Way back in 2013, a team of 3 friends, Alex, Bruno and Hamza set out to make premium smartphones more affordable for Canadians. We saw smartphones becoming more and more essential to our daily lives, but even back in 2013, a new phone was really expensive and we thought there has to be a better way…
(And no, it’s not your imagination, they have gotten more expensive.)
Bridging the Gap
Despite the increasing cost, millions of Canadians upgrade to a new phone every year. Often, their old phone is in perfect working condition, but doesn’t find its way to a new owner. At the same time, there are plenty of people out there who want to enjoy all of the great features and durability offered by premium smartphones, but are perfectly happy with a 1 or 2-year-old phone. There are two things stopping these two groups of people from working together: trust and complexity. We built Orchard as a bridge between those early upgraders and people happy one or two generations behind:
For people selling their phone, our offers are higher than anywhere else, while also making selling as easy as answering a few questions and dropping your phone in the mail (with our prepaid shipping label).
Our buyers get the affordability of a used device and the assurance of buying a phone thoroughly tested by our technicians to confirm that it is in perfect working order. Should anything go wrong (or you need some help getting set up) there is someone to call and a 90-day no-questions-asked warranty.
By offering sellers a fair price for a gently used phone, and making buying a preowned phone an attractive alternative to a new device, we bring down the cost of wireless for everyone.
But Orchard isn’t just about affordability – we also have serious environmental bona fides. Think of us as a giant smartphone recycling operation: so far we’ve kept more than 100,000 phones out of the landfill.
Because we want to help establish the standard for the used electronics industry, we got our R2 certification, which is a third-party audit of our facility to ensure that:
We also partnered with Environmental Defence Canada for our 2023 Giving Tuesday pledge, providing customers with a more sustainable Black Friday spending option.
