I think this works by volume of customers in the NYC metro, but might not be viable for a repair shop in a smaller city. I would be very interested to see if a similar specialist could financially support the salaries of a few full time techs in a much smaller metro on the scale of, for example, Spokane WA.

But in this case the market would balance itself; this isn't an argument against the right to repair. If there's indeed no market for this then nothing will change, but it doesn't mean parts/schematics shouldn't be available in case people do want to repair devices.

>I would be very interested to see if a similar specialist could financially support the salaries of a few full time techs in a much smaller metro on the scale of, for example, Spokane WA.

You can have a B2B business model where local stores replace phones for customers and then mail the broken phones in bulk to a repair center.

He has stated many times that the majority of his board repair business is Mail in, not local. In fact because of this he stated in a recent video to be considering leaving NYC because of the high costs but since he employee's have strong ties to the area is may not be an option

In the article Louis says he wants to leave NYC, because the rent is exorbitant and over half of his work is mailed in anyway.

Yea but you also have to take into account that he's internet famous. Probably the most well known person in the computer repair industry says his shop with 16 people is taking in between 1 and 2 million a year.

So that's somewhere between 62.5k and 125k per employee annually in revenue. He's doing well enough but its not exactly a money printing machine and you would assume a person at the top of his industry is doing significantly better than anyone else could.

I do think its quite possible to make a living doing this in most places, but there's easier ways for people with that level of technical skills to make more money so it remains to be seen how many will choose to do it.

That being said I'm 100% supportive of right to repair and I'm a fan of Louis's content.

I don't think he's really at the top of his industry, financially/size-wise speaking, he's just more prominent on the internet. There's huge repair companies, he's still "just" a small business owner

That's a good point there are probably corporate electronics repair companies out there that have a much larger operation. Perhaps the guys that PC manufacturers contract warranty repair work to. However, I still think its fair to assume that when you take small businesses into account a guy that's as well known and liked as much as Louis is going to be getting way more business than he would if he wasn't famous.

I really don't get what your point is here.

The geographical location of the repairer does not matter because shipping is a thing.

And the fact that these repairers will charge per repair rather than a flat fee for partial replacements of entire boards like OEMs do means they can be cost effective while profitable.

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Apple will charge you $475 to replace a motherboard rather that has a blow 40 cent capacitor on a MBP.

Between the 40 cent cost of the component and labor, there's a lot of meat left for individual repairers left to make money.

>The geographical location of the repairer does not matter because shipping is a thing.

I wasn't suggesting it did matter in regards to his mail-in business. Someone else mentioned that living in a large city makes it easier to maintain a high volume of work locally.

>Apple will charge you $475 to replace a motherboard rather that has a blow 40 cent capacitor on a MBP.

This is true. My point was that when a large computer repair shop run by arguably the most famous person in the electronics repair industry is only attracting enough work to have an annual revenue of 1-2 million a year, it could be entirely possible that a regular, non-famous person in a smaller electronics business might struggle to stay busy enough to earn enough of a living, even if certain repairs like the one you described are very profitable on their own.

I mean these businesses already exist and make enough money to support people.

Most places I've lived had a shop or two where someone would repair things like logic boards for cheap, using grey market parts.

You don't need 1-2 million a year to keep the lights on, there's people doing this stuff in their garages.

>>Apple will charge you $475 to replace a motherboard rather that has a blow 40 cent capacitor on a MBP.

That is not the only consideration either, data recovery is as well, since most of the time that $475 also means your device is wiped and all data lost, an independent shop could even charge someone that same $475 but retain the data and it would be worth it to the customer.