Everyone wins when consumer’s fix and do not discard non-working cameras or camcorders. Consumers can save from $30 to hundreds of dollars with the repair/replace decision. Retailers who use Precision Camera’s services, often see their gross margins double vs. what they make on selling a new camera. And, the process is Green. The CO2 saved on a years’ worth of Precision Camera repairs, is equivalent to removing 1,000 SUV’s off the street. As they say on SNL, REALLY!
Precision Camera’s recent Rethink Repair ™ environmental impact study found that repairing a single camera consumed 15% of the resources of a replacement camera. Two Clark University PhD candidates were commissioned to conduct a lifecycle assessment of consumers’ repair vs. replace decisions. The lifecycle assessment/LCA methodology utilized SimaPro7, the world’s most popular environmental impact database.
First, the money saving: Fixing a 3 year old, 10 megapixel camera is $360 less than buying a $600 replacement. It conserves enough energy to POWER A LAPTOP COMPUTER for a YEAR! Proportional benefits occur on $100-150 point and shoot cameras. Since the old camera is not discarded and new metal, glass and plastic parts are not created and transported, only 1/7th of the environmental resources are used.
With Precision Camera’s campuses employing more technicians than the next 3 competitors combined, it has highly specialized capabilities. Broken lenses can be disassembled, repaired and then calibrated to original factory specifications. Replacing individual components on malfunctioning circuit boards reduces the need for expensive, scarce resource consuming, new assemblies, transported from the Far East. With Precision’s processes, air, surface water and top soil emissions are cut. “Human” pollutants like carcinogens, radiation and Ozone Layer damage drop 85 percent.
Consultant to Precision Camera, Roger Heuberger adds: “Just as a retailer merchandising includes accessory sales to bolster low new camera margins; the 30-40% repair margin opportunity should be included too. With no inventory carry cost and those margins, retailers can incentivize their floor to offer repair to their recession weary shoppers.”
