Edmonton-based Dr. Phone Fix, Canada’s fastest growing cell phone and electronics repair chain, is continuing to expand its footprint in Canada and is opening a unique location soon at the West Edmonton Mall.
“For us, we’re thrilled to be going into West Edmonton Mall because of its reputation/worldwide profile. It’s an amazing opportunity to showcase our brand,” said Warren Michaels, VP, Brand and Business Development for the company.
Michaels called it a golden opportunity, an extraordinarily valuable marketing opportunity and a centre piece of its promotional strategy, with the shopping centre seeing 90,000 visitors a day, up to 200,000 a day on high traffic days such as during Christmas.
It will be the company’s eighth store in the Greater Edmonton Area.
“Ordinarily we’re in plazas. New shopping plazas and we do that because of convenience. People can get in and out very quickly. They park in front of our store, drop off a cell phone, they jump out and head out again. We don’t ordinarily go into malls. That’s not our plan, our format,” said Michaels.
“But West Edmonton is a super opportunity because it enables us to not only have a presence in the mall but also to be seen by 90,000 visitors a day. We’re not going to get all those going past our store or in our store but at least we have that chance. We have that opportunity. That’s one of the biggest things, the opportunity for branding.”
Until it opens in WEM, it’s using the storefront as a giant billboard.
Dr. Phone Fix currently has 34 locations in 20 cities in four provinces. The plan is to grow the national footprint to about 200 stores.
“Our goal is 500 people in total. Way over 400 technicians,” said Michaels.
“Our growth continues to explode. We’re moving fast. We’re burning up the road in my mind.”
In the past year, the company has opened six new locations.
“Each store is somewhat identical in terms of the layout and the shelving and so on,” said Michaels. “We have a format but depending on the space you get you’ve got to work with the space.”
Stores are about 1,000 square feet and the West Edmonton Mall is about that size.
It now has 14,000 online verified positive Google reviews – a big jump since last year’s 4,000.
Last year, it had 50 technicians. Today it has 65.
“We have struck deals with the world’s two largest cell phone makers to provide repair services for their customers. We project that will be a new multi-million-dollar revenue stream for the company,” said Michaels.
The growth in the industry is pretty obvious these days with a staggering number of people with cell phones and many of them have more than one device.
“I wouldn’t say we’re recession-proof if a recession happens unfortunately but we’re pretty well protected. Everybody has cell phones and there’s certain things they would not do without and a cell phone is one of them,” said Michaels in a previous Retail Insider story.
“People are now keeping their phones slightly over three years as opposed to model changes almost yearly. And so if a recession was to hit, people would be buying our pre-owned phones rather than buying up.
“It’s a massive, massive growth industry. It’s hard to get solid numbers.”
