It may be true that many of the best business ideas emerge during desperate times. Take weFix, which was started in a university dormitory room in 2007 after the iPod of its founder, Alex Fourie, broke."I couldn’t find [anyone] to fix it through the traditional channels," he says. "I went online, ordered a part and fixed it myself. Soon friends were asking me to fix theirs — and a business was born."The business was originally called iFix, as it limited repairs to Apple products, but the company recently changed its name . Its portfolio now includes brands such as Samsung, LG and Huawei.With the global smartphone market soaring, the astronomical growth of firms like weFix is no surprise, says Fourie.Today weFix has 30 retail outlets, employs 200 people and has more than 500,000 "happy customers", he says."If you consider that most smartphones break at least once in their two-year lifespan, the market [for repairs] is quite big," says Fourie.Fewer than 5% of weFix clients return with...
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