Apple Reseller Jump+ planning to grow presence across Canada with store expansion [Interview]

Jump+ is Canada’s first and largest Apple Premium Reseller, an independently owned Canadian family operated chain of stores, recognized by Apple for achieving the highest standards of expertise and customer service.

Established in 2011, following a 30-year history and experience with Apple products, jump+ started in Guelph, Ontario and has grown quickly to have a presence across Canada from coast to coast.

And many more locations are being planned.

Tim McGuire, Executive Chairman of the company, said currently there are 17 stores.

“The plan is focused on aggressively growing the company across Canada. Other than the Apple store itself we’re the only retailer that brings the full Apple experience to Canadians. Every Apple product, every Apple service, every Apple offer,” said McGuire, who previously built Mobile Klinik into Canada’s largest and fastest-growing store network of professional smartphone and tablet repair services.

“We’re first to market with new Apple products. When the iPhone comes out you’ll get in our stores before any other stores. You’ll get every colour, every size, every memory, every configuration. We talk a lot about iPhones but the majority of the business is actually in the computing side. So we sell more in Mac computers, MacBook Air, iPads, in addition to a very healthy business in iPhones. I should include Apple Watch and soon Apple Vision Pro. You name it, we’ve got it.

“Not just sales but also service. We’re the largest provider of Apple Care retail service for covered products no matter where you buy them. We’re the authorized service provider in the communities that we’re in.”

McGuire said the plan is to grow from the current 17 stores to about 30 in the next two and a half years and probably 50 in the next four to five years to fill out the national footprint.

“(Apple) is the most powerful brand in the world. So if your wagon is hitched to a brand to pick a winner, Apple has dominated the ecosystem for all things computing and telecommunications for the last dozen or so years. We expect that to continue over time. You see that through the introduction of new products,” he said. “The Apple Watch has been a tremendous hit. The new Apple Vision Pro spatial computing system will be another big hit.

“All of these products prove that there’s an innovation pipeline coming out of Apple that is better than any other electronics company in the world. So we’re delighted to focus our attention on being the provider of the ultimate Apple experience in those small to medium size communities across the country where anyone can walk in and know that they’re going to get everything Apple.

“My partner in crime on this is James Ferguson who was previously with me at Mobile Klinik. James was the VP of Sales and Operations there running the whole store network and James is now our Chief Operating Officer here. We’ve done it once, we’re going to do it again. We’ve proven we can really grow this business.”

McGuire said in addition to geographic expansion the company is also going to focus on category expansion.

“Particularly, we will dramatically increase the sales of wireless plans within the store. We’re already selling tens of thousands of Apple iPhones, iPads, every quarter. But we’re not doing a good enough job yet of selling people to wireless plans to go with them. We did that successfully in our previous roles at Mobile Klinik making that one of the highest productivity wireless plan selling retailers in Canada and we’re fully confident we can do that here,” he said.

“There’s no reason why we can’t be Canada’s highest sales per store multi-carrier activations retailer. So we’ll be putting a dedicated team in growing that business very aggressively.

“We’ll also be growing the repair business. Our roots are in repair. That’s how Mobile Klinik started. The jump+ stores do a very good job right now but we have significant capacity to grow market share there and make sure that we’re the number one spot of choice whenever they need a repair whether that’s under an Apple Care program or whether that’s an out of warranty repair.”

McGuire said people may think about jump+ as only a retailer but about 25 per cent of its sales is with a sister company jumpIT which is a provider of Apple hardware and services to major corporations, government agencies, universities, schools, etc.

“Our 17 stores right now there’s 11 in Ontario, three in Atlantic Canada, two in Alberta and one in BC. There are none in Quebec. That will be a core focus for us and certainly I would expect eight to 10 stores in Quebec over the next two to three years.”