Loading...
Answers
MenuHow do I go about starting a brick and mortar repair business?
I'm interested in opening a phone store in which I will repair, buy, and sell cell phones... Where should I start?
Answers
Start by fixing phones! Make a name for yourself as the guy who can fix phones. Fix your own phones, fix them for friends and family for free/discounted rate to start with and you will build a name for yourself.
Depending on where you live, rent payments for a 'brick and mortar' business may be higher than the benefits, so I'd first consider the reasons for wanting a 'brick and mortar' business. What advantages come with a shop? Here are the main ones:
1) It allows easier discovery by people that happen to walk by (i.e. a form of advertising)
2) It provides a reputable looking place where people can come to transact (i.e. dropping off their phone there instead of dropping it off at your house)
3) It provides space to do your work.
All of these things are important for certain kinds of businesses, but I'd say it's not as important for phone repair. At least not while you're starting out and testing the waters. So as Chalmers suggested, you should try starting out by just doing repairs with whatever resources you currently have available. There are several ways you can do this while still having the advantages of a 'brick and mortar' listed above. For instance, in the same order as above:
1) Post signs about your services around your neighborhood (phone poles, etc.). You might be able to get permission from certain local shop owners to post signs in their shop too (for instance coffee shops, bookstores, libraries, colleges, etc.).
2) Try to find a local shop owner that would be willing to act as a drop off point for your customers. Try to find someone that you're pretty sure you could maintain a long lasting relationship with, you don't want to have to change your address frequently. Shops that would be most interested would be those that would either A) potentially get business from the same people that are dropping off phones. For instance a coffee shop, or a pizza place (after dropping off a phone someone might also buy a coffee or slice of pizza), or B) be providing a useful additional service to their existing customers, thereby enhancing their relationship with them. For instance, maybe there's a computer repair shop that doesn't know how to repair phones. By having you repair phones through their shop they'd be increasing their range of services.
3) You shouldn't need all that much space to repair phones, at least not when you start off. Buy a cheap $30 desk online and set it up in your house to use for repairs.
With those solutions, you've now got 90% of the advantages of a brick and mortar without having to pay the rent. So you can spend that money on online advertising, etc. instead. You can do geographically targeted advertisements on Google adwords, so you could start with that. Make sure to set up analytics for your website too, so you can measure how well your advertisements and landing page work. After you've started to get business and a reputation then you could consider setting up a brick and mortar shop of you think it's worth it.
If you'd like more in depth and specific advice related to your specific situation, or related to your online presence, let me know, I'd be happy to help out.
best of luck,
Lee
Related Questions
-
How do I best validate my idea?
It's hard to fully understand the background of your question, but in general, it sounds like you want this company to start a pilot program with your service. To get them to be willing to start a new pilot program with your service, you'll need to make something that solves the problems that existed with their previous service. To do that you'll need to better understand _why_ their previous service "did not work." Was it because the service itself had too many bugs, or because customers didn't need the service, or because the user interface was inappropriate, etc.? Get as in-depth an answer as you can to this question. If possible, ask your contact at the company, ask the engineers that worked on it, and most importantly: ask the company's customers that used the service while it existed. You could reach customers by posting on forums (Quora, Reddit, etc.) something like, "Question for people that use [company X's] services" Based on this info, you can design and build a new product which solves the pre-existing problems. Show this new product to the company's customers that you previously interviewed (through forum posts, etc.) and quantify their interest in it (rate 1 - 10 if you think this would be useful, etc.). You can then show your research, and new product, and how much their customers like the idea, to the company and you'll have a higher likelihood of them being willing to start a pilot program with it. If not, ask them why not, and see if you can address that issue as well. If you'd like more detailed advice on the specifics of doing market research and product development for your idea I'd be happy to help, best, LeeLV
-
I am looking for assistance on how to create a mobile payments 1) paypal 2) ACH 3) credit/debit
You'll need a little more detail than that to get a useful answer, unfortunately. Are you a developer and/or someone with access to custom development? If so, there are great options like Stripe available. You can use PayPal's API. If not, you may want to look into SaaS offerings that handle the UX for you. Also, is this a native mobile app, or a web-based mobile app? Do you need subscription payments or one-off payments? Taking people's money online is a complicated, risky process that needs to be extremely well-considered. Otherwise you risk big problems: unhappy clients, security vulnerabilities, poor usability, and so on. I would recommend doing a good deal more research on your own, then coming back to this question with far more detail. Good luck!JL
-
I want to build an electronic Home product and need help determining how to establish its industry.
I'd be happy to help, depending on what you need help with. I advise early stage hardware startups on rapid prototyping, market testing, etc. I've both founded my own hardware startup (which has gone on to raise over $10 MM), and designed and built hardware prototypes for other startups. If you'd like to schedule a call, feel free to send a Dropbox link to related materials beforehand so I can go over them, best, LeeLV
-
I have an idea of a new type of wearable device, which I think is really huge. But I have neither the team nor funding, how should I proceed?
The best avenue for funding would likely be Kickstarter, but that presumes that the idea of a gesture-reading device is likely to have broad-enough appeal, which I'm not sure of based on the one line description. When I think about reading gestures, I think about a market primarily aimed at people with vision impairments. If that's the case, you might even want to look at foundations or organizations who might fund some of the research, but that will almost inevitably slow your pace of innovation. You might want to setup a call with Clay Hebert if you decide to go the Kickstarter route. https://clarity.fm/clayhebert Best of luck. Curious to hear more.TW
-
We just launched our mobile app (social/fitness). What should our server requirements be to maximize performance when we move out of Beta?
In case Godaddy does not offer you a bigger data transfer plan, you can move to Heroku. They let you choose how much efficient you want to configure your serverBB
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.