Starting up an Appliance repair business

Re: Starting up an Appliance repair business

Its tricky these days as so many peeps are doing it.

Most important I would suggest is too keep it small, don’t go spending money on premises, flash van or loads of stock etc etc.

Here’s an example.

“A real story about Hippies and loaves of bread (yes, true!). Many years ago, a bunch of people decided to bake some fresh bread and sell it door to door in a nearby ‘posh’ neighborhood. They baked half a dozen or so loaves and went out and sold every one. Flushed with the success of their brush with capitalism, they went out and purchased a load of flour and other ingredients. Working overnight, they produced several dozen loaves. Out they went, and just as their market testing had predicted, they sold six loaves”.

Marketing is also important, including a web page, but again don’t pay too much for flash ads or a site.

Word of mouth is king, so if you remember people you have been to and repaired for before send them some info, speak personally to them and make contacts, network, a lot.

People skills are important, more than being an employee, but don’t fall into the trap of trying to please everybody, learn to walk away, you’ll be surprised how people can turn against you.

Price your work to your costs, not everybody else’s.

Here’s why.

Too many small businesses are afraid of putting their prices up (yes, even in the current climate) for fear of losing clients.

Think of this example: You run a business that buys widgets for £6 and sells them for £8. 100 customers makes you a profit of £200. Let’s say you decide to compete on price and reduce your prices to £7? Now you need 200 customers to still make that £200. Doubling your customer base is not easy. Instead of this, let’s say you up your prices to £9. You now only need 66 customers to make £200. In other words, a third of your customer base can leave and you still make the same amount.

Remaining customers can benefit from the better service you can give them and you have more time to spend on marketing and other activities beneficial to the business. If you just lose 20{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of customers through the price rise then you can bet they were mostly the high maintenance ones that caused the most hassle, paid late, and kept asking for extra discounts. Aim to deliver premium products and service at premium prices.

Good luck.

Re: Starting up an Appliance repair business

Lee is 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} spot on. Print his posting out & use as a template.

Best way to go for it is if you had to, such as redundancy or whatever. Nevertheless as long as you put in the hours & have the passion in the early days, it will work, above all don’t spend too much in case of lean times etc.

As Lee says keep it simple, run from home and be particular what you do & who for. Be careful of relatives and friends, they will expect something for nothing. You may need to remind people that they get paid for what they do, and you are no different. Above all don’t under-price yourself.

If you only get 4 or 5 calls a day & expect to go the extra mile in some cases and manage to keep a high first time fix rate, it should work.

Make sure you get insurance, find yourself an accountant (doesn’t have to be the dearest in town) and make yourself available, whether transferring calls to your mobile, or keeping on top of voice mails missed calls etc.

Factor in though, when you are ill and holidays. Anticipate you may lose work on some occasions. Things will work out very well if you have a similar person to yourself in the vicinity who is a competitor, set up a rapport with them, pass work to him & he should do likewise. Then if either of you want a break, you can look after each others customers.

Avoid partnerships, unless with your missus for tax reasons.

I started with just the Missus taking the calls and me on the road. I was a lot younger, hungry, with a mortgage, kids wanting to go to university etc.

The agencies came along, and then I increased staff to keep up. You should’t need to do any agency work I suspect. If it heads that way, you inevitably evolve into a capitalist and an unpaid tax collector.

Alex

Re: Starting up an Appliance repair business

I went self employed myself in January Den, and got some great advice when I too asked on here. Robbra very kindly sent me a copy of the flyer he mentioned and it is a very simple but very clever piece of marketing and has defiantly worked (Cheers Rob). I found I got the best flyer response from both new build estates the type young professionals would live, and streets with larger family homes, without too many converted flats.

I personally don’t do free estimates, most people do understand that im not going to run around for nothing.

If you haven’t got and web hosting yet godaddy are doing a great deals at the moment.

Best thing for me is as Im a single dad I can work around my daughters schooling.

Best decision Ive made in years going self employed
Good luck if you go for it

Re: Starting up an Appliance repair business

here my 2pence worth ….. run run i tell you and never look back ..
sorry couldnt resist ,

marketing is probably 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of any business now , it can feel like money down the drain – make sure you do it wisely ,

if you want to get a quick customer base then you will need to spend or be good at free marketing

use all the free stuff as mentioned google maps , yell , free index , yelp – free index is my favorite – make sure you fill in all details use the upload a photo spaces ( take some pics of your van signs etc

the free stuff is time consuming but worth spending a couple of days filling in all the boxes and getting them right –

i wouldnt wait until end of summer do it now as they can take time to filter into google world.

leaflets into local houses – make sure you leave some when you do a repair with an offer ie 10{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of next ,

possible local adds in local papers ?

and yes a nice web site and some seo to make sure it gets noticed

cheers ally

Starting up an Appliance repair business

twicknix wrote:you need to ask if you want quality or quantity.

Oh quantity every time, that way you can choose to pick the ripest fruit from the basket! 😀