TechUnwreck from March, 2020 to August 2021

TechUnwreck, like so many businesses & schools, has seen incredible changes since the initial pandemic lockdowns in March, 2020. At the start, we were a fairly small operation of three technicians (Leo, Victor, and Bryce), a sales person (Matt Smith), and a part time manager who split time between the bulk, mail-in repair business and our retail stores (that would be me, Matt McCormick, the owner of the business).

At that time we fixed about 400-500 devices a month. Things have changed drastically since then!
March, 2020 through July, 2020Business was slower at the beginning of the lockdowns. Yes, schools were in the process of going virtual but they had little time to worry about fixing devices, so for the first 5 months of the pandemic our business actually fell to about 300 device repairs a month.
August, 2020
Things changed quickly at the beginning of August, 2020. We started to receive 400-500 devices per week! That was a 4-fold increase from our normal volume pre-COVID. Obviously our 3 technicians couldn't suddenly crank out 4 times the repairs, so we had to start hiring and improving some of our processes.
September, 2020 - July, 2021
The most urgent need was hiring more technicians and getting a full-time manager. Fortunately we had a solid lead on a technician (Andrew) and a highly accomplished manager (Neal) who had been with the company since 2014 and managing our Chicago retail stores since 2017. He immediately started fixing devices and began the process of hiring even more technicians. After a few failed attempts (which can happen when you're in a rush), we landed two more excellent technicians (Tyrone & Greg). Then in late June, 2021, we brought on board another great hire (Tim) to run a new shipping, receiving, and diagnostics station we had setup.

Halfway through this process we ran into a snag: we were running out of space - especially in the new COVID world where we needed to socially distance technicians. Our existing space of 2200 sq ft just wasn't enough. Fortunately for us the 2500 sq ft space across the hall opened up and we were able to add that space. That gave us almost 5000 sq ft to house inventory, customer devices, and all our employees.

We also changed our name to TechUnwreck and built this new website back in February, 2021. It's a division of JCD Repair - same great people and services - but just a new brand focusing on our bulk, mail-in repair service.
August, 2021
Things have not slowed down in over a year. This August has been the biggest repair month in TechUnwreck's (and Jet City Device Repair's) history. We're on pace to fix about 1700 customer devices for about 35 different schools this month, and in the past year we've fixed over 14,000 devices for over 150 schools around the United States!