Korean Job Discussion Forums

[red_devil]

Considering the lack of computer repair shops and amount of people that need repairs...has no one thought about starting a business for computer repair/upgrade for expats? It'd be easy enough to hook up with one of those hardware supply vendors for replacement parts...

[eamo]

I've thought about it but gave up the idea for a few reasons.....

There's not much money in it unless you rip people off. Putting a new HDD in a laptop and then installing an OS is going to take roughly an hour. To have a profitable hour you would need to charge, what, 70,000? More? Would people pay that?

There are a couple of guys already doing this for expats in the Seoul area. I don't know if the small expat scene can support more computer engineers.

Building a good system with Korean prices might produce conflict. People can easily go to Newegg.com and wonder why you are charging roughly 20% more for parts than in the USA. That would need explaining.

If I could get a nice low-rent shop in an expat-heavy area then I'd love to give it a go........I don't think there would be much to lose if it failed. The set-up costs would be very small.....

....mmmmm.....got me thinking again!!!

[archmagos]

Slightly off topic, but I've often given some thought to advertising a networking service aimed at foreigners (eg help setup my wifi, voip, media NAS etc).

I know most people are probably just interested in getting the basics working, so I may just content myself with getting experience doing it for free.

As for hardware - yeah, it'd be a hard sell (although commodity hardware businesses are cutthroat in any part of the world owing to the extremely low margins).

[sheriffadam]

I don't think you'd even need a shop. Just run it from home and advertise like hell online?

Those Korean shops you see just get piled up with old junk anyway. Shit, most of them are more like museums!

Laptop recovery's, ram upgrades, screen repairs, might eek out a few quid. For instance: screen for laptop in Korea, 180,000 bought from eBay UK 70,000

Get a bit of a second hand sideline going to from the people coming and going? Of course that means scouring craigslist and then just adding 10% to the price after you format+reinstall, have to have thick skin to do that!

[hallazgo]

Computers/parts are very low margin these days. One must do lots of business to make any money on hardware. If you want to make your money on service, you have to compete with Koreans who do it for far less and you therefore have to differentiate yourself with extras of some kind.

I like dorking with computers and have fixed many of my friend's (and their friends') computers. But I don't think there's enough business out there just dealing with expats.