Care for what you have.
Partners
Our forward thinking partners are creative change-makers, working collaboratively to build a new, healthier model of consumption. Partners host locations where customers can drop off broken items (and pick up fixed).
Partnering with us generates increased foot traffic, community goodwill, great press, and most importantly, provides a valuable service to your customers or community.
Does your business, school, or community organization want to host a drop off location? Let us know now!
Training & Jobs
We launched an apprentice program in Spring 2018 thanks to support from the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board in partnership with Citizens Committee for NYC and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.
Volunteers
Want to get involved with Fixup and volunteer? Volunteers will be trained to help with intake and return (tagging items, taking customer info, talking to public about the project, etc) at our partner sites during pop ups. Send us an email if you're interested in getting involved!
Our Team
Sandra Goldmark
Founder
Michael Banta
Co-Founder
Caitlin
Harrington-Smith
Operations Director
Adam Dowis
Fixing Director
In 2013, Sandra Goldmark was home on maternity leave when a bunch of things broke around the house: a lamp, the strap on a backpack, the vacuum cleaner. She didn’t want a new vacuum (or lamp, or backpack), and was frustrated by the lack of options. The vacuum manufacturer’s only recommendation was that she drive to Hackensack to the nearest authorized service center. Drive to Hackensack from Manhattan with a newborn and a toddler to get a vacuum fixed? Forget it.
Sandra and her husband and co-founder, Michael Banta, started talking about how, today, it is almost impossible to get most things fixed. Every force, every nudge in our consumer culture today, is towards buying something new. For those who resist these forces, for whatever reason (perhaps they are stubborn, or sentimental, or frugal, or simply like the things they have) options are few and far between – sometimes even as far as Hackensack.
At the same time, Sandra and Michael knew that at work, they and their colleagues fixed things all the time. Sandra was a set designer and Michael a technical director and production manager. Backstage, there were people with the skills to fix almost anything – quickly and on a budget. They envisioned a simple solution to the frustrating and damaging cycle of use-and-discard consumer goods, harnessing the skills of local artisans and matching it with people’s real world needs.
So, logically, rather than get a new vacuum, Sandra and Michael decided to open an unconventional startup social enterprise repair service. Sandra and Michael opened their first Pop Up Repair shop and staffed it with fellow theatre artists. We fixed all kinds of stuff, made a big splash in our community, and learned a lot about repair, owning a business, and lots of other stuff.
Since then we have run twelve pop up events, participated in numerous environmental and community events, given fixing skills to New Yorkers, young and old, taken in over 2,000 broken items, and helped introduce repair back into the lives of families and individuals across the City. The overwhelmingly positive response has made us eager to continue our services in the neighborhoods we have already been welcomed and expand to those we have not yet reached. Everyone has a faulty toaster or a wobbly chair or a broken necklace or a dead vacuum at home, and all of us are looking for a healthier more sustainable alternative to the problems of overconsumption – Fixup is here to help.