Gadgets And Collectables' Shop Popular For Goods Recovery
Cavin Kanoko | Monday November 18, 2019 18:00
The company was founded by Tebogo Aaron, who started the business only focusing on the sales of electronic gadgets and the after sale services, which includes cellphone repairs about seven years ago.
The company currently has several business units, which are mobile-tracking, repairs, which is part of the after-sales support, sales of consumable electronics and smart home automations, a product they are looking into marketing more aggressively in the near-future.
The company has two branches being the main centre in Airport Junction Mall and another one in Phakalane, as the founding branch has since been closed down.
“We started focusing more on the tracking business in 2015 after our store in main mall was robbed of all the goods we had in stock,” he said.
According to Aaron, the stolen items included some of the customer devices, which he said was a very big drawback for the company, as they temporarily went out of business for a couple of months.
He said this was a wakeup call for them and it led to them having to restructure the company to bring more focus into mobile-tracking in order to avoid a repetition of their past experience where the clients’ devices were stolen and they could not get them back.
He said he engaged with some of the company’s suppliers from outside the country on the issue and he started working on the mobile-tracking product, which was put into use in March 2019.
Aaron said since they launched the product they have received a huge wave of Batswana who were bringing in cases of stolen phones, tablets and laptops that he said are the easily traceable things if the owner has the packaging in hand as they use IMEI tracking system.
He said they use the local carrier networks as a means to identify the current users of the devices and get the necessary information to locate the stolen gadgets of which the information can be presented to the police to follow up on the cases.
Mostly the users who are found in possession of the stolen goods are usually people who have acquired the devices from the actual culprits unaware of the fact that they are buying stolen goods.
Aaron said their success rate is very high as most of the people who have used their services have been able to get their devices back even though he said they usually have a problem with tracking laptops, which is why they have introduced a chip that can be inserted into laptops, televisions and many other compatible devices.
He said they are now working on sensitising Batswana on the product so that they can come to their store and have chips inserted into their devices for them to be easily traceable when stolen.
Another service that the company is planning to roll out is that of the licenses for software that can be installed into phones that enable the users to monitor their devices from any other devices that they can open the software from, and the licenses will be paid for on an annual basis.