Profile of iFixit, a company that sells repair parts and tools with $21M in sales last year, and whose site offers 25K repair manuals covering over 7K devices
David Whitford / Inc.com :
Context & Ripple Effects
This Inc.com profile lands mid-arc in iFixit's slow climb from scrappy DIY publisher to the industry's default repair infrastructure. An earlier Motherboard profile in 2015 framed the company as the last line of defense for repairing modern electronics; by this piece it has $21M in sales and 25K manuals spanning over 7K devices — a catalog no single OEM maintains.
What makes the profile worth revisiting is how OEMs subsequently treated that catalog as an asset rather than a threat: Motorola shipped official-parts DIY repair kits through iFixit, Microsoft routed approved independent repairers' Surface tool purchases through iFixit.com, and Apple — long repair's most closed player — launched Self Service Repair with published manuals and parts sales.
First-order effects
- iFixit's manual-and-parts catalog becomes distribution infrastructure for OEMs themselves: Motorola's $40-$200 official kits and Microsoft's Surface service tools now reach buyers through iFixit.com rather than proprietary channels.
Second-order effects
- Apple's Self Service Repair program, announced in late 2021 and live in the US by April 2022 for iPhone SE and iPhone 12/13 lineups, validates the exact model iFixit proved — forcing the question of whether Apple's program competes with or feeds iFixit's traffic.
Third-order effects
- If OEMs keep conceding that customers will repair with or without them, the durable position belongs to whoever owns the cross-vendor knowledge base — iFixit's 25K-manual library is the moat, and warranty terms like Motorola's void-on-faulty-repair clause show OEMs still control the legal perimeter around it.
The trend: Electronics repair is shifting from a fringe DIY movement into OEM-sanctioned commerce, with iFixit positioned as the neutral intermediary both sides need.