Mobile Klinik, a leader in professional smartphone and tablet repair, refurbishment and resale, has launched a new brand campaign to showcase its new look and feel and revitalized in-store experience.
The retailer continued to grow its footprint even during the pandemic of the past two years and Tim McGuire, the company’s CEO, said it added 22 stores in 2020 and 20 new stores in 2021, with a total store count now of 121 across Canada.
“We’re continuing to plan to build out to somewhere in the 200 to 250 in the next few years,” he said. “Opening new stores virtually every month and then recently we’ve been doing a major retrofit on our existing store base to the new brand and the new concept.
“We’ve got lots more expansion to go. We won’t stop until every Canadian has access to a Mobile Klinik store and knows exactly what we’re all about. We need them to know we’re a lot more than repair.”
McGuire said that throughout the pandemic it’s become even more important for Canadians to be able to stay connected.
“We’re not all in offices. We’re not all in our workplaces. We’re working from home. We’re going to school from home and so on. So keeping your devices functioning well is even more important than it was before,” he said.
“We’ve dramatically expanded the services we provide. We started out as a pure repair company. If your phone wasn’t broken, you didn’t need to come to us. We’ve realized that Canadians need a low-cost, high-quality provider of all the services they need to keep them connected and to do so at great value in order to keep things going forward.
“So we’ve expanded our program from primarily repair to now we are Canada’s largest buyer and seller of used devices and we have a number of different protection plans and products to help you keep your device from breaking so you don’t need us to fix it. We’ve opened a central refurbishment facility. We have rapidly moved to become the full-service, everything for your phone shop and that’s what the buy, sell, connect is all about. If you want to buy a newer phone but you don’t want to spend the $2,000 for the latest and greatest from a manufacturer, we can get you last year’s model at substantially lower costs and you’ll never know the difference.”
McGuire said the retailer’s goal is to create a lower cost, far more sustainable system for Canadians to have access to phones, tablets and computers as it moves ahead.
“If you go back three or four years ago, we didn’t even sell used phones and now that’s one of the largest portions of our overall business. That’s an important expansion to it,” he said.
“The other thing is if you need a new wireless plan for your phone we can give you great value on a wireless plan but it ties directly to our overall sustainability position. So if you buy a used phone and activate it on one of our plans we’ll give you $100 off the cost of the phone. If you repair a phone and keep it out of the landfill and activate on a plan, we’ll give you $100 off the cost of the repair. And for anyone who activates a plan with us, because we are so tied to extending the life of devices and keeping them out of the landfill, we’ll give you a $5 a month sustainability credit as long as you have your phone.”
McGuire said Mobile Klinik has reimagined and evolved the in-store experience at more than 40 cross-country store locations. The revamped stores provide a more modern and welcoming environment that accurately reflects the innovative and forward-thinking brand, while addressing increasing consumer demands for affordable and sustainable ways to buy, sell, repair and connect mobile devices.
“This rebrand asserts our position as the market leader in the mobile device care and aftermarket category, and our company’s commitment to offering Canadians the most sustainable and affordable phone options,” said McGuire. “A survey we commissioned with Angus Reid last year found that despite 41 per cent of Canadians considering certified pre-owned devices and 76 per cent considering repair, more than three quarters still chose to purchase a new phone in the last three years.”
McGuire said more than half of the stores have been converted and within the next several weeks the rest will be converted.
“We’re renovating about five stores a week to the new concept. This new store design, while not taking anything away from repair, which is still the life blood and the heritage of our company, puts substantially more emphasis on Mobile Klinik’s ability to buy and sell used phones and to activate plans for those phones,” he added.
“So instead of the we’re just there if you need a repair, it’s more the one-stop shop, the everything for your phone is the way we’ve talked about it. That’s why you’ll also see a major marketing campaign . . . the tag line there is ‘that’s why we’re here’. So whatever happens to your phone, whatever you need, whether it’s a repair, whether it’s a replacement, whether it’s accessories, whether it’s a connection, that’s why we’re here.”
