Our story
I used to fly to Shenzhento fix my phone.
How a cracked iPhone, a broken MacBook and a few trips to Huaqiangbei turned into Tinylab.
01The quote
Two broken things.One painful quote.
It started the usual way. My iPhone screen cracked, then my M1 MacBook Air screen went too. So I did what everyone does and took them round the shops in KL.
And that was before the iPhone.
02Huaqiangbei
So I wentto the source.
Huaqiangbei (华强北) in Shenzhen is the biggest electronics market I’ve ever walked through.
Floor after floor of tiny stalls. Screens stacked in trays, batteries by the box, technicians fixing phones on the counter while you wait. And the parts were cheap. Not a little cheaper. Properly cheap.
Most of the parts in Malaysian repair shops come from here anyway, through a chain of middlemen. Today we buy direct from the same Shenzhen suppliers, without the middlemen.
03The flight home
The whole trip costabout one repair.
Flights, a hotel, good food, a few days away, and both devices fixed for a few hundred ringgit.
On the plane home I added it up. I’d spent about the same as a single repair quote in KL, and I’d had a holiday. That’s when it clicked.
The parts aren’t expensive. The rent, the renovation and the big team are.
04Tinylab
So I builtsomething tiny.
Tinylab is lots of small labs instead of one big shop. Upstairs shoplots and partner labs, not prime ground-floor rent, no expensive renovation, no big team.
We do the repairs people need most, iPhone, iPad and MacBook screens and batteries, and we do them well. Whatever we save on rent and overheads goes back to you as a lower price.
Tiny labs, not big shops.
Free drop-off at a Tinylab lab or partner point, Lalamove pickup and return, or post it to us.
Lowest price. Honest parts.
You choose the part and we tell you exactly what it is. Same part, lower written quote elsewhere? We’ll beat it.
We never ask for your passcode.
Screens and batteries are fixed with your device locked. You check everything yourself when you pick it up.
3–6 month warranty.
On every part we fit. Anything we need to tell you, like Apple’s Unknown Part message, we tell you upfront.
05Fix it, don’t bin it
Fix it,don’t bin it.
A cracked screen or a tired battery shouldn’t be the end of a phone, a tablet or a laptop.
Fixing what you already own means one less device in the dustbin and less e-waste. It also means you don’t have to find the money for a new one. Life is expensive enough.
- Reuse what works.
- Replace what’s broken.
- Bin less.
06Our goal
What we’rereally building.
In Malaysia, young people have to leave orphanages at 18, often with nowhere to go.
Our goal is to train them before they turn 18, so the day they leave, they already have a skill and a business: the training, the tools, the parts and the customers. A real business, with systems behind it.
We’re not there yet. We’re building Tinylab as a social enterprise so that we can be, and not only for them: single mums and young people starting out are just as welcome to run a Tinylab lab.
That’s the storyso far.
If your screen or battery needs fixing, I’d like to show you what it should really cost. The price is upfront, you choose the part and we tell you exactly what it is, and we never ask for your passcode. If someone quotes you less in writing for the same part, we’ll beat it.
— Max, founder