Kyle Wiens was a college freshman with an iBook G3 and a half-formed dream of launching a robotics company when the power plug on his laptop loosened and changed his life.
Wiens had spent every penny he’d earned working minimum wage during high school to buy his laptop, so paying someone to repair it wasn’t an option. Not that he would’ve handed it over anyway; he liked solving his own problems, and as a student at California Polytechnic State University, this setback was right up his tech-strewn alley.
“I thought, ‘It’s a loose solder joint; I’ll have to solder it.’ But when I started to take apart my laptop, I saw that the repair was going to be more complicated than I’d thought it would be.”
Worse, Wiens was unable to locate a repair manual online. Fortunately, he was armed with more than the solder gun his grandfather had gifted him as he left for college; he also possessed a brain that allowed him to troubleshoot tech dilemmas the way a skilled auto mechanic can get a faulty engine purring again.
After Wiens bumbled his way through the repair, he thought, “No one else should have to suffer through this,” he says. So, he wrote a how-to manual and placed it online.
iFixit was born the moment Wiens clicked the upload button.
“The manual became wildly popular; every Mac site in the universe pointed at it. So, (iFixit co-founder Luke Soules and I) wrote more manuals and started selling the parts. By the time we graduated, we had 20 employees and were the go-to Apple resource online.”
Fast forward a head-spinning 20 years, and Wiens and Soules have expanded iFixit from a dorm room operation to an internationally-based repair juggernaut. The company now offers more than 100,000 guides for repairing everything from cracked iPhones and damaged laptops to worn-out power tools and terminal hospital equipment, and assists about 100 million people a year with their DIY patch-ups, Wiens estimates.
“About one in 10 Tennesseans used iFixit to repair something last year,” he boasts. “At this moment, there are 5,000 people on ifixit.com taking something apart and learning how to put it back together.”
Despite iFixit’s growth and the cost of the bandwidth needed to funnel information to the company’s users, the repair manuals are still free. Instead of selling the information it compiles, iFixit peddles the parts and tools. This makes a strong distribution network a necessity.
iFixit’s reach presently extends from its San Luis Obispo, California headquarters to company-owned distribution centers in Germany and third-party facilities in Toronto and Sydney. But Wiens and Soules need an Eastern Seaboard distribution facility to close yawning gaps in their chain.
“We have to move parts quickly, but there are obstacles to doing that,” Wiens says. “We can’t ship batteries via air, for example. But shipping a battery from California to New York City via ground takes five days. So, we desperately need a tighter web of logistics.”
Enter Chattanooga.
Upon discovering the Scenic City during their search for a suitable home for an additional distribution center, Wiens and Soules took the 50-cent tour.
“We wanted to be in a city that was cool and dynamic and would attract employees,” Wiens explains. “We also wanted to be in an outdoor-friendly place. So, the first thing we did when we started scouting Chattanooga was buy mountain bikes and start riding the trails.”
As Wiens and Soules explored the city, they ate southern-fried chicken at Champy’s, visited green | spaces to learn about local sustainability efforts and enjoyed front row seats at a Chattanooga Football Club match.
When it was all said and done, Wiens and Soules decided they’d not only set up their new warehouse in Chattanooga but also establish a second base of operations in the city.
“We wanted to be in the most badass place we could find,” Wiens recalls, “and nothing came close to Chattanooga.”
Like other companies that have established operations in the badass capital of the South, iFixit could have purchased a plot of land and built the facility it needed from the ground up. But that would have rubbed painfully against the grain of the company’s ethos, says Wiens, so he and Soules bought an existing building, rolled up their proverbial sleeves and started to knock down walls.
“It would have been easy for us to do what Amazon and everyone else has done and put up a box by the airport. But that’s not who we want to be.”
Wiens knew he and Soules would need more than his soldering gun from college to whip their new purchase into shape. Located in the Onion Bottom neighborhood of downtown Chattanooga, the 70,000 square-foot facility at 812 E. 12th Street bumps up against a Norfolk-Southern rail line and the Chattanooga Community Kitchen – and could only charitably be called a fixer upper.
Which means it’s perfect for iFixit.
Some of the costlier upgrades have included a new roof, enough solar power panels (580 480-watt boards) to generate all the electricity the facility needs to operate, and a geothermal heat pump that will keep the warehouse cool in the summer and warm in the winter, Wiens says.
“We have 16 wells, each of which is buried 400 feet deep. The system pumps water underground, where heat is exchanged, and then pumps it back up. The result is a vastly more efficient heating and cooling system,” Wiens explains. “We’re doing everything we can to make this building a sustainable project. Our goal is to be 100% self-sufficient on Day One.”
Add in the countless smaller projects that will also help to turn the gutted Dixie Produce distribution facility – which previously sat empty for several decades – into a modern e-commerce hub, and the bill is “ginormous,” says Wiens. According to a 2022 iFixit announcement, the company will invest $24.2 million in the center before it begins operations this summer.
“It would’ve been easier to tear this building down and build a new one from the ground up, but those aren’t our values,” Wiens says. “We’re a repair company, so we wanted a structure that needed to be fixed, and we wanted to be in a part of town that needed rejuvenating.”
In a world in which tomorrow’s innovations becomes yesterday’s kitsch with dizzying speed, iFixit has fashioned a business model that has stood the test of two decades of growth, is fortifying a headquarters that can stand the company’s next test of time, and is pushing against tidal forces to create a less disposable society.
“Our mission is to enable everyone to fix their own things,” Wiens says. “It takes 250 pounds of raw materials to make an iPhone, and then we toss it in a drawer when it stops working. We want to change from a disposable society to one where things last for a long time.”
However, a joke older than Wiens’ iBook G3 chides the iFixit co-founder for brazenly believing he and Soules could disrupt a long-standing practice that manufacturers build into the very circuits and movable parts of every electronic device on the market: planned obsolescence.
Wiens isn’t listening.
“There used to be a joke about how your new laptop is out of date the moment you leave Best Buy. But that’s no longer the case,” Wiens submits. “A 5-year-old laptop is fine, and each new generation of tech is actually expanding. We’re at the point where you don’t need to replace your cellphone every two years.”
What consumers do need to do is swap the battery on their devices, Wiens adds.
“I believe most people can get by with a four-year cellphone replacement cycle. We hope to extend that even further.”
To ensure consumers have the ability to stretch the life span of their electronics, Wiens and Soules are leading an international movement known as “Right to Repair.”
Although it sounds like a war cry, it’s actually an active political crusade that’s uniting Republicans and Democrats in the pursuit of laws that will make fixing game consoles, refrigerators, farm equipment and more easier for users, says The New York Times in an article titled “ Fix or toss? The ‘Right to Repair’ movement gains ground.”
Wiens, who’s testified before Congress and the International Trade Commission, says Right to Repair laws are passing worldwide.
“Manufacturers have stopped selling repair parts, but Right to Repair laws say if you’re going to make a complex electronic product, you have to sell the parts, and you have to make the repair information available. So, Apple has started selling parts for iPhones.”
The Right to Repair movement has already benefited iFixit, which has the distribution network tech giants like Apple and Microsoft lack, Wiens notes.
“All of these electronics manufacturers are saying, ‘Oh, shit, we have to sell parts. How are we going to do that?’ Well, we have the logistics infrastructure they need.”
Samsung, Microsoft, Logitech and Google have already given the nod to iFixit, which is serving as a parts distributor for those companies. In some cases, the companies send the parts directly to iFixit; in others, iFixit manufactures the parts in Asia and then distributes them.
More companies will follow, Wiens predicts.
“We want to help people to step off the treadmill of continually having to buy new devices and return the balance of power back to consumers. Let us choose how long our devices will last.”
As Right to Repair gains momentum, Wiens expects the ensuing demand to create a need for 200 jobs at iFixit’s Chattanooga facility within the next five years, he says. He hopes individuals whose prospects might not look promising today will fill those positions tomorrow, he adds.
This part of the iFixit ethos isn’t limited to the Chattanooga facility, though. Rather, it can also be found in the global availability of information Wiens says will always be free.
“Back when iFixit was a college business, and we were thinking of making it our life’s work, Luke and I stepped back for a moment and asked, ‘What’s a problem in the world that maybe we can have a part in solving?’”
Wiens says an answer came to him as he toured garbage dumps in Africa and found children burning electronics to remove the copper, which they’d then sell.
“It was terribly toxic, and I wondered, ‘Can we give this kid a better job?’ As I spoke with internet cafes across Ghana, they said they Google the repair information they need. Ever since then, the mission of iFixit has been to release as many guides as possible online to hopefully create a repair economy – a grassroots economic growth engine that doesn’t just create jobs but also helps the environment.”
Charles Wood, president and CEO of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, says efforts like this make iFixit a welcome addition to the city.
“iFixit is a great cultural fit for Chattanooga, as their corporate values align with many of this city’s priorities, including a track record of innovation and environmental stewardship.”
Wiens agrees.
“iFixit is a mission driven company, and it was important to us to find a community that matches our values. We refuse to take ‘broken’ for an answer, and we’re proud to be in a city that does the same.”