New Geek Cabin Premises Open In City – Steven Hewitt and Chris Baker founded Geek Cabin in 2019 with the intention of providing a cost-effective mobile PC and electronics repair service.
Solving Daily Problems
Chris had been repairing electronics for years and Steve had just left Micro-Plus Computers after running the shop for years, then running the in-house engineering there too. Steve was there for around 10 years and loved working with customers and solving their daily problems.
They especially wanted to provide support without ever making someone feel stupid for not knowing something. It was their job to answer these questions – who should the customers ask if they can’t ask the experts?
Working in a small room at home, they set up their first “workshop” and tooled up to repair fairly specialist things like soldering HDMI ports and PC hardware/software issues. Things took off a bit, and they soon started thinking about expanding.
They’d found a lovely little shop in Wrexham town centre and were about to sign when the world got sick, and they needed a change of plan!
A Much Larger Space
Covid put a stop to the idea of a new shop, but it opened up the option of expanding into a much larger space with much bigger work desks to do more jobs and keep items isolated, expanding their collect-and-return service with sealed tubs and plenty of PPE, so they went to work by advertising heavily on Facebook.
This worked well, and they were busier than ever all the way through the lockdown, fixing people’s items while the other shops were closed. Things were starting to look good!
The end of the lockdown in 2021 changed everything – no one wanted to sit indoors to wait for someone when they could finally be outside. They had pre-empted a drop in business, but they pretty much ran out of jobs in a few days, so they needed a new plan quickly.
A New Plan
The new plan was very similar to the old plan, so they started looking for a new shop or workshop people could visit. This was far harder than expected, but with a huge amount of help from the amazing Ruth Rees (of Martin Rees Jewellers), they managed to get their first little shop in Wrexham on Chester Street.
Money was tight, but they managed to pull enough together to get the workshop built, with the idea they would still be mainly a repair shop that also sold PCs. The shop featured only a small trade counter style layout, giving them as much room to work as possible in such a small space.
They actually lost a bit of space compared to the previous place but gained a shop counter, and they were in the middle of Wrexham now so this was a win.
Chris did a huge amount of work demolishing the insides. It had previously been a Thai massage parlour, so there were all sorts of colours to paint it over and multiple false walls to remove it. Quite the mission!
Chameleon Design
Steve says, “Building this shop was made far easier with the help of Chameleon Design, who designed the whole space and dealt with finding the parts to buy. I have no idea how we’d have managed otherwise!”
Karl even came down with a pile of Steve’s mates to help build it all on one of the hottest days of the year!
A lot of the old computer shops had actually not re-opened, and some had vanished altogether, so they started to build up some regular items of stock for people that they couldn’t get elsewhere. Following on from their original goal of offering reasonably priced repairs, the same philosophy went into items for sale.
Busier And Busier
Things kept getting busier and busier, and new suppliers became interested in them as they were starting to order heavily now, giving them even more product line options. To say the old shop was cramped by the end would be an understatement!
They’d always wanted gaming PCs to be their main attraction as they’re both quite experienced builders, so they started off with a second-hand PC tower, then two second-hand towers and then did their first “stock build“.
All new parts, great for home office, and cheap for what you got. This proved popular, so they added their first gaming pc for around £700. The PC sold OK, but it led to far more people asking for a PC built to their spec or price that looked like it.
After a while, they managed to build up to a range of six towers ranging from around £400 for home users and around £1,800 for the big gamers, with models in between, a few hundred apart.
A More Solid Product
Their PCs gained a reputation for being reliable and fast. Other companies sometimes scrimp on parts and it’s easy to make an extra £30 on £400, even though this affected the performance. However, the guys knew what they trusted from so many years of using and selling them and they decided they would rather put out a more solid product.
It seems to work well, so they don’t plan to change that anytime soon. Custom-built towers are now one of their specialities, and they’ve built towers for more than £3,500, so they can cater for any budget.
Insane Money
They decided to look for a new shop about nine months ago, but estate agents had let them down, and the landlords wanted insane money for shops in very poor condition. Finding the space they needed without leaving the (now) city centre was surprisingly difficult!
They finally signed off on their current shop at Saint George’s Crescent in mid-2024. It used to be a Subway, so it needed a huge amount of work to make it suitable while still operating the other shop as usual.
Plenty of 12-to-15-hour days for the next few months meant they gutted the whole place, the rear wall removed, a new one put in, an all-new suspended ceiling, electricals, then a workshop and retail desks. Somehow they managed to use 2½ x 305 metre boxes of ethernet cable! It took ages, to say the least!
After a massive snowstorm hit the area and pretty much closed everywhere, they decided to take advantage of the break and move everything. Two wild days of running back and forth without actually closing was again very challenging, but somehow, they managed it and completed their first few days in the new place around late December 2024.
Special Mentions
Steve says, “Hopefully, we’ll still be here in 10 years, helping anyone and everyone. Advice is always free – if you can’t ask us, we’re doing something wrong!
Special mentions to Carys Hewitt: none of what we’ve managed would have been possible without her support. Karl Davies: the skills this man possesses should be fabled; from design and ordering to building – legend doesn’t fit the bill. Tom Norman was like a Duracell bunny with a nail gun and tape measure in hand, the weight of their new store build on his shoulders has been heavy! A truly superb joiner/shopfitter that I just cannot recommend enough.
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