Setting up a Storefront & Mobile Repair Business with Dean Ingraham

Bryce Whitty: The good thing about the repair shopper guys as well, is they are very good at listening to their customers as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if they do implement better report systems sometime soon.

Dean Ingraham: Yeah, they definitely are. In fact, one of them reached out to me a while back when I was complaining about the reports and they wanted to set up a time to talk to me about making them more robust. To be completely honest with you, I’ve just been so busy that I wasn’t able to sit down for a half hour or so to just talk to them and give them an idea of what I needed and wanted. Obviously, I could have definitely helped in contributing to that, but it’s difficult to find the time.

Bryce Whitty: Fair enough. You mentioned a lot of your customers are walk-by customers. Do you do any other marketing beyond just people seeing your sign and walking in?

Dean Ingraham: Actually, most of our customers are coming from Google AdWords and referrals now. In fact, Google ad boards almost makes up around half of what we bring in. What I was hoping to accomplish with the new location was actually the walk-by traffic. We don’t get a whole lot of that here. In fact, most of the time, most people who actually walk in and it’s because they saw us by happen chance. They are actually asking us for directions to another place. We don’t get a whole lot of that here, but like I said, Google AdWords and referrals is our biggest advertising venues, but we also advertise in the local movie theaters. We have some commercials there. We did some advertising in the past with the radio, we didn’t see a whole lot come back from that, but that makes up the bulk majority of the advertising that we currently do now.

Bryce Whitty: Is someone else managing the AdWords campaign or is it just you guys just running your own stuff?

Dean Ingraham: Right now I’m actually using AdWords Express, which works fine. Obviously, I know there’s a lot of advantages to actually using AdWords, but honestly I have not had the time to learn AdWords, so starting probably next month I have someone that’s going to start managing actual AdWords for us. He’s a local guy here that does a really good job at web design and building and stuff like that. He’s really good at SEO, so I think he should do much better at the AdWords than I’m doing at the AdWords Express. Even with AdWords Express we’re still doing very well. We’re only spending maybe about $750 a month and about half of our business is coming from those AdWords and we’re doing a little over $30,000 a month in gross. I think that’s a pretty good return for not knowing a whole lot about AdWords in general.

Bryce Whitty: That’s an excellent return. Did you find that the movie ads helped much?

Dean Ingraham: We get some customers from the movie theater ads, but I think the biggest thing that it helps is, it helps target the customers that we want because one of the movie theaters for instance, is more family-oriented. We get a lot of the higher income families that come in through there, and it gets everybody else at the other movie theater but our ad is very professional. It actually has that whole Apple feel to it and it gives our business the image of being extremely professional, elegant, sleek, up-to-date, so even though it doesn’t bring in a whole lot of direct business, it helps build our brand. If you’re looking for direct results I’m not sure that that’s the way to go, but if you’re trying to build a name and build a reputation and build a image for your business, thing like that that are visual I think definitely help.

Bryce Whitty: How did the radio work out for you guys?

Dean Ingraham: Radio is very much the same way. It’s more marketing than it is advertising. Yeah, you get your name out there and somebody may in fact walk in as a result of hearing you on the radio, but it was more of a brand building, marketing than anything else. I could say that I could probably count on one hand in a 6 month shot how many people actually came in. Ultimately, I didn’t think it was beneficial enough to continue the campaign. I’m not sure if we’ll do it in the future or not. If we do, it will be for a very specific purpose but just for general advertising that we do repairs, it didn’t seem to do very well for us.

Bryce Whitty: Have you done any sort of other offline advertising? Yellow pages, newsletters, dropping ads in mailboxes, that sort of thing?

Dean Ingraham: The first year we did yellow pages and it was terrible. In fact, I think in the last 5 or 6 years I can count maybe 2 or 3 people who have ever called in from the yellow pages. Obviously, people keep their phone books around for a few years so that’s not too terribly surprising that we had a couple more after that first year. The thing about Jacksonville is that the average age is 22, so there’s not very many 22-year-olds using the yellow pages anymore. They’re mostly on their smartphone googling whatever they want. We learned that very quickly and very early on. That obviously is doing very well for us from making the shift from the yellow pages to Google.

Bryce Whitty: It also shows the importance of having a responsive website, one that changes size for mobile devices. Just because it sounds like most of your traffic is coming from online and potentially from a phone.

Dean Ingraham: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we’ve had several customers throughout the years mention how much better or more professional and up-to-date our website was compared to all the other shops. In fact, from the very beginning we have tried to set ourselves apart from all the other computer shops local here by doing things like having an up-to-date website that didn’t look like it jumped out of the ’90s, or having a shop that was clean and presentable. Most of the shops you walk into here, and I know everybody’s got to start somewhere, but most of the shops you walk into here are just ghetto. They’re run down, there was even one shop that the walls are so brown from nicotine it was just disgusting.

There was computers and equipment everywhere, you literally walked in you tried not to step on someone’s computer. Needless to say, most of those business are out of business now in the last few years that we’ve been open. Things like the website and things like the appearance of our business, those are things that we strive to be different on, strive to be more professional, more up-to-date.

Bryce Whitty: Yeah, looking at the pictures of your shop on your website, the shop is absolutely beautiful. Everything’s branded, everything’s got your colors, it looks fantastic.

Dean Ingraham: Yeah, and I think it’s been a key factor in keeping our customers and not making them want to go somewhere else, because they feel comfortable dropping off their equipment here. In fact, most of the time when someone walks in through our door, they rarely ever leave and go somewhere else. They feel like they can drop off their stuff here and that it’s not going to be stolen, that it’s not going to be destroyed. Especially if they’ve walked into other shops locally here, so I think it definitely has helped a lot.

Bryce Whitty: It looks a bit more like a shop than a workshop from the pictures. I can’t see any computers and cables dangling around. I see things that are on the walls that people can buy. It’s much more of a shop than a workshop.

Dean Ingraham: Yeah, it definitely is. That is the image that we wanted to go for and honestly, while we’re not a major retail store by any means, having those items definitely helps increasing our profits. Most of the retail that we do sell is after a repair. We sell cell phone cases and tempered glass screen protectors, and charging cables, and stuff like that after almost every single screen replacement that we do. Not only does it make our shop look a whole lot better, but it also increases our profitability obviously.

Bryce Whitty: Like selling a backup after a customer’s data loss, it’s one of the easiest sales once you’ve repaired the damage.

Dean Ingraham: Exactly, and if you don’t have it there, it’s going to be very difficult to sell.

Bryce Whitty: It’s interesting that it seems to be very important with the way you look. A lot of people wouldn’t think it’s not that important to have a place that looks really great, or even your own presentation, but I think people forget that the way you look is extremely important. They’ll judge you in about 7 seconds about whether this guy looks like he’s on top of his game or as you mentioned, whether they’ll steal the computer or do a bad job or get their cigarette nicotine on it, or anything.

Dean Ingraham: Right, yeah, absolutely. Appearance is everything because even if you’re not successful you sure as heck should look successful. The thing is, is success breeds success. One of the reasons why clubs have lines out the door is because if there’s a line then obviously people want to go there. If you got a packed out parking lot then obviously you’re doing good business and you’re obviously being successful because you got traffic coming in and out of there. If you look successful, you’re more likely to become successful. It basically boils down to, fake it ’til you make it. Even when down to the business name, the PC Exchange, while I do want to change it now because now more of our repairs are cell phone stuff, it was great in the beginning because it sounded like it was bigger than what we were.

I was out of my house and I had the name the PC Exchange and it sounded like it was a big store. It allowed us to be able to grow into it, whereas if we had named it Bob’s Computer Repair, you go to Bob’s Computer Repair and you’re going to expect it to look like Bob’s Computer Repair. Name, your logos, your image, your branding, all of that. Your first impressions is so important to the customer because that’s usually what’s going to make the customer decide whether or not they’re going to do business with you or if they’re going to do business with somebody else.

Bryce Whitty: I think with the name it also sets the kind of customers you’re going to get with the price. If people were looking for Bob’s Computer Repair there’s a good chance they’re hoping for a single guy working out of his bedroom, get a cheap price, $25 repairs. If you go to a big store like the PC Exchange that looks so professional like this, then you’re already expecting to pay $80, $100 plus.

Dean Ingraham: Right, exactly. From the very beginning, this is actually not my first business. In my first business I learned very quickly that you have to price yourself for the customers that you want. Obviously, you have to provide the quality to back that up. Without having that quality and without having that appearance, it’s going to be very difficult for you to be able to charge that amount. Just as an example, I remember having a family come into the shop, this was a couple years ago, and I was working with another customer at the moment, but I could hear them and they walked in and almost immediately after the husband looked around, he turned around and said to his wife, “We need to leave. This place is going to be way too expensive.” Obviously, I don’t want to give the impression that we’re way too expensive, but it does go to show that appearance will set in the customer’s mind what they expect to pay and what they expect to get.

Bryce Whitty: It’s really an automatic filter.

Dean Ingraham: Absolutely.

Bryce Whitty: You mentioned you’ve switched largely to cell phone and tablet repair. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Dean Ingraham: Initially, we started out with computer repair, virus removals, tuneups, hard drive replacements, power jack placements, screen placements, everything you can imagine. Your traditional computer repair shop. About 2, 2 1/2 years ago we started to get into iPhone repair. In fact, for a while that’s all we did as far as cell phone repair goes. At the time I probably only had 2 technicians and we were doing everything. We were doing software, we were doing hardware, we were doing iPhones, we were the receptionists, we were doing everything. It was very difficult to expand with the limited technicians that we had, but it finally got to the point to where we actually had to have a dedicated technician that all he did was cell phones and tablets, and anything remotely close to that type of repair. For instance, we even send over things like glass replacements for the MacBook screen assemblies over to the mobile device section as well, because it’s the same skillset that’s required to take glass off the tablets.

We started out small, we started out with iPhones, then we worked our way into iPads. To be honest with you, iPads were so frustrating in the beginning that I went through periods of learning how to do it and then quitting for 6 months. Then I would go back to learning how to do it again and then I would quit for 6 months. Finally when I decided to hire a dedicated technician to just do cell phones and tablets I said, “You know what, you’re going to learn it and we’re not going to stop doing it.” We learned it, we developed a process for that, and then we started going into Android phones and Android tablets. We started learning what repairs were worth doing, what weren’t. Eventually we started building a name for doing those type of repairs until we basically are where we are today, where we’re doing mostly just those repairs. I think it’s not only because of our reputation obviously, but I think a lot of it is because especially with the demographics that we’re dealing with with this age group.

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