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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

TV repair industry getting lonelier

By Steve Gravelle
The Gazette

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Television repairman Don Dunkel checks a circuit board at his shop, Darrel's Video City, in Marion, Iowa. Dunkel also is a Sony retailer.

JIM SLOSIAREK | Gazette

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MARION, Iowa — Instead of an automated voice assuring you of the importance of your call, which may be answered within 20 minutes, a human answers the phone at Darrel's Video City.

"A blue line running up through the middle of the picture?" Dee Dunkel asked a caller one recent afternoon. "Let's eliminate the box. Put a VCR tape in, play the tape, and see if it's still there. Let's just try to do a process of elimination first."

It's the kind of personal service that keeps independent shops like Darrel's in business, even as their numbers dwindle.

"We are Mom and Pop, and we have a lot of word of mouth," Don Dunkel, Dee's husband, said. "I get 'em from all over. Everybody wants to sell them, but nobody wants to fix them."

While the 1967 directory for the greater Cedar Rapids area had 22 business listings under "Radio and Television Repairing" or "Radio and Television Sets — Sales and Service," the 1987 edition had just six.

The category doesn't even exist in the current city directory. The Cedar Rapids phone book has four listings, including Darrel's, under "Television — Parts & Service."

In 1985, 40,000 independent electronic repair shops operated nationwide, according to the Professional Service Association, the industry's trade group. At the end of last year, there were 6,441.

"It's really a sad state of affairs," said Ron Sawyer, the association's executive director. "We're watching the death of an industry."

"We are a dying breed," said Kathy Martens, who with her husband, Richard, owns and operates Ed's Radio & TV in Williamsburg.

"It's like a dying art," said Janet Minnaert, who answers the phone at Tranmer's TV Sales & Service in northwest Cedar Rapids while husband Jack works his day job at Cargill. Even if the parts can be found — and they usually can't — only the most minor repairs to today's cheap Asian brands are economically justifiable.

"TV manufacturers, I will admit, don't want them to last as long," said Dee Dunkel.

"We don't even want to look at most of the China brands because there's no way to fix them," Martens said. "There's a lot of people who feel that way — they're going to buy something cheap and throw it away."

So independents like the Dunkels and the Martens supplement what used to be their basic business with warranty work done under contract to upper-end makers and through their own sales niche.

"Sales are the icing on the cake," said Don Dunkel, a Sony retailer. Without a sales franchise, a customer who learns his set can't be repaired "leaves your store to go buy a TV someplace else. We've got to have the TVs here. I'm never going to put Best Buy out of business, but if they bring their TV in from Best Buy, I might sell them one."

Don Dunkel, 49, learned electronics as a communications chief for his Army infantry unit, trained under the GI Bill after his discharge, and went to work for Darrel Oldenburger. He and Dee, 44, kept the business name when they bought it from Oldenburger in 1998.

"It's a different world," he said. "I don't want $200, $300 TVs in for repair. I want the big ones."

Sawyer said expensive big-screen TVs may indeed bring in business as they age — if they don't become too inexpensive too quickly.

"There's also a lot of people, guys mostly, who take pride in their large-screen TVs," said Martens. "They're looking for some integrity."

Sawyer expects most independent repair shops to stay in business until their owners retire, but no new generation is waiting to take over.

"You can still find TV repairmen," he said. "You may have to look a little bit, but the smaller the town the more difficult it is to find one."

Said Kathy Martens, who's in her 50s: "We'd love to be able to sell our business, but everybody wants to be an engineer these days. Nobody wants to be the Maytag repairman."