it, but I dont know how likely that is to actually happen. I just know screen repairs are the most common repair. Now $1,000 per day would be 30k/month. As good as that sounds on paper. Screen repairs being what probably 90% phone repairs are, average of 20 customers per day, and each screen repair is no less than $50 (a galaxy S3 is a $100 profit screen repair). Then it SOUNDS like 1,000/day and 30,000/month is possible, but it makes me wonder if its possible in reality.

The largest cell phone repair chain like geeksquad is CPR cellphone repair. They have 20 or 30 locations. The biggest reason I keep pushing and thinking about this idea is the fact that they did it and if they can keep operating all those locations, it has to be worth it, right? And since the competition is about nonexistent (CPR being the only real competitor) it makes me wonder if theres room for another chain that could maybe do it better? I mean CPR is doing exactly what im talking about, and they must be making some money, so why cant another person? I'm actually asking questions and listening to real advice here like Biophase gave.

You're right the 60k/year would probably become somewheree around 30-40k by the time expenses were done, and that may be a lot better than working at mcdonalds, it probably isnt worth the risk, but that is also the absolute worst case numbers. I almost want to just call or email cell repairs stores accross the country and just ask if its worth it or if i could talk to the manager, but I doubt i'd get too far doing that. No one is actually going to give out what they're making. I just know from calling around and asking how many customers they have, some in smaller towns say 10-20, and some in huge places like Tampa say 40-50 a day

 

[smartman]

Again, only riffing on a few ideas here, as I have also debated opening a used phone store myself for the past few months. You could invest a day and sit across the street and keep count of how many people go in and out of the nearest cell phone repair store, to get a better idea of the amount of walk in traffic you may get. I had planned to do this for the several locations in my city to get a better grasp on their traffic.

another idea would be to try to get hired at one of these stores, so you have a hard count on the amount of business. You could work at one for 2 weeks and then just quit. That way you'd be able to figure out any contacts, contracts, and regular customers the store has. Then you can undercut them.

There are maybe 4 phone repair stores in my city. None of them have really done adequate advertising in my opinion. You could control your market by advertising a set price for screen repairs. So often I hear people talking about cracking their screen, concluding the conversation with "how much does it cost to get it fixed?" If you advertised a set price, that could get you a greater draw. The other drawback to that could be that people will see the 80 dollar repair cost you have proposed, and realize they can get a replacement from apple for 100 dollars with apple care, or pay the same amount and just renew their contract for another 2 years. Right now, I have a guy in town that has been fixing phones for me for 65 a screen replacement. I've debated learning how to fix screens for a couple months to circumvent this cost, but I simply hate dealing with small screws(I have clumsy big hands).

 

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[formerflyboy]

I started a home based repair business in July. I chose the home based route for several reasons. First, cash flow. As mentioned above the overhead for maintaining a brick and mortar store is prohibitive especially when just starting out. Second is time. I'm also working a full time job to pay the bills while I build my brand so I couldn't have justified the expense of a storefront even if I could afford it.

I started out advertising iPhones and iPods as they are prevalent and are, simply put, easy to repair. As my brand grew I started receiving requests for Android devices and Kindles, etc. so I am slowly starting to add those devices to my repair offerings.

Something I have noticed, and I expected it, was "sticker shock" at the prices of some of the repairs. I had somebody recently that balked at a $200+ quote to replace the broken screen on her phone. They get their phones at a subsidized price and don't realize that they are talking about a $500+ phone. My policy is that we will not attempt a digitizer only replacement if the assembly is fused together or uses OCA because we don't have the specialized equipment required to do a quality job. People see that they can get a cheap glass for their $500+ phone for $5-10 and can't understand why we won't put it on for them but expect them to pay a couple hundred for a whole new display assembly.

People do come around in time. If you have a price that is in line and maybe a bit lower than the competition than they will choose you. Luckily there is no real competition in my area and business is slowly growing and my territory expanding..

I keep iPhone and iPad components in stock but special order Android parts as I need them. My customers tend to understand that it would be cost prohibitive to try and stock parts for every phone out there and unless their phone is completely dead they are generally fine with waiting the three days it takes for me to get a part (using standard shipping).

There are more than enough people out there that can't/won't spend th with extra money for a good protective cover to keep me in business.

Initial cash outlay wasn't too bad. I dropped $500 for some truck magnets, phone service and website. That left me around $400 for parts as I needed them. The rest of my advertising was on Facebook and word of mouth. It didn't take long to get to where I was holding an inventory.

While my plan is to eventually be able to make enough to open a brick and mortar and stop working for someone else I have no delusions that it will take time. And I'm okay with that. My business account balance is slowly growing and I enjoy what I do.



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[FoxFire21]

My father owns a cell repair shop in our home town that has 2 other competitors. He was in the red every month until a new manager took over and they began buying broken phones, repairing and then selling them. The location stings a bit but he is the only one of his competition that will buy used/broken phones and now that brings in more business than the actual repairs.

I do want to say that Dad debated on selling the business early on but he found the right guy to manage the place and now all is well. He is about to open a 2nd location and attempt to franchise. I do think it is a difficult entry especially when there are already 3 other competitors in your city but you could just as easily adjust your service as we did to bring in more customers. Hope you're off and running with this.

Good Luck!

 

[Rawr]

That is why I dealt only with unlocks. It is fastlane in a sense that I didn't have to go anywhere, I can do 1 or 20000 per day and have decent margins, you don't fully control it but you are in a pretty good control. The problem again is competition. One guy I know continuously made 10k a month doing it part time, that's nothing to sneeze at. Now? It is a fraction of that and only going decent because of repeat big clients. Repairs will take more time and investment and take out the passivity, so you have to adjust and see if it makes sense. In that regard I don't think any of us can answer your question for your specific market.

Lesson in control. Apple shut down unlock centers. Game over, just like that.

 

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[amp0193]

Yup. Slashed the value of my flipped phones by a good 30-40 bucks a piece. I'm just glad I decided to leave the phone resale hustle a couple of months ago before that all went down.

 

[maxeite1111]

Now that unlocking phones is illegal (I think) wouldn't it be a great opportunity to start some sort of "legal" unlocking business. I mean maybe you can work with the carriers or something. Is this fantasy?

 

[caezlar]

It seems phone pad pasting business grows fast than phone repair business recently years.

 

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[Gale4rc]

You're trying to talk yourself into a shitty business idea.

I hope you move forward with it.

 

[SeanKelly]

I'm unsure if you're still considering pursuing this business model, but if you are... why do you need a physical location? Couldn't you advertise that you fix at their location? It's better service for the client and you save money. Just make sure you're driving around in a gas efficient car... http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao...he-aaa-of-smartphones-and-grow-20-each-month/

 

[D11FYY]

Why don't you see if you can just rent 'space' in a already open shop its going to be alot cheaper than renting a full shop to your own - doesn't have to be related to your business just its a base for now isn't it and they may be willing to take you up on your offer as its extra $ for them.

Hand out leaflets , drop some off at local shops just to get your business advertised and known. Or even do it from home to begin with dont jump in head first and just rent a shop it may set you back and you have wasted a few years of your life that you could have earned a wage without this hassle.
If your competitors are doing it for $80 why are you going to do it for $80?. If your over heads are low and your being known as the cheapest one in town why not $65/$70. If i could save my self $10 I would.
Also going by your estimates of your town populated by 49,000 and that you will be doing minimum 4 phones per day/28 a week. Do you think you will get that much business? I mean alot of people has Apple Insurance and are able to buy these home made repair kits.

 

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[smartman]

not to hijack, but is anyone doing iphone unlocks again?

 

[wilthis]

Just wanted to add to this post. I've started a smartphone, tablet, laptop repair business. I'm starting out of my house to keep costs down. I'm in a more rural area, (nearest big city is 2 hours away). I've only advertised on our local Buy and Sell on Facebook and the response has been amazing! I never realized there were so many damaged screens out there! I've had 3 people each with 3 devices that have damaged screens! There is no shortage of work so far. Word of mouth is spreading that I'm The Guy, that does these repairs.

 

[Paul David]

I've owned a PC repair business since 2001, we've modified it now slightly and undertake phone repairs but it's never made more than $50,000 a year.
I've closing it down very soon as my Internet business makes a lot more money, for example i found a new product in China a couple of months ago which i sell on Ebay in the UK and it makes $3500 a month now. One product, all more or less passive income now.

Don't get me wrong there is still a need for what you are attempting but it's a lifestyle business. Plus a lot of companies are testing unbrakeable glass etc whether that will come out i don't know but if it does bye bye repair business.

 

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[amp0193]

Just wanted to add to this post. I've started a smartphone, tablet, laptop repair business. I'm starting out of my house to keep costs down. I'm in a more rural area, (nearest big city is 2 hours away). I've only advertised on our local Buy and Sell on Facebook and the response has been amazing! I never realized there were so many damaged screens out there! I've had 3 people each with 3 devices that have damaged screens! There is no shortage of work so far. Word of mouth is spreading that I'm The Guy, that does these repairs.

I did some similar work 4-5 years ago.

Be careful of falling into the trap of trading your time for money. Find a way to outsource your work. Find some tech-savvy college kids willing to work for $10 an hour.

You will make some money continuing to do it all yourself, but you will also be building yourself a slow-lane job that is limited to the hours that you put in. Also find a way to increase the value of each customer. Offer upsells.. ask if they need a new lightning cable, or a new case to prevent their phone from being damaged again.

 

[lcdfixmachine]

I was thinking of opening a repair store dealing with all cell phones in general, but then I started doing research.. Just in the last 4 years there have been more than 100 unique HTC phones released, and even more Nokias, Samsungs, and other brands. Costs would be through the roof if I tried to stock all of those parts. No one wants to hear "yeah, we can order you a screen and call you when it gets here". People want to bring a phone in, wait for the 30 minute repair, and then get out the door.

Now, an iPhone repair business would be very easy to start and very cheap to run. Only problem is its sort of a popular business model. In one city alone there are 3.. IN THE MALL. In another city there are 4 iphone repair stores.

general Cell phone repair stores in these cities combined? 2.

Competition for iPhone repair is crazy, but competition for nokia, htc, samsung, blackberry, etc. Barely any.

Anyone have any experience with the business? Or any advice or things to say.

I should mention, I do have all the education needed to repair any phone given to me. hiring people wouldn't be too difficult.

I was thinking of just stocking parts for the 10 or 20 most popular phones in America, and as the business grows I start expanding to less and less popular phones..

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