The French group has obtained official approval from Apple for repairs and access to the brand’s spare parts.
The general manager of Fnac Darty announces Sunday in the columns of the Sunday newspaper an exclusive partnership between his group and the American firm Apple in the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch repair market. “From tomorrow, we will be the major local third-party repairer, approved by Apple in France.“, explains Enrique Martinez in an interview. “We now have official Apple approval for repairs and access to Apple spare parts“, he continues.
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This new service will rely on the network of WeFix smartphone repair stores, in which Fnac Darty invested in 2018 to meet its commitment to “repairability” some products. The employees of this start-up founded in 2012 “will be trained in the know-how and use of Apple tools“, explains the leader to the weekly. Wefix has its own shops but is also accessible in Fnac and Darty stores. Its number of points of sale, of around 150 today, will be set to double.in the years to come“says the general manager.
However, it will be necessary to wait until June for Wefix to be officially approved as an Apple service center, specifies Mr. Martinez. The manager took the opportunity to take stock of the increase in the number of products repaired each year by Fnac Darty: it went from 1.7 million before the health crisis to more than 2 million and 2.5 million “in two to three years“.
The Fnac Darty group crossed the 8 billion euro turnover mark in 2021 (+7.4%), with a very sharp increase in net profit to 160 million euros, driven by its sales online and consumer appetite for high-tech equipment as well as comics and manga.