An Angola company is making tech last longer. Its mission has led to big growth.
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In 2012, Kyle Wainwright broke his flip phone.
Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars for a new phone, he ordered a cheap part online for $10 and figured out how to fix it.
That turned into fixing his friends’ phones and later into a phone repair business where he repaired 400 to 500 iPods a week. He later sold that business, which has 18 locations under the name Genius Computer and Phone Repair.
He’s now the founder and CEO of a growing technology company that doesn’t produce new products but rather makes them last longer. Angola-based Refreshed Tech is a buy-back company that purchases aged and well-loved computers, phones and the like in bulk to then refurbish and put back in the market.
The company celebrated its first year in business in August with strong financials. Refreshed Tech had $11.6 million in revenue with $4 million of that being made by the end of 2022. The company has hired 53 employees, and Wainwright said two more were hired the day he spoke with Inside INdiana Business. He said he expects to add another 20 people to the team by the end of the year.
“Our first year in business was going by very quickly because our business is so fast-paced,” he said. “We grew very quickly.”
The company mantra focuses on the sustainability and longevity of devices that have grown to be much more expensive yet paired with short lifespans. It’s an industry called Information Technology Asset Disposition, where the company is growing to be a player.
“The sustainability piece and the E-waste piece was really always in our heads of how can we prolong the lifecycle of devices?” Wainwright said. “We want to keep them out of landfills.”
With advancements and how the tech industry has trended, there is more waste that the world needs to deal with. Wainwright mentioned how he got his first flip phone when he was in college, but now kids in grade school have phones more advanced than some computers. The pandemic also accelerated the use of Chromebooks in school and more people working from home.
“The key point of point now is it’s no longer just one piece of technology per person,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few years, every person has four or five pieces of technology that they use on a daily basis.”
Wainwright talks about how his company is diverting used tech away from landfills and how the issue of e-waste is growing.
The main products the company brings in are Chromebooks, MacBooks, iPads and phones. Many of those products are subject to almost yearly new releases with tech companies encouraging users to upgrade hardware frequently rather than highlighting the long-term durability of a device. With how expensive those devices have gotten, Wainwright said people are trying to find ways to make their technology last a bit longer.
Refreshed Tech’s routine customers are typically school districts and enterprise businesses, both of which can filter through a lot of product. When they buy from those entities, the products are shipped to Refreshed Tech’s 17,000-square-foot Angola facility, which is powered completely by solar panels.
Once in its hands, Wainwright describes it as “raw material,” since they have no idea if products are fully working, missing a key or have extensive damage. From then on, they diagnose how to fix it or if it needs to be recycled. They’ll replace batteries, fix displays and do what they can to bring that device back to full health, he said.
“In almost all the cases, we don’t tear hardly anything down to recycle it,” Wainwright said. “And if we do that, and we push in the right direction so we still keep it out of landfills.”
Regardless if the device will live on, the company wipes data from all devices and has the necessary certificates to do so. Especially with the industries they buy from, he said they know the weight data has and vows no data will leave their facilities.
After making its way through the process “refreshed,” Wainwright said a lot of those products are then shipped out all over the world through e-commerce.
“We’re able to take on any raw material that comes to the door,” Wainright said. “Then on the backside, it comes out a refurbished product that gets sold through e-commerce or wholesale channels all over all over the world.”
Wainwright anticipates 20% year-over-year growth and wants to control future expansion so they don’t grow too fast. Currently, he said they buy products from around 35 to 40 states.
“We’re new to this obviously. We’ve been going out for a year,” he said. “but we’re we’re making a very big impact.”