In the Carros industrial zone, a few kilometers from Nice, the Reborn company receives and repairs more than 650,000 products per year, the vast majority of which are iPhones. While the image of reconditioned products has taken a hit in recent years, Reborn wants to show its seriousness against Asian competitors.
New or reconditioned? Everyone has their preferences. From an environmental point of view, reconditioned products seem difficult to dethrone. It doesn’t have to be manufactured, which makes it much more responsible.
Despite this, many people are wary of refurbished products. It must be said that this solution is not always perfect, since not all reconditioned products are equal… Some players reintroduce modified products onto the market, with counterfeit parts. Others send smartphones that do not conform to the descriptions, sometimes without any repair… It is difficult to be surprised to see French people returning to new ones, even if it means paying more, in the hope of not being duped.
As in all sectors, there is good and bad reconditioned. In Carros, near Nice, the Reborn company is trying to restore the reputation of the sector with its devices repaired in France, then reinjected into large distribution networks (Fnac, Darty, Boulanger, Bouygues, etc.). Is this French reconditioning really rigorous? Numerama went to the site.
650,000 reconditioned products in 2023
Today, 120 people work for Reborn.
The company specializes in iPhone reconditioning, which is the product most demanded by consumers. Roger-David Lellouche (who has no connection with the author of this article), its founder, explains that he is targeting young people, who are looking for low prices and the societal recognition provided by Apple. 70% of its sales are iPhones, while the rest concerns Samsung and accessories, such as AirPods. Other brands do not interest people who purchase equipment on the second-hand market.
For Roger-David Lellouche, the repackaged has a bad press because of actors who don’t do their job seriously. “Marketplaces do not properly filter resellers. There is a quality problem and a VAT fraud problem”, he tells Numerama. Reborn, with its B2B approach (you can’t buy anything directly from it, you have to go through its partners), presents itself as a much more honest actor. “I don’t sell a second-hand product” indicates his boss, who sees the reconditioned as real quality work.
In 2023, Reborn returned 650,000 devices to the market, including 450,000 smartphones, 100,000 pairs of AirPods, iPads and Macs. It plans to double its surface area by 2026, with the intention of becoming the largest European reconditioner.
The process of refurbishing a smartphone
Every year, Reborn buys hundreds of thousands of smartphones, the vast majority of which are iPhones (on the day of our visit, there was not a single Samsung being repaired). The player obtains its supplies in particular from operators, who take back old devices, or recover company fleets.
The majority of the products he repairs come from the United States (60%), a market where people change their devices much more often. The other iPhones recovered come from Europe (20%) or Asia (20%), although Reborn deliberately excludes a few countries like China from its sources, since they are notorious for modifying devices with counterfeit parts .
When a product arrives at the Reborn factory, it goes through a very specific circuit:
- Reception : employees verify that the product is authentic, cleared and updated. They also make sure it is not stolen.
- Diagnostic : 54 checkpoints are checked by a human (Reborn says he doesn’t believe in automation), to ensure that microphones, speakers, cameras or contactless (NFC) work.
- Repairs: if necessary, Reborn changes the battery (capacity less than 85%), screen (too many scratches), charging port and USB cables. An employee repairs 50 smartphones per day.
- Aesthetic : an employee cleans the devices, treats the scratches and assigns them a grade, between A and D, which will determine its price. Reborn announces that it is a rule not to disguise damage; a scratched smartphone cannot be repainted.
- Conditioning : the product is packaged in a new box according to its grade, then distributed to the company’s partner resellers.
The morning Numerama arrived, 3,354 smartphones were being reconditioned. 15% of them will probably never be resold, because of too many problems (lies about storage, counterfeit part, faulty and non-replaceable component, etc.). “Transparency is essential in this profession” indicates Sylvain, the site director, who says he dreams of setting up a QR Code system so that the buyer can consult the Reborn report, on the 54 points controlled. According to him, “When a phone is too beautiful, we rely on a quick return to after-sales service. »
Parts not always authentic
The only downside is that Reborn is unable to obtain supplies from Apple, which sells replacement parts at too high a price for its business to be profitable. The company explains to Numerama that the replacement batteries and screens it puts in its products are compatible parts, but not authentic. The company swears that the quality is the same (it only replaces an OLED screen with an OLED screen for example, unlike some less reliable players), but is a victim of Apple’s error messages against unofficial parts. Behavior that Reborn judges “disloyal”since it tends to dissuade and frighten consumers.
Another activity of Reborn: designing loaner devices for its partners, while they repair a customer’s smartphone. The company also changes the tips of AirPods, and even the batteries (by sawing them), while this market is booming (with prices 30 to 50% cheaper).
According to Reborn, most customers who choose refurbished do so to pay less, even if the image of refurbished and the attractive promotions on new goods sometimes play tricks on them. One of its weaknesses is that many people do not know that refurbished iPhones are refurbished in France, which leads them to believe that they come from an opaque circuit without quality verification. A vision that the company is striving to change, also focusing on employment in France.
Subscribe for free to Artificielles, our newsletter on AI, designed by AIs, verified by Numerama!