“Price and Convenience make us better than competitors. Many of our repairs are less than 50% the price of Apple and our turnaround time is an hour if you live in Columbia.”

Interview by Kelsey Meyer of Make Me Your Ad

Keegan Burkett and Zach Hockett have taken full advantage of Apple’s mistakes.  The two junior business school students from the University of Missouri have made a business around fixing broken iPhones.  They started a company called iPatchit in November 2010.

Keegan and Zach pride themselves on their amazing customer service, repairing most phones in an hour or less!  Since their beginning in November 2010, iPatchit has grown sales revenue to between $1,500 to $2,000 a month, and are continuing to expand. They are very excited about their up and coming ability to “color change” the iPhone.

MO:
What inspired the idea for iPatch it, and how did you learn how to fix these problems with the iPhone that most people have to send to the Apple headquarters to resolve?

Zach and Keegan:
I actually broke my phone two separate times and decided it was time to learn to fix it myself. I started searching the internet and found out that it might be possible to fix it. After my parts came in, and a couple hours of frustration, I seemed to have a good and working phone with a new screen. I then found out I actually broke the ear speaker in the process of replacing the screen. I took it apart, and started testing a simple process of elimination and figured out that I had broke a cable that now needed to be replaced. Once I ordered that cable and carefully replaced it; the phone was good as new.

After I told Keegan this story at the coffee shop the next day, he suggested that we start a business fixing phones and that was the beginning of it all. We bought a couple broken phones from friends and began learning the ins and outs.

MO:
Why would people come to iPatchit before sending their phone to Apple?  What makes your service better?

Zach and Keegan:
Price and Convenience make us better than competitors. Many of our repairs are less the 50% the price of Apple and our turnaround time is an hour if you live in Columbia.

MO:
What types of problems with the phones can you fix?  Do you work with all versions of the iPhone?

Zach and Keegan:
The broken glass screen or black and white issues with LCD are our most common repairs. We also do battery replacements and fix issues regarding a loss of service with the iPhone.  At times we do other repairs on request.

MO:
It is very impressive how quickly you have grown your business considering you are still in school.  Can you tell us about being a student entrepreneur and what advantages and disadvantages this has given your company?

Zach and Keegan:
Time management is an issue. We are both full time students and really have to keep our priorities in line. I wouldn’t say that one takes precedence over the other, but we generally keep classes in the morning and are open for business in the afternoon and evening. Being a student at Mizzou offers a very large market with around 30,000 students right here, many of whom own iPhones.  We see people in class all the time with broken screens and can easily offer our services.

MO:
What is the future for iPatchit?  Do you wish to reach out to people outside of Columbia, MO, expand into fixing more Apple products, both?

Zach and Keegan:
We just launched our e-commerce enabled website so we are now serving all 50 states.  It is possible to purchase a repair, send us your phone and we’ll fix it the day we receive it and ship it right back to you.  At this point and time we are going to focus on just the iPhone.  We are beginning to offer a “color change” service that will enable us to change the color of an iPhone.

MO:
Why is Columbia, MO a perfect place for you to start iPatchit?

Zach and Keegan:
Columbia is awesome due to the students and many professionals that have the iPhone. There is a pretty large market here. We have also received support from many small businesses in Columbia. It’s a great place to launch a start up.