Lisa Reisman Photo
Patricia Perez and her daughter Ana pushed through the door of the unassuming storefront on 254 Grand Ave.
“Long time no see,” Musa Ugurlu greeted them, standing behind the counter in the tidy, brightly lit space. “How’s everything?”
Patricia and Ana were in the market for an iPhone as a birthday present for a nephew, they told Ugurlu. Ana, 17, got her first phone at the shop about three years ago. Since then, they moved to East Haven.
“It’s not that far, and I like the place,” Patricia said. “If we need service, we come back here.”
Roughly 12 minutes after Patricia and Ana entered, Ugurlu handed them a phone, newly activated with a new service and new number.
“Good luck with school,” Ugurlu called to Ana as they left.
Ugurlu, who is 40, sells and repairs multiple brands of cell phones; that’s evident from the exterior. The name of the shop — Turq Cell — is not evident. There’s no sign.
“He doesn’t need one,” observed Lee Cruz, a longtime resident of Fair Haven’s Chatham Square area. “Everyone in the neighborhood knows he’s the tech guy.”
In between helping customers, Ugurlu recounted the story of how he came to open the store, and the philosophy that has propelled its success.
In 2004, Ugurlu came from Turkey to study mass communications and journalism at the University of Bridgeport. While on hiatus from pursuing a master’s degree in global development, he went into partnership with friends who owned Pizza by Romano’s on Ferry Street.
“I didn’t know much about the food business, and I’d been doing cell phone repairs at Crystal Mall in Waterford to pay the bills, So I told my partners, ‘I’m more with electronics. Let’s open up a store here,’” he recalled. (He eventually bought out his partners.)
He set up shop in 2008 across the street with “a couple of tables and a small display” and without a grand opening or advertising blitz. “Always my way to get customers was helping them, and when they were happy with my service, they came back,” he said.
If someone wanted to buy a phone and didn’t have good credit, Ugurlu offered them the option of more affordable prepaid plans as opposed to being locked into a contract.
If someone came to him with a cracked screen, he fixed it “at a fraction of the regular cost,” he said. He repaired phones that were constantly crashing or responding slowly. He helped customers transfer data from one phone to another, even remember their passwords.
“A lot of people, especially older people, they have no idea how to use a smart phone. They don’t even know their passwords,” he said. “I invented a way to create a secure password with their information, so if they come back, say, five years later, I’ll ask them a couple of questions, and I can tell them what it is.”
Musa Ugurlu: Working within people’s budgets pays off.
Sometimes a phone might stump him. “Then I’ll say, ‘If I fix it, you pay me. If I don’t, you don’t owe me anything,’” he said. “Maybe I learn how they made it, and I can use that information in the future.”
That fascination with “backwards engineering,” as he called it, has been with Ugurlu since he was a kid. He recalled opening the color television when he was 8 or 9, then taking apart the family dishwasher.
“Always my father was supportive,” he said with a smile. “But he did say, ‘OK, let’s put it back together, son.’”
At that moment, a man came in. He showed Ugurlu his phone. The screen was shattered. There was a dent in the body.
Ugurlu started to speak in English. The man shook his head. Only Spanish, he said.
Ugurlu brought up a translator app on his phone and told the man he probably needed a new device. But if he found the same brand and make, Ugurlu might be able to use those parts.
The man nodded. “I’ll be back,” he said.
“Since I am interested in all kinds of electronics. I have a lot of accessories like transfer cables and smaller parts for every kind of device,” he said.
His repairs go beyond cell phones. “If someone comes here with a problem, anything, their small DVD player doesn’t work, their camera, I will try to help,” he said.
He’s not averse to servicing computers suffering from water damage or stuck keys or general unresponsiveness.
For issues with hard drives, he encourages customers to buy a new or refurbished one and come back. “I’ll just charge for the labor, and that’s a lot less expensive,” he said.
“A neighborhood like this, people have a certain amount of money that they can spare, so this all helps,” he said. “You have to give value to your customers as much as they give it to you, so they come back and that keeps me staying open.”
A woman came in. She paid her phone bill and left.
“I have a lot of Ecuadoran, Guatemalan, Mexican customers. They don’t have bank accounts or credit cards. They don’t have a way to pay online,” he said.
“They come here and I help them fill out their food stamp application, or weekly child care schedule, or print something.”
“I don’t advertise any of this, but if they get a letter they can’t understand, they come to me and ask me what does this mean,” he continued. Sometimes he can help. For legal matters, he routinely calls on John Lugo, the immigrant rights activist and founder of Unidad Latina en Accion, for backup.
During the pandemic, mobile phone repair was considered an essential service. Turq Cell was one of the only businesses open on the block for months.
That was fine with Ugurlu.
“There’s a personal satisfaction in working here, so much so that it doesn’t feel like work,” he said. “Every day I come here, I’m looking forward to something interesting to come my way so I can work on it, fix it, and along the way, I’m making a living.
“And if I can do little things for the community along the way, you can’t put a price on that.”
