What's the future of the repair business?

[D_R]

Hey Guys,

I’d like to talk a little about the repair business itself. Where do you see the future of the business?

Let me explain my question a little bit. I don’t know the current situation in US, but here in Germany the price for a broken MBP on ebay is quite high. If something happened to my MBP, I would sell it on ebay and just buy a new one. And I think, that this is the mentality of many people here.

And even if I would buy a broken MBP on ebay and would fix it, I would never sell it for more than 150$/€ more, than I bought it. And I have the risk, that not only the logic board is damaged, but also some other stuff.

Sometimes I think, that a new MBP in Germany is worth much more, if I just take the machine apart and put the spare parts on ebay.

So what do you think about the future of the repair business?

 

[larossmann]

I think it has none. I think there's GREAT money to be made right now, money worth being good at one's craft, and I'll happily fix as much as I can get my hands on right now. However, the devices are becoming cheaper, the parts are becoming smaller and more integrated and eventually, all will become more durable.

Think about it 99.9% of what we make money on right now is the lack of liquid resistance on these products. It would take Apple one day in engineering, if they cared, to do what IBM did over 11 years ago, and poof, 99% of the business is just gone.

I would always suggest diversifying your skillset. The same analytical mindset one applies to solving these problems can be applied to many other problems in society. The way I see it, this is just practice for "the next thing."

 

[mnaty]

This a good point. I have also noticed that sites like ebay have driven up the price of the 'broken for parts' market and driven down the cost of the refurbished market.

The one thing i would say is that youve got to find other supply chains for your parts, as ebay will rarely make sense. The phone logic board market is a great example of this with broken logic boards selling for nearly as high as functional. The demand for the components drives up the price.

 

[mnaty]

I think the next thing is transitioning. Migrating your business model to B2B.

Make money with repairs and build brand, but long term goal, at least for me, is leveling up to a become a competitor in the business IT market. We handle some small business needs now, but the real money is in the mid-size and enterprise level.

The downside is that those are extremely hard markets to penetrate without some deeper pockets for competitive marketing campaign.

 

[larossmann]

The main issue is that all the new people coming into this business are ok making no money. iphone screen repair is a good example of that. For months people were fixing iphone screens at cost.. why? if you're not making money at something, go do something else!!

 

[D_R]

@mnaty
I don’t think that this is the market where you want to be. Currently I’m doing some Level 2 Support for a company that supplies computers for mid-sized businesses. And it’s like hell. Because you are blamed for everything. Just today I get a call that some ones E-Mail was rejected by my server combined with a comment, that this is my fault that the Mail of the Client isn’t working. I took a look in the logs and found out, that my server rejected this mail, because there was a virus in the attachment.

And now try to explain your customer, that he can’t get his Power Point file with a funny picture, because if I let the Mail through, his PC gets infected or maybe the whole network.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The First Level support gets even crazier calls. “My PC isn’t working”. “The Solution was just to press the power button to turn the PC on.”

 

[D_R]

The iPhone Screen business is over. At least with the home button problem with iPhone 6/6s. And before? The iPhone Screen was fixable by everyone with the right screwdriver. The only problem was to get the spare parts. But many of the people with to left handy damaged their phone.

On another electronic board I found a posting where someone is fixing iPhone Boards just for hobby. So he bought his equipment for a large amount of money but he has absolutely no idea what to do with it. That’s the other side.

Currently I’m some kind of undecided if it’s worth to make Macbook Logic Board repairs just to do something else.

The main problem is, where to get the broken hardware to resell or to fix.

 

[mnaty]

So true. That business model was great for us, but has taken a dive. We will continue with it, but not as a focus and certainly not a future proof business model.

Look at the droid turbo and new s7. Not bulletproof, but damn near close. Also now with gorilla glass 4, aftermarket repairs are nowhere near the same quality.

Planning a trip to china this year to do some discovery. I want to put my hands on some aftermarket supplies and accessories. Id also like to find a few aftermarket suppliers from the past and put hands on them too.

 

[mnaty]

Marketing my friend. This industry is still underserved, which is why and how you make money in. People break their shit like its going out of style. I had one customer that had anger issues. He was good for about two device repairs per month... Every time the wife pissed him off he through a phone or smashed a tablet.

Focus on seo for local searches. Youll waste your time trying to compete nationally. Custom printed yard sign stands outside of business and partner locations have gotten me the most traffic. You cant be afraid to use passive-aggressive market. Such as our yard signs advertive Laptop Repair and cracked screen repair as low as $59. Avg sale price is 120 but our lowest is $59.

Its not misleading, its just putting you best foot forward to make an impression. I plan to make a similar marketing push with board repair for mac books--something that catches a would-be customer's eye, but doesnt give away the farm.

Additionally we sell trending electronics and accessories at retail and wholesale to small business owners in our region. Wholesale every now and then makes a monster profit of 2-5k in a single order. You have to be flexible and versatile, but not so much so that you lose site of your end game. We only wholesale what we would also retail.

Every now and then i have to dial back, but im always looking forward. Dont be afraid to fail. Learn from it, then correct and move forward.

 

[D_R]

Hmm… It’s some kind of weird when you comment on my posting but I can’t comment to your comment

Let’s just take your 120 $ Avg. sale price and work with it. What’s a simple repair of a cracked screen? For me it’s for example the replacement of a Nexus 7 cracked screen.

Now let’s take the 120$ and work with it. First of all, I have to pay sale tex, in Germany currently 19%. So now I have 100$ left. The replacement screen costs about 25$, so 75$ are left. Than I have to pay income tax of 30-50%. What’s left is 37,5$ - 52,5$. And for this money I have to work about 30-40 minutes, have to give a warranty of 1 year for my work and spare parts, have to deal with the customer, pay for marketing, office, e.g. And what happened if I screw up a board? That’s everything I have to take into account.

And the worst thing is, that I need the spare screen. And currently there are so much phones and tablets out there, I can’t just buy some screens and hope, I’m going to sell these. So what do I have to do? I can go up with the price to 160-200$. But now I’m in a region where most people say, that they aren’t going to pay 200$ to bring their 600$ Smartphone or Tablet back into use – and I totally understand that.

So you need a larger leverage to make money. And the Chip-Level repairs of Macbook Logic Boards are some kind of interesting thing. The Schematics and Board Views are available. You can take the Notebook in few minutes apart. And most of spare parts are available on 20$ donor boards you can use for multiple repairs, ebay and aliexpress.

What you are selling is more your know how, your skill than spare parts you put into someones phone or pc.

And Marketing… Well, I can’t book advertisements on facebook for people with a faulty Apple notebook. In my private surrounding I have no chance for advertising. Everything I can get here to repair is a Nokia 3210. And in the business center I have my office in, everyone use a Windows PC. So no chance there. What’s left is the local university. And well, there I have a large amount of Apple devices.

But is a student going to pay me 350-450$ for a logic board repair. I don’t think so. May be a few. Because I think that there are two kind of students (or people in general). The first group saw some ones video on youtube and they want to DIY repair without even knowing what to do. That are the people, that are trying to replace the GPU after a liquid damage on the kitchen table with a heat gun.

The other people think, they are experts in technology. They (say, they) know everything. Such people are looking at a bricked HDD and say that there are absolutely no way, some one can restore the christening pictures on the HDD and bet against me. And their friends are hearing to that people. Even after I proofed that they are wrong. Lets stay at the christening pictures case. I was able to repair the drive and to get the pictures from the drive (as a backup). To save costs I gave the drive back to the customer with the instruction to copy every file he want to keep from the HDD to another. If he has no other HDD, he has to buy one. But till tomorrow the files have to bee copied to another HDD.

Yes, the guy did it. But the restored drive continued to work. And he kept using it for the next 12 month, because his friend told him, he can still use the drive. Than he was standing again in my office and I had again to rescue his fuck’n files from this piece of shit.


That’s why I think that it’s kind of difficult to enter the market.

 

[mnaty]

System doesnt appear to allow replys to a reply. Must be a limitation.

 

[pcfriends]

hello friends , this business is always changing the future reside on the ability to change with the change I guess , notice the new pattern early and start getting ready to profit while we can , but always getting ready for the new pattern , I don't know whats the future , but I feel really good about my new skill of reparing macbooks not because I think I will be reparing macbooks forever , but because it open the chance to fix any electronic board , we just need to look for expensive ones and make sure there is schematics for them right? , anyway , many shops on my area are suffering because of the lcds prices , I notice also on my own one that iphone 6 traffic slow down a lot , the good thing is that's not all the business in fact iphone is just like 5 models to repair , we still do all the samsungs phones and tabs , all the laptops pc and mac , sales , bla bla , this current lcd prices change on iphone hurt more to the people who didn't get ready with more diferent services. For places that are currently solid I belive this iphone crisis is good because it will take out of business many places , and the ones who can stay will get the customers that lose their local or favorite repair place because of this business change.

 

[pcfriends]

a good place to find dead macbooks for decent prices is craiglist here on united states, if you can fix that dead board good if not , you got a donor board , a keyboard , a hard drive , a dc inboard , a charger a lcd , a battery , good stuff to stock , but you are getting your money back 100%

 

[D_R]

Sorry, but what's craiglist?
Is it like small advertisements?

I don't know the situation in US, but in Germany I often read something like "for privacy protection i removed the HDD/SSD and RAM". The people even remove ram modules, because they think that their data is stored on it. And on ebay I often see, that some people are selling dead macs regularry. And every single time with a description like "I was using my mac, suddenly the screen was black and I wasn't able to turn the machine on after this.".... On 30 MBPs in the last 6 Month he sold on ebay. Maybe this guy is ja jinx, but I don't believe it. So I'm not going to buy macs, some repair shop was fooling around with and sell it again because it's unrepairable for them.