Cell Phone Service and Repair Center Reaches Black and Hispanic Communities

Clear Choice Mobile Cell Phone Service and Repair Center, 866 Haywood Road in Asheville.  Photo: Urban News

From staff reports

There’s a new business in Asheville – West Asheville, to be precise. This spring Lennie Dukes opened Clear Choice Mobile Cell Phone Service and Repair center at 866 Haywood Road, and it has already become a valued community resource, filling several needs in communities with few resources and limited access to credit.

How did a psychology major from Winston-Salem State U., Class of 2006, get into the cell phone business? Dukes grew up in Youngstown, OH, and he deliberately chose to attend a historically black college and to make a career in the south. The son, grandson, and nephew of ministers, he sees divinity school in his long-term future. “I plan to do theology studies later on. It’s part of my calling,” he says. But for now he’s making a life as an entrepreneur.

Dukes began his career in Atlanta. “For my first years out of
college I did guerilla marketing for Warner Brothers Music Group,” he
says, “but as the economy turned sour last year, it became clear that I
couldn’t rely on project-based contracts to bring in steady income. So
I began thinking about new career directions.”

He recognized that in a recession, as people search for jobs,
arrange interviews, or work part-time in several locations, they need
their cell phones more than ever. “And when they fall behind on their
bills,” he adds, “they go for prepaid services instead of a contract.
Prepaid costs more per minute and lacks a lot of the other services
that people want – they’re basically minutes only.”

By switching from prepaid phones to a month-to-month contract
using a Mobil Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), cell users save money
and have a full range of cell services available. The MVNO works
simply: a vendor like Clear Choice buys time in bulk from a wireless
network (Verizon) and resells it in small monthly quantities, just like
the major providers but without the demands of a multi-year contract.
“Everybody wins,” says Dukes.

Dukes’s decision to enter the mobile phone business was made
easier by the fact that the Atlanta realty market was crashing as well.
Nothing was selling, so Dukes and a friend with real estate investments
decided to set up shop as a repair and MVNO dealer. The business took
off, and after six months or so, for lifestyle as well as business
reasons, Dukes decided to head to Asheville to open a second store.

Lennie Dukes, owner Clear Choice Mobile Cell Phone Service and Repair Center. Photo: Urban News

Hispanic Community Underserved

One of Dukes’s aims is to provide reliable service to the
Hispanic community, which is underserved for a variety of reasons. Many
Latino immigrants lack access to credit, making them ineligible for the
long-term contracts offered by major cellular services. Instead, they
buy a phone and a set number of minutes in advance, often at a cost of
$30 or $40 per week. Since none of the area’s cellular stores is
Hispanic-owned, and few have Spanish-speaking personnel, his two
Hispanic sales representatives, Armando Nieto and Francisco Perez, are
mainstays of the business.

Dukes is also using his marketing background to inform Latinos
of his service. He plans to host social events to educate the community
and promote his services. “In the long run I want to offer a cell phone
service where the whole service, the menu, the sales and programming,
everything is in Spanish. For now,” he notes, “a lot of the tiendas
[small Spanish markets] sell prepaid phone cards, and some sell the
phones, but there’s no full-service option out there.”

He envisions not only a Spanish-language service using his MVNO
contracts, but additional brokers who can activate the service, write
contracts, and accept bill payments.

Segments of the black community are also underserved, especially
those who haven’t built the kind of credit histories demanded by major
phone-service companies. “They’re buying prepaid, too,” says Dukes,
“and it’s much more cost-effective, and you get better service, with an
MVNO contract.”

Products as Well as Services
The other aspect of Dukes’ business is repair and sales of the
phones themselves. Like any major phone service provider, Clear Choice
has a wide range of phones available, from new, expensive I-Phones to
very affordable used handsets. And that, too, is a service that offers
good business in a recession by giving customers a useful, valuable
choice. The process is no different than the options that have long
been available for cars: buy new, buy used, trade in, lease long-term,
or rent short-term.

Here’s a Case in Point:
A few months ago this reporter put his AT&T phone through the
washing machine. Whoops! The very nice folks at the AT&T phone
center said, A) they almost certainly couldn’t repair it; B) they
possibly could retrieve the data from the SIM card; C) I could buy a
new phone for $100+ (minimum) and then probably move the data from the
old one to the new one.

Or… and this was the good news… I could “take it to the repair
shop a mile or so up Haywood Road and the guy there can probably fix
it.”
When I did so, Lennie Dukes offered me several options, all good:
repair the phone, if possible; remove and retrieve the SIM card and
transfer the data; or keep the card and put it in a different, similar
phone, which I could buy as a “trade-in” for my sparkling clean, but
useless, older phone. I chose the last option, buying a used Motorola
Razr V3, formatted for my AT&T service and with my SIM card data
uploaded, for a total of $60. Clear Choice got the old phone, which a
technician was able to rebuild and repair and, later, resell.

He profits, I save, and what could be a more American story than that?   

Clear Choice Mobile Cell Phone Service and Repair Center is
located at 866 Haywood Road in West Asheville. (828) 505-4200. Lennie
Dukes can be reached at [email protected].