I was on the phone with Samsung earlier getting some warranty work sorted for my phone. They directed me to a store called UBreakiFix. I googled them cause I had never heard of them before, had no idea this guy started from fixing phones in his house and now has a multi-million dollar business. When I think the one thing that most of us use on a daily and are prone to breaking, he had it right..........
A few quotes from the article.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes...2-stores-and-a-deal-with-google/#f79d8bd123b1
In 2009, Justin Wetherill cofounded uBreakiFix, a cell phone repair service, out of his bedroom in Orlando, FLA. Trained as an accountant, he taught himself to fix phones after he dropped his iPhone and smashed the screen. He first teamed up with a buddy and ran a mail-in repair operation. They then realized customers wanted same-day service and opened a low-rent brick-and-mortar store. Business took off. Within three years, the company had 47 stores and $27 million in revenue. When Wetherill decided to turn uBreakiFix into a franchise operation in 2012, he offered extraordinarily generous terms to store managers who wanted to become owners, charging them only one month’s worth of sales and financing the transaction at 0%. In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, Wetherill, now 29, explains how he grew uBreakiFix to 262 stores in 25 states, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago with expected systemwide store sales of $98 million in 2016 (corporate revenue should exceed $52 million).
---
Adams: How did that lead to uBreakiFix?
Wetherill: I broke my iPhone 3G. I was walking and typing on my phone like a zombie and I dropped it face down on the concrete.
Adams: Wasn’t the Apple store able to fix it?
Wetherill: The Apple store wanted $200 and I thought that was crazy. So I went home and looked around online and found some parts and decided to do it myself. And I broke it worse. Rather than get discouraged, I bought a bunch of broken phones on eBay and got good at fixing them.
Adams: How did you learn how to fix them?
Wetherill: Trial and error. Then I told David and he started building a website. We retailed the repairs on eBay. For $79.99 you could mail in your phone and we could fix it and mail it back to you.
Adams: How did that go?
Wetherill: It got really busy. We started fixing seven to ten phones an evening. I ended up hiring my roommate at the time, Carlos Marmo, to be our first employee. I taught him what we learned and he started fixing phones in my bedroom. I paid him $10 per phone.
Adams: How expensive were the parts?
Wetherill: Like $30. At that point we were only fixing screens.
Adams: How did you grow from there?
Wetherill: We moved the business from my bedroom to my living room and then we started meeting people at Panera and fixing phones there.
Adams: Panera didn’t mind you using it as your repair shop?
Wetherill: I would always buy something. It only took us 10 minute to fix a phone and we were out.
Adams: How did you make the leap from Panera to your own store?
Wetherill: A friend of mine, Eddie Trujillo, came over and said, you’re driving yourselves crazy driving everywhere. You’ve got to open a store and have people come to you. We’re like, that’s risky. He’s like, I’ll put up the money for the store, and he did.
Adams: Where was the store?
Wetherill: In a not-so-nice part of town. The rent was $800 a month and we hung the drywall, we put the floors in.
Adams: How did the store do?
Wetherill: The second month the store was open, it eclipsed the website’s sales. That’s when the light bulb went off.
Adams: Why did the store do so much better than the online business?
Wetherill: People wanted to get their phones back the same day.
Adams: How did you advertise the store?
Wetherill: We barely did any advertising. That was the magic of it. We did some pay-per-click, we made a Google Places page.
Adams: What was your revenue in the beginning?
Wetherill: It was $18,000 in the first month and $28,000 in the second month. I quit my job the third month.
Adams: How many employees did you have?
Wetherill: It was me, David, Eddie and Carlos.
---
Adams: How much were you paying yourself?
Wetherill: Less than $100,000 a year. But we built the business with no loans, no debt, no investors. We put all the money we made back into the business. That’s how we were able to grow so fast.
Adams: What happened at the end of three years?
Wetherill: We said, we need to continue this growth rate, but how are we going to do that? We needed to do one of three things: borrow from a bank, raise money with private equity, or franchise. We went to the bank and they said, you have no loans, no debt and you want $2 million? That’s not happening. Private equity always talks about an exit and we were trying to build a business so there wasn’t a good match there. We read some books about franchising and talked to a lawyer and decided that was the way we wanted to go.
Adams: How did you get the franchise operation off the ground?
Wetherill: We sold 26 stores to managers and we financed those at 0% for one month of sales. We put them on a payment plan where they paid over 12 to 36 months. They pay a royalty of 8% of revenue.
Adams: You only charged franchisees one month of sales? How much did that come to?
Wetherill: It varied but it was $30,000 or $40,000. It was our way of giving back.
---
Adams: How much do you pay yourself now?
Wetherill: I’m on the payroll at $150,000 a year and we continue to invest profits back into the business. We opened 113 stores this year. We’re opening 13 stores a month.
Adams: How much of the business do you own?
Wetherill: Me, David and Eddie own all of it.
Adams: Has anyone tried to buy the company?
Wetherill: Conversations have come up. I wouldn’t say it’s gotten serious. I think we’re just now getting to a size that is interesting to a lot of people. Google just offered us an exclusive on being the walk-in repair provider for its new Pixel phone. They provide us with training.
Adams: How much do you think the deal will be worth?
Wetherill: I couldn’t put a dollar amount on it. It depends on how successful the Pixel is. But it’s invaluable to us as a business. One of the premier original equipment manufacturers has decided to work with us. Not only have they validated us but they’ve validated the customer’s demand for same-day repairs. Hopefully it’s the first of many relationships like that and manufacturers are realizing their products don’t have to go through an expensive reverse logistics system. They can be handled locally.
Adams: What was the most unusual repair challenge you’ve had?
Wetherill: A customer dropped their phone into a deep fryer at McDonald’s. That was in 2009. We were still in my living room and we were able to fix it. We’re capable of a lot more now.
A few quotes from the article.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes...2-stores-and-a-deal-with-google/#f79d8bd123b1
In 2009, Justin Wetherill cofounded uBreakiFix, a cell phone repair service, out of his bedroom in Orlando, FLA. Trained as an accountant, he taught himself to fix phones after he dropped his iPhone and smashed the screen. He first teamed up with a buddy and ran a mail-in repair operation. They then realized customers wanted same-day service and opened a low-rent brick-and-mortar store. Business took off. Within three years, the company had 47 stores and $27 million in revenue. When Wetherill decided to turn uBreakiFix into a franchise operation in 2012, he offered extraordinarily generous terms to store managers who wanted to become owners, charging them only one month’s worth of sales and financing the transaction at 0%. In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, Wetherill, now 29, explains how he grew uBreakiFix to 262 stores in 25 states, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago with expected systemwide store sales of $98 million in 2016 (corporate revenue should exceed $52 million).
---
Adams: How did that lead to uBreakiFix?
Wetherill: I broke my iPhone 3G. I was walking and typing on my phone like a zombie and I dropped it face down on the concrete.
Adams: Wasn’t the Apple store able to fix it?
Wetherill: The Apple store wanted $200 and I thought that was crazy. So I went home and looked around online and found some parts and decided to do it myself. And I broke it worse. Rather than get discouraged, I bought a bunch of broken phones on eBay and got good at fixing them.
Adams: How did you learn how to fix them?
Wetherill: Trial and error. Then I told David and he started building a website. We retailed the repairs on eBay. For $79.99 you could mail in your phone and we could fix it and mail it back to you.
Adams: How did that go?
Wetherill: It got really busy. We started fixing seven to ten phones an evening. I ended up hiring my roommate at the time, Carlos Marmo, to be our first employee. I taught him what we learned and he started fixing phones in my bedroom. I paid him $10 per phone.
Adams: How expensive were the parts?
Wetherill: Like $30. At that point we were only fixing screens.
Adams: How did you grow from there?
Wetherill: We moved the business from my bedroom to my living room and then we started meeting people at Panera and fixing phones there.
Adams: Panera didn’t mind you using it as your repair shop?
Wetherill: I would always buy something. It only took us 10 minute to fix a phone and we were out.
Adams: How did you make the leap from Panera to your own store?
Wetherill: A friend of mine, Eddie Trujillo, came over and said, you’re driving yourselves crazy driving everywhere. You’ve got to open a store and have people come to you. We’re like, that’s risky. He’s like, I’ll put up the money for the store, and he did.
Adams: Where was the store?
Wetherill: In a not-so-nice part of town. The rent was $800 a month and we hung the drywall, we put the floors in.
Adams: How did the store do?
Wetherill: The second month the store was open, it eclipsed the website’s sales. That’s when the light bulb went off.
Adams: Why did the store do so much better than the online business?
Wetherill: People wanted to get their phones back the same day.
Adams: How did you advertise the store?
Wetherill: We barely did any advertising. That was the magic of it. We did some pay-per-click, we made a Google Places page.
Adams: What was your revenue in the beginning?
Wetherill: It was $18,000 in the first month and $28,000 in the second month. I quit my job the third month.
Adams: How many employees did you have?
Wetherill: It was me, David, Eddie and Carlos.
---
Adams: How much were you paying yourself?
Wetherill: Less than $100,000 a year. But we built the business with no loans, no debt, no investors. We put all the money we made back into the business. That’s how we were able to grow so fast.
Adams: What happened at the end of three years?
Wetherill: We said, we need to continue this growth rate, but how are we going to do that? We needed to do one of three things: borrow from a bank, raise money with private equity, or franchise. We went to the bank and they said, you have no loans, no debt and you want $2 million? That’s not happening. Private equity always talks about an exit and we were trying to build a business so there wasn’t a good match there. We read some books about franchising and talked to a lawyer and decided that was the way we wanted to go.
Adams: How did you get the franchise operation off the ground?
Wetherill: We sold 26 stores to managers and we financed those at 0% for one month of sales. We put them on a payment plan where they paid over 12 to 36 months. They pay a royalty of 8% of revenue.
Adams: You only charged franchisees one month of sales? How much did that come to?
Wetherill: It varied but it was $30,000 or $40,000. It was our way of giving back.
---
Adams: How much do you pay yourself now?
Wetherill: I’m on the payroll at $150,000 a year and we continue to invest profits back into the business. We opened 113 stores this year. We’re opening 13 stores a month.
Adams: How much of the business do you own?
Wetherill: Me, David and Eddie own all of it.
Adams: Has anyone tried to buy the company?
Wetherill: Conversations have come up. I wouldn’t say it’s gotten serious. I think we’re just now getting to a size that is interesting to a lot of people. Google just offered us an exclusive on being the walk-in repair provider for its new Pixel phone. They provide us with training.
Adams: How much do you think the deal will be worth?
Wetherill: I couldn’t put a dollar amount on it. It depends on how successful the Pixel is. But it’s invaluable to us as a business. One of the premier original equipment manufacturers has decided to work with us. Not only have they validated us but they’ve validated the customer’s demand for same-day repairs. Hopefully it’s the first of many relationships like that and manufacturers are realizing their products don’t have to go through an expensive reverse logistics system. They can be handled locally.
Adams: What was the most unusual repair challenge you’ve had?
Wetherill: A customer dropped their phone into a deep fryer at McDonald’s. That was in 2009. We were still in my living room and we were able to fix it. We’re capable of a lot more now.
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? Impressive either way
.
