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Righting the Balance
in Cell Phone Repair Ed McKinley
Ed McKinley is a Senior Writer for The Prepaid Press, an online publication for the prepaid services industry. To learn more about the relationship between prepaid and repair services, and meet the players, attend The Prepaid Expo, produced by The Prepaid Press: August 22-23, 2017, Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas. Visit www.theprepaidexpo.com to register.
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weird imbalance prevails in the cell phone business. On one side of the equation, the stores founded to sell prepaid minutes also repair phones. But on the other side, the shops launched to specialize in repairs usually don’t sell minutes. More specifically, about 80 percent of prepaid stores now double as repair shops, while perhaps 10 percent of the nation’s 15,000 or so repair centers are selling minutes, according to Avi Yosopov, CEO of PhonePartsDistributors.com, a wholesaler of repair parts and used cell phones. Despite their resistance to selling minutes, the repair specialists have been growing in number for the last five to seven years, observes Sean Michaels, president of MaxBack, a company that buys and sells used electronic devices, including phones. That growth shows little sign of abating, he says. Meanwhile, however, the repair marketplace is becoming more confused as big box office supply stores get into the business, says Lee Terkel, vice president of sales and marketing for cellhelmet, a phone accessories supplier. “Things are juxtaposing in all sorts of odd and strange ways,” he observes. The fragmentation of the market also includes incursions by small shops selling that specialize is selling barely related products – like battery stores, notes Matt Roldan, chief customer officer at Sourcely, a company that provides internet services and repair parts to the cell phone industry.
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