Inside Indiana Business:
ANGOLA, Ind. – In 2012, Kyle Wainwright broke his flip phone.
Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars for a new phone, he ordered a cheap part online for $10 and figured out how to fix it.
That turned into fixing his friends’ phones and later into a phone repair business where he repaired 400 to 500 iPods a week. He later sold that business, which has 18 locations under the name Genius Computer and Phone Repair.
He’s now the founder and CEO of a growing technology company that doesn’t produce new products but rather makes them last longer. Angola-based Refreshed Tech is a buy-back company that purchases aged and well-loved computers, phones and the like in bulk to then refurbish and put back in the market.
The company celebrated its first year in business in August with strong financials. Refreshed Tech had $11.6 million in revenue with $4 million of that being made by the end of 2022. The company has hired 53 employees, and Wainwright said two more were hired the day he spoke with Inside INdiana Business. He said he expects to add another 20 people to the team by the end of the year.