Thursday, March 28, 2024

Wireless store coming to E.L.

September 4, 2001

Students might be expressing themselves with a new cellular phone store in East Lansing.

Cellular Express, 109 E. Grand River Ave., will open its doors Saturday.

Navid Ghavami, an 18-year-old Haslett resident, is the owner of the store and another in Okemos. Eventually he hopes to open one in Ann Arbor.

Ghavami said the store is the largest individually owned cellular store in the area.

The new store is a division of Unified Solutions, a direct wholesaler to distributors throughout the country, a company Ghavami started last year.

“Basically I can bypass the distributor and sell them $30 cheaper and it is the same,” he said.

The store will sell AT&T, Cingular Wireless, Verizon, Sprint, Voicestream Wireless and various prepaid services.

The idea behind buying direct from the wholesaler came to Ghavami while working in the mall. He said he noticed a cellular phone he liked and decided to go online and buy one similar to it. Eventually he began to get offers for others like it and then had an order for 200 of them.

With foot traffic and proximity to campus, Ghavami said his store should do well.

“There are always the new students and the students without cell phones,” he said. “Everyone is beginning to get one, wireless is turning into a trend almost.”

But offering lower prices than local distributors may cause other stores to lose customers.

Paul Goff, sales associate for Millennium Digital LLC, 611 E. Grand River Ave., said the store could cause some problems.

“It is going to definitely be not at good thing for us,” he said.

Millennium Digital carries Nextel products, which will not be a primary product at Wireless Express.

Ghavami said Nextel phones can be purchased in his store, but the focus will be on the other products.

Goff said Nextel has rules against its authorized dealers having store fronts within a certain distance of each other.

In order to avoid problems, Ghavami said he is selling Nextel indirectly.

“I am gong to carry some Nextel phones here, but I am going to activate it nationwide,” he said.

Goff said the store might find more success elsewhere.

“I think there is other places that are better, I know for a fact there are better places to put a store than there,” he said.

Megan McDonald, a business sophomore, said many students without cellular phones might need one.

“Mine is more convenient because it is cheaper for long distance calls,” she said.

The store, she said, might also be much more economically feasible.

“It might be more convenient for the student’s budget,” she said.

Discussion

Share and discuss “Wireless store coming to E.L.” on social media.