WiGoMan Blog - Tech Care (Repair, Reuse, Recycle) Industry Leader

For many years the Tech Repair Industry ( aka, Cell Phone Repair ) has struggled with trying to find a way to police itself and discourage rogue players. Now a few BIG COMPANIES in the repair industry have partnered with CTIA ( who represents the $475 billion wireless Empire ) to create WISE Certification. WISE stands for W ireless I ndustry S ervice E xcellence, which I don't really get as it applies to tech repair?! Maybe add an 'r' for repair and make it WISER? OK, OK, much of the current Tech Repair Industry ( TRI ) is fixing cell phones -- more specifically replacing a glass screen on a phone that gets cracked -- which many of the CTIA Board members make, insure and run on their networks. So when I think Wireless Industry I think of; AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Sprint, Apple, Samsung, Asurion, American Tower Corporation, Intel, Qualcomm and the positions THEY support; Competition, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Net Neutrality, Privacy, Public Safety, S

I had to double check my calendar last week to make sure it wasn't April Fools Day. Apple, you see, stunned the tech repair industry with the announcement that they would do a complete 180-degree turn on allowing independent repair of their products by now offering select companies access to, "...  Apple-genuine parts, tools, training, repair manuals and diagnostics...". Whhhaaaaat? This strange announcement stood out to me as more than a little bit odd since Apple has fought the independent tech repair industry tooth and nail ( or by pentalobe screw and tons of glue if you prefer ) for decades. Their early morning press release reminded me of the 2014 iFixit April Fools Day prank that had the repair community dazed and confused at the possibility of iFixit and Apple working together. Yah, right! Had someone started August Fools Day??? Truth is it was announced on   August 29, 2019,  the end of Summer , far  from April and seemingly not a new "Fools Day

When I was a kid my Dad taught me how to fix things. We fixed things around the house, we fixed the car, we fixed the roof ( in the middle of a very hot summer ), we fixed the lawnmower but when the TV broke we both carried it down to the car and took it to a local repair shop. Repair was in our blood but when it was above our pay grade we took it to a repair shop for a professional to work on. Boy howdy did I love to tinker with things when I was a kid! Radios, tape decks, boomboxes and anything that had screws to be unscrewed. One time my parents bought me a brand new ten-speed bike, which I promptly took apart and repainted. Repair was in my blood! Our family was a typical middle class family in America enjoying what life offered us but respecting the fact that we needed to take care of the things we owned. Money was something we didn't just throw around. When my Mom wanted new chairs for the dinning room because they were wobbly and worn out. Dad broke out the wood glu

Today a newly formed group within the Trump administrations Space Force Scientist Consortium (SFSC) announced a major breakthrough in repairing liquid damaged electronics. "We have finally done what no other human person has done," said Elmer Gantry. "We have stumbled onto a way to magically repair the water damaged iPhone forever." Gantry, who made his fortune planting churches across America and more recently served as the US Ambassador to North Korea, announced the "Factual Findings" on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial while skipping iPhones into the tidal basin where they would sink to the bottom to be retrieved by migrant children in paddle boats. The SFSC report reveals that while working on a classified project with their Russian counterparts, who were trying to understand the 'Young Peoples' fascination with Avocado Toast, an intern dropped his iPhone in the toilet during a FaceTime session with family back in South Dakota. Up

The TECH REPAIR INDUSTRY is huge! I mean really, really big. Billions of dollars in revenue flow thru thousands of tech repair shops and independent tech repair people all over the country. But MOST people don't even know that tech repair is a thing! Sad 😞but true! You see, when my company started repairing cell phones as part of our AT&T retail business in 2006 every single customer would say, "I never knew anyone who fixed phones". Then w hen I opened my first standalone repair shop in 2010 almost everyone who came into our shop would say, "I never knew anyone who fixed phones". Well of course, that made sense, because we were one of the first companies to offer on the spot immediate cell phone repair in the country. The thing that really surprised  me was that for  ten years  we still had a lot of people coming in and saying the same thing!? INDEPENDENT RESEARCH Before I sold my repair business in 2016 I decided to do some research. I went ou

Wow! In the last three years the TECH repair industry has seen some pretty big dominoes fall and I predict that 2020 will be a breakout year for this rapidly growing multi-billion dollar industry. Dominoes started falling back in mid-August 2016 when a company most people had never heard of managed to pull down $15 million in series A funding, led by Carmel Ventures, with Sequoia Capital (a pretty serious name in investing) also participating - after seeding CellSavers with $3 million in December 2015. An $18 million invest in a less than one year old company kind of said something about the tech repair industry don't ya think?? Down went a domino. August 22, 2016 | Israeli startup  CellSavers , which provides an on-demand repair platform for smartphones and other mobile devices, has completed a $15 million financing round, led by Carmel Ventures, with participation of Sequoia Capital Israel. The current funding follows the company’s $3 million round in seed funding l