This is the letter a housewife wrote to Andrei Malakhov’s “Let Them Talk” program. God be with her, with the program, but the topic of the letter is really relevant:
LLC Forward Master at home remont-sma-msk.ru scammers
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Tatiana Morozova [email protected]
Good afternoon Andrey!
Faced with a banal everyday problem (a washing machine breaking down), we became victims (probably due to our inexperience, of course) of fraudulent organizations.
The first organization we contacted for repairs was Forward LLC (Foreman at home, address on the network remont-sma-msk.ru) they said that they had super experienced craftsmen and sent us one, for three days he repaired the machine, it started working, we paid for the services, the master left , after 2 hours the machine broke down again, they called the company and asked for a refund because... We began to have doubts about the master’s competence; they suggested that we send another master and not be nervous. Another master arrived, also not understanding what was going on, took the payment from the machine, said he would come tomorrow and disappeared. As a result, the machine does not work, there is no payment and the money was not returned to us. I called this company more than once and asked for management contacts, to which I received the answer that management would contact us and that’s it... No one called or came. When we asked the manager how to return the money, we were told that this was to the management, but no one gave us contact information, they gave us an email address where to write a complaint and said that perhaps they would answer us.
Washing machines are now of such quality that no matter the hour, they break down. Almost every apartment today has at least one washing machine. And it requires maintenance at least once every few years. If you open a newspaper, there are only a few specialists advertising in one issue. Five advertisements in a newspaper for a city of half a million is not too much competition. Yes, there are several more service centers, but in general, the field for work is very large.
There are only a few components in a washing machine that can break down. Often it's the electronics, the motor, the pump, or there's a blockage somewhere.
MARKETING FOR WASHING MACHINE REPAIR
The washing appliance repair specialist I interviewed says that he promotes his service exclusively through local newspapers. Moreover, he submits advertisements in every issue. According to him, he does not stop advertising even during vacation, since clients may not call immediately after a new release. In other words, the submitted advertisement in the newspaper has a certain residual effect, which can last for several months.
SPARE PARTS CAN BE DELIVERED FOR NON-FERROUS METAL
They replaced my pump. There is up to 90 grams of copper wire. According to Damir, he rents out non-ferrous metal in winter, since prices for it rise in winter.
Speaking of spare parts. The master had several pumps with him. He offered to replace the original pump for 2,000 rubles (labor + pump + one-year warranty) or, as an option, it was proposed to install a “Chinese” one for 1,500 rubles. I am sure that the cost of these pumps is several times less than the cost of a total replacement. That is, repairing washing machines can be a profitable business.
Moreover, this is beneficial for both the client and the washing machine repairman. Why should a client buy a new washing machine for 10-15 thousand rubles if he can repair the old one for, say, a couple of thousand rubles.
THE KEY TO SUCCESS IN REPAIRING WASHING MACHINES
As practice has shown, living without a working washing machine for more than three days is very problematic. If you lead an active lifestyle, then after each workout you urgently need to put everything in the wash. And washing by hand when the hot water is turned off seasonally is, of course, possible, but problematic.
In this sense, it is unacceptable to make a client wait a week. He will naturally go elsewhere and be right. And of course, your experience and professionalism in this field is important. And for this you probably need to work for some time in a specialized service to learn how to recognize a problem by ear, how to solve them and what tools you will need for this. Damir, for example, identified the malfunction literally by ear.
Attachments: from 10,000 rubles
Payback: from 1 month
Washing machines are household appliances that every family needs. At the same time, it is prone to frequent breakdowns, since users are usually too lazy to monitor its condition. The cause of the malfunction is often an ordinary blockage. Let's take a closer look at the business idea for repairing washing machines: find out how to start in this niche and how much you can earn.
Business concept
The portrait of the target audience is heterogeneous - an order can come from both a representative of the middle class and from the poorer urban population. Each apartment has a washing machine, which needs repairs from time to time.
Orders can be very different - from replacing a water level sensor to replacing a hitchhiking hose. At the same time, they can order from a specialist not only the repair of the old one, but also the installation of a new washing machine, since not all users undertake this on their own.
What will be required for implementation?
Washing machine repair is one of the few types of business that you can truly start from scratch with only the desire to work and two hands. At first, you will only need the most necessary spare parts and tools.
The main thing is to be a good and conscientious specialist if you are going to do the repairs yourself, or hire one if you only want to manage the business.
In the future, you can acquire your own premises in which you will receive and deliver washing machines, as well as store tools and spare parts. But in the beginning this is completely optional.
Another detail is state registration as an individual entrepreneur. You also need to take care of accounting - you can do it yourself, but it is better to hire an accountant remotely or use online accounting.
Step-by-step launch instructions
In order to begin providing such services, you must follow the following algorithm:
- First you need to purchase the necessary tools and spare parts.
- Get IP registration.
- Advertising your services - in newspapers, posting leaflets and distributing business cards, banners and your own business card website.
- Start of service provision and further expansion. Here it is worth considering that at first prices will have to be lowered in order to stand out from competitors and develop the first client base that will start word of mouth.
Financial calculations
Start-up capital
It all depends on the planned scale of the advertising campaign and the provision of services. In most cases, up to 60,000 rubles are spent on purchasing tools and spare parts, as well as on advertising.
Monthly expenses
How much can you earn?
If there are 5 orders per day with an average cost of 2,000 rubles, a monthly profit of 150,000–200,000 rubles is obtained. If you subtract the monthly expense from this amount, the net profit will be 80,000–100,000 rubles.
Payback period
Risks and disadvantages of business
The washing machine repair business has one significant limitation - it is relevant only in a city with a population of 150,000 or more people. In smaller settlements, an entrepreneur runs the risk of receiving only one or two orders a week, or even being left without customers. In this case, you can combine this business with the services of a plumber.
Conclusion
If you have a sincere interest in this business and you live in a large city, with a conscientious attitude to work, you are guaranteed a high income from what you love, as well as a significant prospect for expanding your business.
Did you know that a washing machine breaks down more often than other types of household appliances? On average, once every three years the owner of a washing machine turns to specialists for help. At the same time, for most machines, the causes of breakdowns are ordinary blockages. The pump, heating elements and filters fail. People simply do not take care of the car, and therefore its service life is reduced several times. But specialized centers and private washing machine repair specialists can only benefit from this.
If you resort to a simple calculation, it becomes clear that in a city with a population of 500 thousand people, about 50 washing machines break down every day. In a city with a million people there are from 100 to 150 cars. Thus, taking into account the competition, you can count on 4-5 clients per day.
These figures also indicate where such a service can be opened. If one client per week suits you, then you can organize a business in a small town of up to 50 thousand inhabitants. But in small towns this is not a profitable business at all. Therefore, a certain starting threshold for starting a business is a city with a population of 200 thousand or more inhabitants.
How much can you earn?
To understand how much such services earn, you can simply look at the company’s price list. Here, for example, is one of these prices:
For a basic replacement of a water sensor, you will be charged 1,600 rubles (plus the cost of the sensor). For a more serious breakdown (drum drive) you will have to pay at least 4,000 rubles.
If we assume that you repair 5 cars a day, with an average repair cost of 2 thousand rubles, then your daily income is 10 thousand rubles. In this case, you can count on 150–200 thousand rubles in revenue per month. After deducting expenses for fuels and lubricants, spare parts, advertising, cellular communications, the profit is 80-100 thousand rubles. This is if you work personally with a partner. If you only supervise the work, your profit is reduced by exactly half, since you give 50% to the craftsmen.
But repairs are not all that the service can make money on. Many orders are also received for the installation of washing machines, since this equipment requires some caution when connecting to a plumbing unit.
Where to start opening a business
A washing machine repair business is one of the few ideas in the service sector that can be organized, so to speak, “from scratch.” All you need at first is labor and a desire to do this kind of work. For beginning entrepreneurs, the ability to personally handle such equipment will be a big advantage. If you don’t have such abilities, then you will have to recruit a team of people who know how to repair washing machines.
This is one of the difficulties in organizing a business. Even the office is not as important in the beginning as good specialists. You can search for workers through banal advertisements, including on the Internet.
Without advertising is like without air
Another difficulty in organizing a business is finding clients, especially the first 10. Finding clients is also complicated by the fact that competitors are not asleep either. Competitors may include small firms and private craftsmen, as well as specialized centers that engage not only in repairs, but also in the sale of household appliances.
At first, you may have to reduce the cost of services, work, in fact, without profit, just to develop a starting client base that will advertise you to other people. As soon as word of mouth starts working, it will be easier. In large cities, where people traditionally look for services via the Internet, opening your own website and creating a group on social media will be a good help. networks.
If it takes a decent amount of money to create a business card website (from 40 thousand rubles), then 1 thousand rubles will be enough to make business cards. To begin with, you can make 200 - 300 pieces at a local printing house and distribute them to the maximum number of people.
You can also contact household appliance stores in your city, which do not have their own service centers for repairing equipment. It is possible that they will agree to work with you, since they sell washing machines with a guarantee.
Business prospects
As the business develops and the client base grows, the need for your own premises will arise. The advantages of having your own office are obvious: the prestige of the company increases, and a place appears where you can store tools and spare parts for equipment. The office can also receive clients and broken equipment, which significantly saves time traveling from home. In addition, the office can organize the sale of washing machines, plumbing fixtures and spare parts.
Another prospect for this matter is the expansion of the list of services. Having a team of professional craftsmen, you can accept orders for the repair of not only washing machines, but also other household appliances: dishwashers, electric stoves, hobs, air conditioners, refrigerators, dryers and boilers.
* The calculations use average data for Russia
In any home today there are many electrical appliances; their users usually do not have the slightest idea about the structure of the equipment, much less how to repair it in the event of a breakdown. Moreover, in most cases, failed equipment can be restored, and repair is much more economically profitable than purchasing a new unit. In this regard, the need for the services of craftsmen among the population is constant; a true professional who can cope with any breakdown will definitely find his client. Building a business in the repair of household appliances is relatively easy, but to do this you need to have the appropriate knowledge, and not every master is a universalist, able to work with absolutely any equipment from any manufacturer. But even in this case, you can build your own successful business, which will have many development prospects.
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The biggest problem, perhaps, is the level of competition in this type of business. Due to the simplicity of starting and low costs, there are a large number of players in the market who already have an established client base; they can be found in any area of the city, and competition forces them to constantly reduce prices for their services. Depending on the market situation in the city in which you will be working, it can be very difficult to organize your own business, especially if there is already a repair and maintenance shop nearby. However, thanks to the wide variety of technical products and the differences in their design, many craftsmen do not even compete with each other, but rather collaborate, occupying different niches and offering their clients repairs of various equipment, and a large number of service centers rarely take on the same type of work , one workshop does this. Thus, there is complete differentiation of the services offered, and competition ceases to be intense.
However, the way you organize your household appliance repair business can be different and has two directions. The first method is a mono-brand salon, which offers repair of equipment from only one specific manufacturer, and does not undertake servicing of equipment from others. Which service center often acts as a partner for a household store and provides warranty service for equipment purchased in this store. This method of organization has its advantages and disadvantages. If you run your own mono-brand salon and have cooperation with household appliance stores, you can constantly have orders for service, but in this case the store itself or the device manufacturer will pay for the repair of the equipment.
An exception is buyers who have expired the warranty period, but who want to have their equipment repaired by an official technician. In this case, you will have to maintain high quality indicators of the work performed, often act on orders from stores, and the range of possibilities is limited to servicing only one manufacturer, which significantly reduces the number of potential consumers. A store that is looking for cooperation with a service center will place high demands on the latter, and often in this case it will be necessary to invest more significant funds in its arrangement. All this should be covered by a stable and large number of orders, but not every manufacturer or store can offer this.
The second way of organizing such a business is opposed to the first, because it involves servicing and repairing a variety of equipment from different manufacturers. Relatively speaking, it is multi-brand, but in fact it does not make any distinctions in the brand of products, but simply troubleshoots. Hence the main difficulty in organizing such a business - craftsmen must be generalists, be able to understand any devices, taking into account their features, and often the design of similar products from different manufacturers differs significantly. But in this case, the repair shop acts independently of other structures, has its own policy and has more opportunities to attract a large number of consumers. With this type of organization there is a considerable risk that demand will fluctuate greatly, but this problem should be smoothed out by the constant request of people to repair products of different brands. It is not worth comparing these two methods of organizing a business, because in each specific case one or the other may be preferable. To do this, it is worth studying the offers of household appliance stores and manufacturers, and then making a decision depending on the conditions offered.
To start your work, you need to register as a business entity. There is no need to register a legal entity; you can remain an individual by registering as an individual entrepreneur. If there is a need to register a legal entity, then it is better to choose the form of a limited liability company, this will make it possible to use a simplified taxation system, as in the case of individual entrepreneurship. However, registering an individual entrepreneur is much simpler and requires significantly lower costs; an individual entrepreneur is responsible for debts with his own property, but in such a business, as a rule, no serious debts arise. It is also worth choosing the right OKVED code, and the activity itself falls under the definition (OKPD 2) 95.2 Services for the repair of personal consumption items and household goods, but this grouping includes many provisions, and almost all of them can be suitable for a business repairing household appliances . For mobile phone repair, the definition of personal consumption goods is more appropriate.
The next stage of organizing your business will be to find premises, and in this case you need to first of all focus on ensuring that there are no competing companies nearby. A significant advantage of organizing a business for repairing small equipment is the ability to work in a very small space; one master with all the necessary equipment can fit in an area of no more than 10 m2. This includes mobile phones and all small, compact and easily transportable household appliances. If you have to work with large units (refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, etc.), then you will no longer be able to get by with a small area and will have to rent significant spaces for your work. This is due at least to the fact that there will be a need for a place to place equipment, including that which is only in the queue, space for the convenience of the foreman and a platform for unloading and loading equipment. The workshop itself may be located in the city center, especially where there is very good traffic, but an enterprise that is located in residential areas can also be successful. Moreover, in some cases, locating in residential areas is more appropriate than in the city center, where there are practically no residential apartments and houses, and this primarily concerns a workshop for the repair and maintenance of large equipment. But even in this case, there is an opportunity to save on rent if you offer home visits to your clients.
Ready ideas for your business
Ideally, the workshop should offer its clients solutions to issues of any complexity, and not all of them can be solved in the client’s apartment, but at first you can limit yourself to only home repair services. In this case, most clients will be able to be helped, and it will be possible to rent a large premises a little later, when there is an established client base. Providing repair services at home almost completely eliminates the need to maintain an office, because if the entrepreneur himself is a master, then he can keep all the equipment at home and accept orders only by phone. For businessmen with limited financial resources, this method of organizing a business is much more preferable, but it is absolutely not suitable in the case of working with stores to provide warranty service for equipment and a specific manufacturer, and is also not very successful in the case of repairing small household appliances and especially mobile phones, because in this case it is assumed that the master takes the equipment to himself. On the other hand, small appliances and phones can be repaired at home.
But even if the business was started by providing services by one person - an entrepreneur, sooner or later in its development it will reach a level where it will require the involvement of additional specialists. In the case of working with large-sized equipment, additional forces will initially have to be involved. Therefore, you need to think about the personnel issue from the very beginning. It is best to outsource all business processes that are not related to making a profit; only foremen will work directly in the company itself, and all administrative and organizational responsibilities must be performed by the entrepreneur himself. We are looking for experienced specialists who are knowledgeable about the design features of many products. Their number is determined by the enterprise level itself, and at first it may be two people, if not one at all.
Ready ideas for your business
In addition, when working with large equipment, loaders and a driver are involved; this is only necessary when the work is performed directly on the workshop premises. Moreover, in this case, it is critical to purchase a truck, but the simplest such representative will cost about 200 thousand rubles. This will be a used Russian-made vehicle, but for the first time this will be enough to transport equipment. In addition, the car body can become an advertising platform on which information about the workshop is posted. Considering that the car will move throughout the city, you can count on the fact that a fairly large number of people will learn about the company’s offer.
Working with each type of equipment has its own characteristics; what type of business may not be in demand among the population if the craftsmen offer maintenance and repair of milking books, which are easier to replace than to repair. Therefore, servicing systems or other types of equipment may be different from the point of view of economic attractiveness. The most cost-effective undertaking can be called repairing refrigerators, because this large equipment is easy to repair, and even a less experienced specialist can handle its repair. It is relatively easy to learn how to repair refrigerators, and therefore there are no personnel issues. However, such devices are expensive enough to replace even if they are seriously damaged, and many users are much more likely to call a repairman than go to a hardware store. Refrigerators, compared to other equipment, are not so susceptible to obsolescence; they last quite a long time, so even when the warranty expires, the user continues to use the refrigerator for a long time. Among other large-sized equipment, washing machines can also be noted, but they are more difficult to repair, although in most cases it turns out to be somewhat cheaper than purchasing a new one.
With small equipment, everything is much more complicated, because it costs an order of magnitude cheaper, the price of components is often comparable to the price of a new product, and many users prefer to replace such products even in the event of a minor breakdown. The demand for these types of services will be much lower, and consumers who find out the price will often refuse repairs in favor of purchasing a new product. This issue is especially acute with cell phones, because they become obsolete very quickly, and after the warranty expires, the consumer often no longer needs the phone if it breaks down. Even a person with limited funds can, instead of repairing his phone, go to a cellular communication store and buy an inexpensive model for a while, which he will use until he saves up money for a new modern phone. In this regard, it is better to carry out repairs of small household appliances and mobile phones as a mono-brand service center that operates at the store and offers warranty service for the products. However, even a multi-brand store can offer its customers simple transactions that are much cheaper than buying a new phone. This includes replacing the display, microphone, speaker, receiver, battery for some models, as well as software flashing and simple services not for repair, but for improving the phone. If you plan to work with mobile phones, then it is not economically profitable to carry out repairs alone, but you need to offer additional services, including applying drawings to the case or changing the backlight.
Depending on the complexity of the services provided, various equipment is purchased, the cost of which can vary significantly. Repairing small household appliances requires special tool kits, as well as soldering stations, ultrasonic baths and computers with special software for reconfiguring electronic systems. The cost of such equipment starts from about 10 thousand rubles, but can be slightly higher when purchasing a more professional and advanced instrument. At the same time, not all devices can be useful, and for a mono-brand service center you will have to buy the most advanced equipment. To repair large-sized equipment, you will need the same tools, but also special equipment for each type of device. The most important thing is devices for checking the electrical system. The amount of such equipment may be small if you buy a standard tool, which self-taught craftsmen use. Also, if you plan to transport equipment, special transport devices will be required. Thus, depending on the complexity of the work and the available funds, the master’s arsenal may be different.
Ready ideas for your business
This type of business is characterized by low profitability, because the main part of the cost of repairs for the client is the price of the components themselves. In this regard, when replacement of any parts is not required, the cost of repairs will not be high; otherwise, it is often more profitable for the client to buy new equipment. In general, the cost of the repair shop services themselves rarely exceeds two thousand rubles, and is often within 500. The craftsmen themselves only engage in simple repairs (all for the same reason: it is often easier to replace than to repair), the most profitable business cost will be when there is a large number of small orders. Engaging in complex work is not profitable for either the master or the consumer.
The repair shop must actively promote itself in the market, because without informing the population there will not be enough orders to survive the business. Therefore, you should pay special attention to the advertising campaign, and if necessary, create your own website, which indicates all the services offered and the cost of them. In order to quickly carry out its task, the workshop must have established connections with suppliers and manufacturers of parts; this, of course, is easier to do for a mono-brand salon. This business can be good knowledge for an entrepreneur who is a master himself; otherwise, almost all of your income will go to cover expenses.
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