Well, either you all are doing a much better job of protecting your smartphones or you never got the chance to discover St. Joe’s UBreakiFix shop in the Southtown neighborhood of St. Joseph. Regardless, if you break things now it’s going to have to be UBreakIt, UFixIt…because the shop is closing effective Friday and they have stopped taking new customers.
The retail repair shop based out of Orlando, Florida will cease to exist at the end of the business day on Friday, June 29th, and all customers who have devices in the shop for repair are being called to pick them up by then because the business is closing for good.
It turned out to be little more than a one year run for the franchise business which opened in June of 2017. At the time that it was coming onto the scene it was reported to be one of five that TCC of Carmel, Indiana was opening regionally. That’s the company that operates the Verizon store in the same shopping center on Niles Avenue next door to Pizza Hut. UBreakiFix took up residence in the former home of Verizon before they moved to larger quarters on the opposite end of the center, more than tripling their floor space to accommodate customer demand.
Apparently, that same level of customer demand was never achieved at the repair center alongside La Pita Restaurant, forcing the impending closure. In fact, Verizon reps say they were told by their own management to no longer send customers there for repairs because of the closing. Employees at UBreakiFix were just told of the shutdown yesterday, Tuesday, June 26th.
At its outset, the UBreakiFix center appeared to be the perfect enhancement to Verizon’s operations, since they sell the sort of products that sometimes end up in need of emergency repairs. UBreakiFix is a franchise business started nine years ago that ballooned rapidly into a network of 313 locations in the U.S. and Canada, now about to be one less in the open for business column.
A paper sign in the window is direct and to the point, reading:
“Store closing on Friday 6/29. If you are here for a PICKUP ONLY, please knock. We are no longer accepting new customers at this time.”
Property owner Dave Slavicek says that while the shop still had 22 months on its lease, he made arrangements to allow the early exit for the failing venture.
That means that the 2,520 square foot shop will be back on the market soon for interested parties who would like to capitalize on that high traffic location. Slavicek is using Joe Giannola to handle arrangements for those with an interest in leasing the space, and interested parties can contact Giannola at 982-1553.
Meanwhile, the news isn’t all bad for Slavicek who just celebrated acquiring a deal for an independent coffee shop coming to that shopping center to take the previously last available space there between All Eyes and Little Caesar’s Pizza. Stayed tuned for more that venture coming soon.
