Yeah, right. So I was going back to school at the time, University of Minnesota for finance. I knew I always wanted to do something in finance or something with business. It's kind always been my passion. I had a daughter too at the time, so I had a lot going on. That was kind of my, a lot of motivation for me was, know, give my daughter a good life, make sure that she has opportunities, that she doesn't have to pass up because of
Mm-hmm.
you know, decisions I've made. So that was really important to me. And also at the same time, I always wanted to start a business. I mean, it was, was a long, long and hard. I mean, I would go, I had a full-time job too. So I would go to work. I would come home. I would hang out with family for a little bit, you know, put the daughter to bed and then I would start doing homework. And then,
you know, between semesters, I was doing fall, spring, winter, summer, I was going, you know, all year round. And I always had just a two week break between semesters. And I was, like I saying, wanted to start a business. I started doing research and I saw this guy, he was just buying and selling devices off of Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. So I looked in my local city here in Iowa and I saw,
there's a ton of people selling their old electronics. So that's what kind of got me inspired. And I just started making a little bit of income on the side. First phone, I made $50 profit, listed on eBay, sold within 24 hours. And I'm like, hey, that took me less than an hour of work between picking up the device, shipping it, listing it. So that was kind of what hooked me to get started. And then it kind of snowballed from there. And then...
Yeah, I brought my two brothers into the business and they were going to a school university at the time, University of Iowa and down in Iowa City. was at Cedar Rapids and my other brother is in Waterloo and it's about 30, 40 minutes apart from each other. So they were doing the same thing as me. I was like, Hey guys, let's, let's whatever money you guys make, you keep whatever I make, I'll keep, and we'll just use the name smartphones plus. And that's exactly what we did. And it kind of.
kind of grew within those cities. And then that's when we're like, hey, let's make a website and have people all over the United States just mail us this stuff in. So that's what we did. And during COVID, that's when it really took off. We got connected with a few affiliate sites that started driving traffic to our website. And then we would just pay a commission per order. And that kind of launched us. Our business tripled that year.
And yeah, we started having to look for warehouse space and all that. So it was really exciting and getting into a lot of stuff that we didn't know what to do or how to do it. So we kind of figured everything out as we built the business little by little. But yeah, I mean, it started with just literally one phone and, you know, I had a goal. I just needed a couple of devices a day and that's all I was trying to get, you know, when it was...
just doing it on the side, now it's the amount of devices that I would probably get in a whole month or, you know, in several months we get literally every day. So it's, you know, it's crazy. Even to me, it's real a lot of days how it's grown from just a simple, hey, you know, you make $50 here and there to literally, yeah, we're a multi-million dollar company now.
Mm-hmm.
100%. I mean, that is a really wholesome story, especially like I can fully relate to that first trip when you make your first dollar out of a business, you'd really feel excited that if that is the kind of returns you can get from your effort, I want to do it more. And then you get hooked on that experience and the obsession takes over. So I really like, I resonated with how you kind of scale the business and you look at
You looked at starting small, having smaller goals and then kind of expanding organically. The brand is doing really well right now from what I understand. I really like the model, how you're kind of approaching the supply side of the business, which is getting supply from consumers is the best way to get the most reliable and most scalable. So I really like how you're scaling.
I mean, I could like while you were kind of sharing your story, I could see like the milestones and how at each milestone you kind of doubled the scale of your business because you made those decisions to kind of continue seeing, okay, how can I make it even bigger? How can I make it even bigger with people and the model? So in this model, like I had this curiosity where, you know, you're competing directly with OEMs as well in that, one sense where
Apple, Samsung, LG, all the smart phone manufacturers, they themselves have these refurbishment programs. how do you position your business against these current stab, the OEMs itself that provide similar services? Not just you, companies like iFixit and other companies, how does the industry work in that sense?
Yeah, it's pretty hard to compete against the names that everybody knows. Sometimes, mean, those companies, Apple, all the OEMs, those guys are just almost, they're almost too big to compete with at a certain level. However, how we compete with them is by providing that one-on-one service. We provide more dedicated service.
Sometimes the people that you're talking to, if you call us or email us, those are the people that are right here at our warehouse working. Whereas, well, some of those larger companies, maybe they've outsourced the customer service and they're not necessarily on the side. They don't get to see the full day-to-day process. So our team has a full understanding of how it works. They're able to better educate customers with questions or help them get the most value out of their products or
educate them on other products that they can buy, that we can buy or they can recycle with us. A lot of these OEMs, a lot of where we do better than them is just the products that we offer for trade-in. Some of them, maybe they only accept phones, tablets, smartwatches, maybe computers. We accept all of that plus go-pads, accessories.
really a more wide variety of items that people can trade in with us. And then also we're usually able to offer a little bit better pricing than them because just because we hold everything here. We're not outsourcing any of the work. The Verizon's of the world, the phone carriers, now those guys to be honest, we can't really compete with.
when it comes to when they're offering trade-in deals, you see the get $1,000 off, get $800 off. Well, they're only doing that to subsidize, to get you to lock you into that contract for another two or three years. So we're not necessarily trying to compete with that type of deal. mean, we can compete with them when you're just doing a normal trade-in. And we typically offer better prices and then everything else that I mentioned earlier as well.
Yeah, I I see their value proposition different than yours. You're able to kind of take the complexity of multiple devices while they specialize in their kind of device and that's what they take. I also see value in your model where you're able to create programs with schools and companies that you're able to take all kind of devices versus, hey, I'm an Apple service provider and I would just take Apple products, right?
That makes it super simple because it doesn't come as the main function of any school or any, you know, IT department in any company where they're not looking at this as the forward moving thing. Right. So I really see a lot of value in what you do. think they are, you cannot compete with them, but at the same time, I think the market is very big. Right. Like I think I looked up, it was around $63 billion. ⁓ And it's growing 10 % year over year.
huge.
until at least the forecast in 2020, 2030. So it's a growing business. is no need for, I don't see that, I think I kind of, my understanding was as well was that your business is very different than theirs while the space might be same.
Right, it's similar for sure, but there's a different need for each type of consumer. Somebody that's on Apple looking to purchase a phone, they probably just traded in because it's simple to do it on that. Somebody that's looking to maximize value, maximize the speed of the trade in, maybe they're looking for outside sources and will find us out there. And that's kind of the...
the customers and the clients how we're looking for. Apple's a great option, go with them for your trade in, but we don't need everybody. It's just like you said, the total addressable market is massive. We only need a little bit of it. And that's kind what we're going after.
Yeah, definitely. mean, in.
I mean, I think you're one of the leading like outside of the OEMs. I think one of the leading I looked up there were around 18 and I think in terms of scale, you're you're among the top five, would say with respect to the electronic trading programs outside of the OEMs run one. So yeah, definitely. think the market is big and I think what you guys provide and the experience that you provide on your website is really smooth. Like I tried to trade in my phone. I didn't all the way trade in my phone because I still need my phone, but I tried to test it. So
Yeah.
I think it's pretty straightforward. Anyone with a little understanding of using websites can trade in their phone, is quite more convenient than going into a store and driving and trying to exchange it. And sometimes you don't want to do that. You just have this phone and you want this gone.
Exactly.
It is.
Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Exactly right.
How do you look at the, you know, these peer to peer solutions though, in this market, you know, like these websites like offer up or your face with marketplace. Like what do you, what, like I think your inspiration for this business came in the beginning from seeing a similar scenario, right? Like where people were extending phones. So that I'm guessing is also taking some chunk of this market. So how do you look at that ecosystem? Like, does it augment your business? Is it eating up in your bits? So like, how do you look at it?
Yeah, I think it's a good option. I mean, I think it's a good option for the consumer because they can get a good deal on a phone and then the person selling, not really a phone, just any electronics, and then the person selling it, they can typically get more selling peer-to-peer. And then there are people that have bad experiences selling peer-to-peer. And then those are the people that typically won't do it again and they will find a site like us.
Are they gonna get paid as much? No, they're not gonna get paid as much as you would selling it on your own. But you're going to have no hassle. No, it's free shipping. We literally baby you through the entire process. How do you re-race your phone? Make sure that it's good to go and not, all your data's gone. There's nothing left on your device. It's all cleared and you have that peace of mind. And that's kind of where we step in.
when it comes to peer to peer selling. So I think that option, that's how we started our entire business is kind of on the peer to peer marketplaces and grew from there. So yeah, I like it. I mean, it's kind of like if you were to sell a car, right? Like you can sell it yourself, you're going to get more or you can trade it in and you know you're going to get significantly less.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
but you get that convenience, don't have to, no hassle, you don't have to worry about really anything. So it's really similar to the selling a car, the whole experience.
That makes sense. It's like, what do you prefer? Do you prefer speed or do you prefer convenience? sorry. Do you prefer convenience or more money or like more returns? ⁓ Those are the two options. So yeah, I think it's again, it's stretching to a different persona of people who would, you know, go out their way and put their phone, would make sure it's clean, would make sure, you know, the charge is back in there and all that. And then there's another person of people that, hey, I just want to put it in an envelope and
Good job.
Right. Yep, that's what it all.
let it go on its way, right? Because sometimes the difference between doing that and that I would guess if it's an iPhone 12 or 13 could be just $50, which might not work with the ass of listing on Facebook, Messenger or wherever you would and then try to sell it and try to meet people in the middle of the road and try to exchange a phone.
deal with people yeah constantly mentioning you hey you take $50 for it's like no I'm trying to sell for $200. So there's not like you can sell it in person for $500 and we buy it for $100 I mean it's it's a lot closer than probably what people think it's yeah it's more like maybe around $50-ish dollars it really depends on the device of course but
Yeah, 100%.
Mm-hmm.
100%, yeah, I'd agree. The value would not be that much in most consumers' minds. So I think that's a good segue. Looking at consumers' perception of this industry, there are two parties. There are parties who are very electronic savvy. They understand electronics really well. They know that a refurbished product is not a...
comes with no defect and kind of relate to buying a new phone as buying a new used car, right? Like just like we buy cars, we can also buy phones with same kind of quality mindset. So in that kind of like thing, like in that kind of kind of mindset, do you come across different kinds of people like where your resistance to be able to move goods has been that, hey, what if the warranty doesn't work? What if the parts have been, you know, like flipped out and in out of the product?
So what role does that play in this industry? Because as a layman, can understand. To me, the first question if I'm buying a used electronic would be, am I buying it from a reliable source? Because there are many source electronic shops that can give that. The phone is something you can't open and see and make sure that, hey, what exactly is in there? You can have a subpar chip or motherboard or whatever the phone has. So what role does that quality in?
know, keeping consumer perception about used goods, used electronics are good products.
Yeah, I mean it's huge, right? Because especially if you're a first time, it's your first time purchasing something refurbished or used. And if you have a bad experience, you might not ever buy used or refurbished again, which is not ideal because there typically is nothing wrong with purchasing used or refurbished at this point. The devices are.
pretty much there's not much changing, I guess, every year. There's not a huge dramatic changes like there once was 10 years ago or anything. So how do you keep that perception? It's just making sure you maintain your quality and the consistency across the board, making sure the suppliers that we're getting parts from and all that, they're high quality parts, they're not low quality. So the consumer has an equal experience or as close to as equal as possible to OEM.
Apple now puts battery warnings and screen warnings on the devices once they've been replaced. Now that's not a bad thing by any means. It's just strictly a warning telling the user that, this is no longer an OEM part or something's been changed in it, right? So it's just educating the consumer, hey, that it's still okay. There's a brand new battery in it. It's actually better than the OEM battery.
because the OEM battery was no longer good. It's it's used, it's used, it's used its life. And now we've replaced it with a brand new battery. Has the warning message on it, but that's okay. Don't worry about it. And then on top of that, we typically warranty everything for a year or so. We're mimicking a manufacturer's brand new device warranty. And sometimes there's stuff that we're warranting that even a manufacturer wouldn't warranty.
Mm-hmm.
Just to provide that next level of customer service to continue to just educate customers and let them know that it's okay. And if something does go wrong, you can be reassured that we're either going to fix it or replace the device. You're not just out of money. So providing all of that education, consistency, and a good warranty on the devices is going to help make consumers a lot more confident.
not only purchasing one time but continuing to purchase, hopefully always refurbished or used.
Yeah, definitely. think I completely agree. The first experience matters if in the first experience you find out that yeah, the alternate part or whatever I got refurbished in my device or if I bought a refurbished iPhone, Samsung phone or laptop and it worked out to be just the similar, then your trust in the refurbished marketing pieces. Like for me, like I bought a MacBook 2016 from eBay.
in 2020 and I had to replace the screen once I went to an outside vendor. The chance that I took was that, it might not work and this might be the time that I have to retire this, but it's worth giving the try because the price of the part is much lower than buying a new MacBook. And there's not much changing. You can change the operating system, you know, like every three months, whenever the update comes. So what exactly are you paying for in a new machine? Right. So
I think that mindset, like as you said, it also, I believe it can also change by giving people this visit, like, you know, creating a business like yours where you're making sure there's a warranty on the part. There's making sure that the supply is good and it's not more like, I just got it done by someone who doesn't know what they're doing. So I think that's the place where a lot of bad experience happened where businesses that set up shop without the
complete infrastructure or the quality assurance guarantees and then they kind of operate and that's where the bad experiences come from. In third world countries, know, these small, you know, at least in India where I come from, these shops are like, you know, like very small businesses. where people would just set up some tools, they'll have some understanding, they learn on the job. So they'll have good experiences, bad experiences, but it's electronics is a very...
deceptive market, at least in Asia, where you can give your phone for repair and if you do not trust the vendor, you might not get the real parts back because you're never opening your phone to check. So I think trust and transparency matters a lot in building that perception.
Yeah, trust us.
It's a-
So how do you like kind of do you like in addition to warranties, like are there other services that you provide if in case you do have a problem outside of your warranty? Can you like, we would be happy to help you repair the phone and you know, get it into working condition with some things.
Yeah, we'll,
yeah, yeah, yeah. We do do repairs on the devices as well. However, typically phones, people aren't mailing it in to us to get it fixed just because, know, they can't be without their phone for more than a few hours, let alone, you know, a couple of days. Just mail time alone would take, you know, two to four days and then give us a day to repair the device. So you might be out your phone almost a whole week.
Mm.
three to five days. So we do offer that service. And if there is anything wrong with the device, typically, if they bought it from us, we might discount that a little bit to provide just that, again, that's that higher level of service, just to let them know, know, hey, it's not our fault. You know, maybe they cracked the screen or something stopped working. That's not anything wrong with the phone. It's actually just the user dropped it or whatever the case might be.
Mm-hmm.
So yeah, we give them those options. We provide insurance on them too. If you check out on our website, you can purchase additional insurance so you are covered against that crack or you know, any type of failure and typically they don't have to mail that back into us. They can just go to a local repair shop and just get reimbursed the funds from that. So that's typically the best option for them after they purchase the phone. If anything goes wrong.
Makes
sense, that makes sense. So yeah, I think that's again like another value of like trust and like assurance that the industry needs that, hey, I am buying a refurbished electronics, good. But if something goes wrong, the vendor or the person I bought from is going to be able to repair it for me. So the assurance piece of that, yes, even if things go wrong, they would be repaired is something I guess it's similar to like, I think the analogy you put like the car industry where if you buy a pre-owned certified car,
the engine stops working in two months, you can go back to the dealer and be like, hey, you showed me this car at least I have two years on this part, like maybe one year on the tires and things like that. I think the industry needs to change a little bit of perception like used goods. think in one of our offline conversations you mentioned just like in 1970s, like used goods were not looked as a good commodity. think electronics are going through that same
I think they're coming out of it, but they're going through that cycle, but there's a lot more can be done. Consumers are buying secondhand clothes, They're buying clothes, which other people have worn. so phones should not be a phones and electron and laptops and TVs and those things should not be a barrier for shop.
Exit. Right. Right.
I think it's more of a US, North America trend than more Europe trend because I looked at, least in Europe, every third person is ready to at least replace their phone, repair their phone. as you grow older, so as you grow to your 60s or as you become 60 plus, your tendency to do that even increases. Which makes sense because as you're growing older, you're becoming more frugal, you understand.
that, hey, why do I buy a new, just like, why would I buy a new device every year? But I think Europe's, the trend in Europe is much better and I think US and economy and market and consumers can kind of catch up on that trend for sure.
100%, yeah, Europe, UK, they're like ahead of the United States when it comes to all of the refurbished category in my opinion. Typically if we're looking to make a change or maybe we wanna see what's trending in the industry, we typically look to Europe to see what's going on over there, what are other companies doing over there.
because it seems like yeah, they're just a step or two ahead of us over here. And I think part of that is due to just they're just more.
sustainability and more education around recycling and reuse and not being so wasteful. Whereas here in the United States, you know, we kind of unfortunately have a wasteful mindset, I'd say that some people do anyways. But I do see a lot of that changing though. I see a lot of even the younger generation just being more aware about sustainability and more conscious about should I
buy this brand new device or this brand new piece of clothing or should I look to go to the secondhand store, go buy a refurbished device and they are, they want to. Thrifting's come back. It's like, thrifting is trending and not that this is necessarily thrifting, but just going along that I think it's just.
It's people are just more conscious I think about what's going on in the world.
Yeah, 100%. I think that's also correlating with the growing industry and, you know, like use goods market is increasing. So I think the industry is definitely growing in the right direction. But there's a lot more can be done. know, stats like, you know, like people are replacing their phone every two years, which every two year technology is not, you know, like no, even Apple cannot, you know, like refresh and, you know, take a revamp the entire product in two years. Product building takes a lot of time. It takes thousands of people.
work together and build features and being able to implement them at a scale of billion people using it. no, like two years is, I think five years is a good cycle when your products, you know, I don't know what you think about the iPhone 17. And if you looked at it, definitely looks aesthetically very different than the, than the old one and it's thinner as well. things don't change that more often. If you look at 16 to 11, it's literally the same phone with, I mean, at least my personal perception with the few upgrades.
Yeah, exactly. It's literally there's not much changing on it. You know, there's very minor details that change that don't in my opinion, make or break should I upgrade or not really the two factors to upgrade these days that I hear from people are phones just getting slow, you know, the applications that they're making and the new software they're making typically you need a better processor to handle the better applications.
Running out of storage battery now storage and battery you can change You know you can always get a call I get cloud storage and upgrade your plan or you can always change your battery in your phone It's just a lot of consumers don't even realize for some reason that you can upgrade and put a new battery in the phone However do any OEMs ever educate any of the consumers around that no they don't why
Okay.
Nobody really understands that thing. You can go and change the battery for usually under $100 and your phone's good for another couple years. Just like in a car, you may need to change your battery every seven to eight years in your car. It lasts a little longer, it's a bigger battery, but it's a consumable product. It is the same thing in a phone or any other device. Change the battery, you're good to go for another couple years. People just don't realize that that's all it takes sometimes.
Mm-hmm.
Those are the two biggest, the two or three biggest reasons I see people upgrading and they don't necessarily need to, or really honestly, the real reason is just because they want the latest and greatest. It's almost like a peer pressure thing or the marketing's just so good that you just want it even though you don't need it.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, but like if you look at it funnily like if you just be one generation behind you can literally buy the same technology at 50 % or like 60 % off. if you go buy an iPhone 16 right now, so yeah, you want to move forward you can move forward. But if you play the system well with you know, I'm just gonna be one behind or two behind you're still gonna get the same experience.
trailing five years, they have to give the same software. So it's not like if any software update is coming in 17, that won't come in 16, 15, 14 at least. But yeah, I also agree like the messaging itself is not there. And I think the industry itself needs more voices like you can kind of bring that, that, what is the importance of having used goods? I want to make a segue. I want to talk about the complexity of your industry itself.
While your business looks quite simple on the surface, but it has a lot of technicalities of opening up phones, laptops, finding out what exactly is going on with them, fixing them, replacing those parts, making sure those parts would last, fixing them and, you know, like packing them as brand new and then so on. Right. So electronics are very challenging if you look at them to kind of repair. So how do you kind of, you know, like, how do you look at your current
processes, what role do you think Vision AI would play and is already playing in this industry?
Yeah, it's a vision AI. Yeah, I think that's gonna be huge, especially with grading devices. That's one of the biggest differences between companies that sell referent mesh devices. A lot of people use ABC grade, right? So our...
Mm-hmm.
B grade or we call it good condition is typically a lot people's A grade or A condition and you know some people have 10 different grades A plus, A, A minus, B plus, it's too much. It's kind of over-complicating the vision. Vision AI though would be great or is great and I've seen this in some facilities where it will you can map it out so if it has
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
this deep of a scratch, X, know, much of the screens covered in scratches, place that in good condition or place it in fair condition or if it notices that, you know, obviously if there's cracks, can get all of that. But by doing it this way, can, companies can get their grading a lot more closer to each other and a lot more just centralized because I think that's one of the biggest things. It's really subjective right now.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Be honest,
it might be something that, again, it's kind of like a car. You have all the same cars, but you might have a lot of scratches on the back right panel of the car, whereas on the identical car, there's only two scratches on the front. Well, both of those cars are in good condition. They're not perfect condition. It's the same thing with devices. ⁓ But Vision AI can help because the human eye.
Understood.
is different on each one of us, right? And what's fair to me might be a perfect phone to you. It's just all how we see it. Because yeah, we get reviews, of course, and we're sending out fair condition phones and they're like, what is a brand new phone? Like there's no scratches on it. Well, there's no there probably is no marks on the screen. It's all scratched up on the back. Put a case on it. It's good to go. It definitely looks like a phone. You just saved $100 because bought a less condition.
Yes.
model that functions identical to the perfect condition one. But that's how I see Vision AI working. And not only that, mean Vision AI to help just receiving and outgoing of devices and packaging and sorting and helping putting into the right processing areas and departments and helping the picking and packing team.
locate items faster and quicker.
There's a lot of good benefits to it. We don't use any vision AI right now. I know a lot of the bigger players use some sort of AI or robotics and stuff. And I love seeing it. the more that they use it, it's kind of just like any luxury item, the more that adapt it, the cheaper it gets over time. So ⁓ just a matter of time. mean, before we adopt some type of AI or robotics,
Mm-hmm.
But yeah, not currently, but yeah, hopefully in the future for sure.
Yeah, makes sense. think the technology is not there yet to fully take over and scale into operating. I was looking at some papers, the accuracy is about 70%. So what happens to the next other 30 % of the time, it doesn't accurately. So the accuracy, think on the science level itself, the accuracy is just not there to be able to kind of at least.
for any deep learning models to be able to see a device and say what exactly is wrong with it. It will only be correct seven out of 10 times. I think from what you said, the scratches analogy, think scratches are not something which Vision AI or anything else can kind of estimate because that's more of a subjective thing. Just like you said, right? Somebody could be okay with the scratch. Somebody would not be okay with the scratch. But it's more about what's inside and what's inside.
itself is pristine or is in a condition where it would continue to go on for another two years, three years or whatever it is. So I think more than, and I'm quite new to the use in electronics industry, but I don't know, is the scratch is the biggest variable? People look at pricing a product or would you not say that, hey, what's inside is sometimes matters more because a lot of devices stop working because the motherboard is gone or something else is gone.
And that's where a lot of time in diagnosing what needs to be fixed goes.
Yeah, I would say condition is the biggest factor. Why? Because when we're testing these devices, our company, really any company, we're saying that everything on the inside is 100 % functional. It's going to last. And that's why we're confident in putting a one-year warranty on these used products, because we're so confident that we hook all of our devices up to the
diagnostic software right now. So it's running checks on all of the kernels. It's making sure the motherboard is good. Is the battery good? The cameras work. They're not blurry. It's functioning. Nothing's glitching out. And if anything is glitching out or acting weird or something's overheating or, you know, just acting not normal, our software already picks all that up right now. And similar to us, most refurbishers or most used
Mm-hmm.
use resellers, they're using some sort of diagnostic at this point because it it's too manual and it's too much, really just too much trust and it's easy, it could be easy to forget certain tests so it's easier to just use the software and then vision AI. So it does become more of just a cosmetic thing because
Mm-hmm.
everything is equal on the inside or it should be equal inside already. And yeah. And then if it's not, you're covered by that one year warranty. you're, you know, it's a hassle to, yeah, send your phone back in and. But it's kind of just that blanket of security and it's way, it's, it's a very minor amount of people that actually have to warranty their devices. I mean, we sell thousands of phones a year and maybe we get a handful back.
⁓ I see.
that we have to warranty. It's not even, it's a fraction of a percentage basically that we actually warranty. But when you're doing the right thing and you're making sure that these phones are good to go when they go out the door, that's what you can expect. You can't expect perfection because that's just unrealistic. But you can expect to have a very high percentage go out your door and be in good working condition for the next
you know, five years for the user.
That makes sense. I think I was missing this diagnostic software piece. I think that makes sense. The hardware, all of that, I think you plug in something and it kind of gives you the entire, and everything is working or not. I think that I understood. think that's awesome. So think there's no application of Vision AI in that. I think it's more of the cosmetics is at least what I like. And I think in my case, in my mind, that's not a huge use case because it's looking at scratches. It's not looking at.
Yeah, so we always have that which is nice. Yeah. Yeah.
other thing but I really agree with the other like the post refurbishment piece of the warehouse and logistics part of running this industry which is picking and packing sorting that I think there's a lot of new robots that have come in their autonomous arms a lot of industry a lot of companies that are popping up so yeah I think in three years like I think I am I'm guessing like at least every every 3PL or warehouse would have one kind of robot it could be just it's picking here and there
They're very, I think robots are very like, one purpose, single purpose, three purpose. can't do like, I don't see a autonomous, fully autonomous, fully, you know, like just give a prompt and do that thing kind of robot anytime soon. But I still see a lot of three case use case, four case use case, it from here, scan it from here and keep it there, making their way into almost every warehouse at least in three years. For sure.
Exactly.
What do you think about the tariff situation and its impact on the industry overall, specifically your parts purchasing, so like impacting your costs and in general your thoughts on it?
Yeah, it's interesting. mean, part prices definitely increase. We get a lot of stuff right out of China. So I mean, anything that's impacting China typically impacts the refurbished community. majority of the items come out of China in general, not just repair parts, right? So I mean, it does have a big impact. And I think I just saw within the last couple of weeks, actually, that Sony increased the price of their brand new PlayStation 5s by $50.
Now I can't remember if that was tariff. I'm pretty sure that was because of tariffs. I'm not 100 % sure, but we also saw Apple come out with their new devices just last week. They unveiled iPhone 17 series. They didn't have a price increase. Now what they did do that was interesting though was they added a two terabyte storage, which is a increase between a one terabyte up to two terabytes and
There's speculation that that's just because that's how they're making up for the difference in the tariffs is by adding that extra storage in there. And then of course they're able to charge more for that. So for the extra storage, they do have pretty expensive iPhone out there for that reason. And I think that's to help make up for any of the tariff situation that may or may not happen. so how does it affect it though? At the end of the day, if there is any effect, it honestly, it...
hurts us when we're refurbishing devices, but it also increases the demand for the user refurbished market if brand new prices are going up, if they're not readily available via demand or sorry, supply shortages, right? So we saw this happen in COVID even where the carriers like the Verizon, AT &T, they weren't able to get enough supply of brand new phones because stuff was getting.
know, stopped at ports and all this and that with supply. So they were carriers referring a lot of people right over to us saying, hey, go to Smartphones Plus, purchase a phone, and then come back here and hook it up with service because we literally don't have any phones. So we saw that. What happens when the demand is high but the supply is low or literally nonexistent for several weeks, the demand increases and they used to refurbish market.
And that also can increase prices in the user-referred market, which is virtually unheard of because there's typically only one way that prices go with used devices. And that's just downwards, just because there's so much new tech coming out constantly. It gets outdated very quickly.
Mm-hmm.
Make sense.
So yeah,
I haven't seen a direct impact other than par prices slightly.
100%. I think a situation like COVID where supply is so extremely low would not come back. obviously I don't see, even I don't see like tariffs having anywhere close to an impact of what COVID had on this industry or any retail industry or any other industry per se. I think tariffs, like, yeah, as you said, the part, like the prices of part is going to increase. So it's going to be getting harder to get
I agree.
parts and cheaper, which is going to increase the cost, which I feel like might force the OEMs to be like, I want to refurbish more goods. I want to get more, you know, use goods, more iPhone or more Samsung Galaxy's and like the older ones so that I can use the parts in the newer ones and kind of keep continuing my production cycles in US as much as I can. So I do see that there could be an opportunity that I might be, you know, just looking at something very naively, but it could be that if
If the parts already can be there, might be able to create phones much faster over here. Because that's, think, guess, one of the barriers. Other than that, think, yeah, I I don't see much impact either on the tariffs. At least as of right now, there are obviously some reports where consumers at an overall level, because of tariffs, becoming more
you know, like inclined towards buying used goods, secondhand goods, they're looking for more deals in the market. So I'm guessing that's going to obviously trickle down to electronics, because that's one of the biggest, you know, expense, you know, high ASP item that you know, most consumers buy. So I definitely see because of that overall tariff situation and that inflation situation, there would be some, you know, like mind-set shifts where people would be more inclined towards buying used goods and used goods being, you know, one of them being electronics.
But yeah, to be honest, other than that, even I don't feel right now if there's going to be a huge, huge impact. I really liked the insight that you shared with respect to OEMs increasing a perception of a battery in a consumer's mind and kind of still be able to kind of make up for the tariffs cost because it might be that the battery is not that expensive or it's easier to kind of upgrade it.
I'm guessing batteries might be one of those things as well, right? Which can be easily refurbished from an older version to a new version. there's a...
One of the easiest things is the battery, yep, to get replaced in there. But they're doing the storage, increased storage of memory. That's what they're doing.
Okay, got it. Got it. I see you got
it. Got it. Yeah, my bad. My bad. Yeah, that actually is really helpful for the processing of your phone. But already, I think we've covered a lot of topics today, Chris, it was a real pleasure speaking with you. I really appreciate the time I think we we touched on topics that are really close to not just the electronics industry, but to the overall industry, retail industry and the second hand in the circular.
mission we are all part of. I really appreciate the time you took to chat today. And do you have any message? How can people reach out to you?
Yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn or you can always email me. It's just christopher.hale at smartphonesplus.com. Always looking to connect with other people, whether it's a business relationship or just to connect and network and just chat. So, yeah.
Awesome, yeah.
Thanks
for having me, I appreciate it. It was great chatting today and always love talking about this. It's one of my passions. love talking about, real quick, just wanna touch on, the whole journey started out as just making an extra dollar on the side, right? Just an extra little side hustle. But it's really translated into something a lot bigger than that. More than ever am I.
more passionate about sustainability and just doing the right thing for the world and just kind of helping educate other people. Because after starting and just seeing the devices come in, at first I didn't think I really had that much of an impact on doing anything and recycling, but even phone cases come in or cords or all this extra stuff that people would just throw away and sitting down thinking about it. We have thousands of pounds of waste that is.
literally diverted from the landfill in the form of not only electronics, but all the accessories that are along with it. So yeah, it's really changed my entire mindset on the industry and kind of on all the behind the scenes stuff that goes beyond in the circular economy. but yeah, just wanted to throw that out there. But yeah, otherwise, I appreciate the time today. It was fun and it was a good conversation.
Yeah, 100%. And just to kind of touch on what you said, yeah, 100%. Sometimes you start a part, but you don't realize how big of an impact you're making. really see your business making, moving thousands of electronic phones that would otherwise be refurbished, or the parts, basically. I think the parts are even bigger, as you said. So it's great to have leaders like you in this industry, because that keeps kind of
innovation going. industry doesn't have that many voices, as many as it needs. know, like, sometimes it's harder to be in the group, which is, you know, not that popular, where there are companies that are doing other kinds of businesses that are looked as more sexy. But there are businesses that actually make the impact and actually make the revenue and I think investing in circular economy and building businesses like you is one of them. So thanks for doing your part and thanks for being on the show.
Great. Thank you so much. Take care.
Thank you,
you as well.
