Life without wires

Opening six new retail stores in a month's time is a lot even for seasoned franchisees, but that's what Steve Kawasmy has been doing to keep pace with the growth of his Fort Myers-based cell phone business, One Cellular Stop Inc.

Kawasmy, who holds dealership rights for most of the Aio Wireless territory from Bradenton to Naples, already has 29 stores open in the region, five in Miami and another three scheduled to open along the Gulf Coast in February. Although the 40-year-old Fort Myers resident declined to disclose revenues, although he says the business is profitable. He adds that he is investing millions in the new prepaid company with the expectation it can grab market share in the ever-competitive cell phone industry.

Kawasmy, a cell phone store owner since the late '90s, terminated a contract with MetroPCS on 19 stores in March to switch to the Aio Wireless prepaid phone company. Aio Wireless, a new brand less than a year old, is a subsidiary of AT&T. He transitioned 10 of those stores to the Aio Wireless brand and moved the other nine to higher-traffic locations before reopening them under the Aio brand.

Dan O'Berski and his Trinity Commercial Group were charged with finding 25 rental sites for the relocations and additional offices by July. That deadline and number of locations has since been expanded.

“This expansion was extremely unusual,” O'Berski says. “Fortunately, we have a great team and we divided it up among members of the company to identify the sites. We were looking for the competition, but we are more concerned with the quality of the location. If all the [other cell phone] brands are there, the draw is there.”
Finding the 1,200-square-foot retail space is just the start to opening a new store. The lease and location must be approved by Alpharetta, Ga.-based Aio Wireless corporate, and the store must be built-out to its standards.

In total, a new store costs an average of $100,000 (including $20,000 to 30,000 for construction and $60,000 for fixtures and computers), excluding the cost of merchandise. It takes an average of two months to open a store from the time the lease is signed.

Aio Wireless provides dealers with an undisclosed amount of money to help with the cost of the new store and staffing and leadership training. Each store has three to seven employees.

The speed to market was necessary, Kawasmy says, because he didn't want to miss out on Christmas shopping or the snowbird season. He also needed to keep up with Aio Wireless. As part of its nationwide rollout, the brand has grown from just one Florida store on May 9 to more than 150 stores in the state today.

Kawasmy says he chose to leave MetroPCS for Aio Wirelesss because he feels Aio's model is the future of the cell phone business. He sees the U.S. model moving more closely to the European cell phone market, where consumers buy their phones outright and then change their plan based on customer service and performance.

“It has the whole package,” he says. “You look at the network you have behind you, and we felt like we were in good hands.”

Aio Wireless is designed as a bridge between the prepaid and contract phone company model. It offers retail stores and more high-end cell phones, which are more common on the contract side, with three prepaid cellular service options.

Kawasmy isn't making the change all on his own. His older brother by a year and half, Alex, who entered the cell business with him more than a decade ago, is running his own Aio dealership covering Orlando and Jacksonville. Alex has 42 open locations and he jointly owns the Miami stores with Kawasmy.

“We're very close,” Kawasmy says. “As brothers we share some of the same ideas and have the same shared vision that we needed to grow this business and get it going.”

The two brothers got their start in business together after emigrating from Jordan. Kawasmy came to the United States in '94 to get his master's in accounting. Instead of graduating, he wound up buying a convenience store with his brother.

One day a door-to-door salesman offered to sell Kawasmy cell phones that he could resell in his store. They sold so well that Kawasmy and his brother decided to go into the retail cell phone businesses. Over the past 14 years, the two have sold for Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and Alltel.

After the three stores under development open, Kawasmy plans to take some time to digest the growth and look at tertiary Florida markets, such as Wauchula, Immokalee and LaBelle, for future expansion. He expects to have 60 locations open within a year.