By Matt Roush

Two recent Western Michigan University graduates are growing a Kalamazoo electronics repair company they estimate has kept 10,000 pounds of electronic waste out of landfills last year alone.

Aaron Vronko and Ben Levy opened their business as iPod Mods in March 2004, around the time of the introduction of the third-generation iPod — the one that really took off, Vronko said.

And so did their business.

“Initially we were repairing a few iPods, but the business really started with this idea of ‘Hey, we can take iPods and replace the LEDs that create the backlight, and make them look a lot cooler,” Vronko said.

That is, rather than just boring old white light, the iPod screens could be backlit by a rainbow of possible colors.

But within about six months, Vronko said the emphasis of the business shifted to repair.

“We discovered that as much as people liked to have their iPods quote-unquote pimped out, they really wanted them to be working,” Vronko said.

Since then, Rapid Repair has added repair of other music players, including the Microsoft Zune, and repair of video game consoles to its roster of services. And last year the company changed its name to the more generic Rapid Repair, at
www.rapidrepair.com.

Today the company stocks and supports iPods, iPhones and the Zune, and repairs PDAs, Sony PSPs, and the Sony PS2 and Microsoft Xbox and Xbox360 game consoles. Vronko said the company plans to start servicing Sony PS3s and Nintento Wiis once those units get old enough to begin needing repair.

The company now has 15 employees in its offices on West Main Street in Kalamazoo.

Vronko and Levy met in 2001 while they worked in the IT department of what today is Pfizer Inc. in Kalamazoo. Both have since graduated, Vronko with a business management degree and Levy with an information systems degree.

The company does most of its music player business by mail, and game consoles mostly for its local market.

“A lot of people don’t want to send (iPods) in because they’re worried it will be a big hassle or very expensive,” Vronko said. “But 85 percent of the iPods we repaired last year were below $90.”

The average repair time is about a week from door to door.

The most common repairs are battery or screen replacement. Water damage is another big problem. In that case, the absolute worst thing to do is to try to turn on a wet iPod, because that just does more damage.

“What we tell people is that if you get it wet you should either take it apart yourself if you can and clean it out with solvent or send it in right away before the water corrodes all the connectors,” Vronko said.

The favorite repair story on Rapid Repair’s message boards? An iPhone left in the company of an infant and left inoperable by baby drool. Its owner opened up the unit, cleaned it out with solvent, and baked it for a few hours in an oven at 160
degrees.

“Miraculously it worked after that,” Vronko said. “But I think you should probably leave the baking for food.”

Items that can’t be repaired, Vronko said, are recycled in an environmentally responsible manner.

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