Growing Cellphone Repair Shop Opening At New Fredericton Location
FREDERICTON – The founder of a cell phone repair shop is moving it to a new home in the provincial capital.
Jordan Irvine, owner and founder of Irvine Phone Repair, told Huddle he will be moving the business to a new 800-square-foot home at 140 King St. in mid-January – just down the road from its location at 151 Brunswick, where it’s been since 2020.
Irvine said his repair business has come a long way from him fixing cellphones on a modified cooking sheet, in his car in the parking lot of the Vogue Optical in Woodstock, serving customers across Carleton and York Counties.
“From 2016 to 2018, I’d drive to Woodstock and set up shop downtown and pre-arranged appointments with people through Facebook, they’d drop off their phone and I’d fix it on my lap,” said Irvine.
“I’d use the car’s heating fan as a heat gun – it was sometimes pretty ad hoc.”
Once the demand for his service picked up, Irvine, who works full-time for software giant IBM in Fredericton, began to hire staff, eventually delegating responsibility for the Woodstock location to one of his staff.
Irvine Phone Repair is staffed by four full-time employees and four part-time workers. Irvine himself oversees staff in a supervisory role.
Irvine originally started providing repair service out of his apartment in Fredericton between 2019 and 2020, and eventually rented space at 151 Brunswick St.
“We’ve kind of just steadily grown since then.”
Irvine Phone Repair specializes in fixing smartphones and iPads, with school districts, in particular, providing significant demand for the latter.
“A lot of people are getting iPads for online learning. Most school districts have 20 to 50 iPads per school,” Irvine said.
The business most often repairs screens, cleans devices and replaces dying batteries – and occasionally does more heavy-duty work like charger port replacements.
There have been supply hitches for Irvine, with the pandemic slowing supply chains – especially ones originating in China where many chips and other phone parts are manufactured.
“Service almost halted midway through 2020, and parts were harder to find. Since then, there haven’t been many issues. Certainly, parts are harder to find than before, but for the most part, it’s not much of an issue,” he said.
While some aspects of repairing phones can be more complicated with newer models boasting features like multiple stacked motherboards and face ID technology, Irvine said screen and battery replacements remain simple.
The market for phone repairs couldn’t be better, with many people – but especially older customers, switching over to smartphones from flip phones.
“Even when they don’t want the latest and greatest, they’re buying refurbished phones and just want something that will work.”
One of the riskiest parts of the job is repairing phones worth as much as $1,500 to 2,000.
Irvine said that since Apple plans to release a program for 2022 that allows customers to fix their own phones and still be covered by their warranties, he expects strong demand for repairs.
“We’re going to see a lot of customers trying to do their own repairs, but they’ll need that extra bit of help and bring it to us,” he said.
Irvine Phone Repair also sells refurbished cellphones and plans under discount carrier service Public Mobile.
Built To Break
Irvine expects steady demand in the coming months, noting that companies that manufacture phones build them to break.
“They understand that phones are made to break and they’re taking advantage of that. If they really tried, they could make a phone that was very difficult to break,” said Irvine.
“But they don’t because they realize how much money there is in the repair industry, and how people will always want to upgrade their phone – and if the iPhone never broke or needed to be updated, how would they make their sales?”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].