Parts Stores
- Thread starter Dayzedandkonfuzed
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Like I said, it's not so much about the price. Being able to walk in and buy what you need is a convenience that is worth paying for in my opinion. If I have to make two trips, suffer slow, poor service and pay high prices.....
I given up hope with buying parts at chain stores. Autozone does not even carry air filters for my 08 CVPI. Even when they do have parts they are often sub par. Service varies quite a bit, some guys are helpful, some are useless. One time I needed a grounding strap, nobody in the store had any idea what I was talking about. More than once I seen 10 people in line and no employee in sight. This has lead me to walk out the store more than once. I find Autozones to be the worst in service and selection. Advance has better service. Often therd is no order and more than once people have cut in line on me at checkout.
There are no O'reilys in my region, just Autozone, Advance, Pep Boys, and the rare Napa. There is a decent Ma &Pa auto store with a machine shop in my town that services many of the repair shops. They can get parts for me pretty fast including OEM. Its where I get air filters for my CVPI since they even supply local police departments with parts. Plus the employees have some knowledge.
High employee turnover is always a symptom of poor management. It is also highly wasteful since it is cheaper to keep employees long term than to constantly search for, filter, and train new employees, even if its little training. Bad management also tends to alienate employees which makes them perform even worse. JIT stocking only works with good management, and totally fails under bad management resulting in constant stock outs.
Online stores like Rockauto are likely cheaper due to having shorter marketing channels (less middle men and red tape), and not worrying about starting price wars with competing stores.
There are no O'reilys in my region, just Autozone, Advance, Pep Boys, and the rare Napa. There is a decent Ma &Pa auto store with a machine shop in my town that services many of the repair shops. They can get parts for me pretty fast including OEM. Its where I get air filters for my CVPI since they even supply local police departments with parts. Plus the employees have some knowledge.
High employee turnover is always a symptom of poor management. It is also highly wasteful since it is cheaper to keep employees long term than to constantly search for, filter, and train new employees, even if its little training. Bad management also tends to alienate employees which makes them perform even worse. JIT stocking only works with good management, and totally fails under bad management resulting in constant stock outs.
Online stores like Rockauto are likely cheaper due to having shorter marketing channels (less middle men and red tape), and not worrying about starting price wars with competing stores.
Something said earlier struck me as odd.... so I wonder what the reasoning is when you think it through. Hear me out.
It was said that not everyone should be able to get the same wholesale price as the commercial acounts down the street, they want to be able to make their markup needing a profit so on so forth.
I see that as WRONG and counterintuitive to keeping customers/making profit.
1) the average person taking their car to a repair shop doesn't have the knowledge, time, tools, space, or some combination to do the job themselves.
2) shops already prohibit outside parts, doesn't matter NIB or junkyard/used, so, their markup is protected no matter what.
3) if the DIY guy is putting in the labor, buys the tools, invests in the garage/space... why aren't they entitled to the similar return on their efforts?
4) OTC sales I'd assume make up a smaller and smaller amount of profits by volume. Wouldn't you want to GROW that revenue stream?
5) It almost seems like the average OTC retail customer is subsidizing the branch operation to the benefit of the wholesale buyer, not the other way around. If margin is as razor thin around its made to sound, it seems that your retail OTC customer is subsidizing the wages of the counter help that answers phones and pulls orders for wholesale accounts, and that there isn't this surplus profit from the wholesale crowd paying that. In that regard it's kind of a perverse model.
Your DIY guy isn't going to go to a repair shop because you don't give him the same price you give the shop. He just goes to rockauto.
BUT, the DIY guy WOULD buy from you instead of the online guy if you gave him the same best-possible deal on every trip that you gave the shops.
There's a difference between charging 15% (arbitrary number, i know it varies with product) more than online (which is probably your local wholesale pricing) if I can get it without dealing with the Internet and knowing I'm investing in keeping you around so I can continue to get it locally without hassle.
You ask me to pay 100% more than the online price and subsidize having service infrastructure for the shops, and deal with high turnover rude counterhelp, and yeah, I'll deal with the headaches of buying online and let you flounder or close locations cause, what are you doing for me?
It was said that not everyone should be able to get the same wholesale price as the commercial acounts down the street, they want to be able to make their markup needing a profit so on so forth.
I see that as WRONG and counterintuitive to keeping customers/making profit.
1) the average person taking their car to a repair shop doesn't have the knowledge, time, tools, space, or some combination to do the job themselves.
2) shops already prohibit outside parts, doesn't matter NIB or junkyard/used, so, their markup is protected no matter what.
3) if the DIY guy is putting in the labor, buys the tools, invests in the garage/space... why aren't they entitled to the similar return on their efforts?
4) OTC sales I'd assume make up a smaller and smaller amount of profits by volume. Wouldn't you want to GROW that revenue stream?
5) It almost seems like the average OTC retail customer is subsidizing the branch operation to the benefit of the wholesale buyer, not the other way around. If margin is as razor thin around its made to sound, it seems that your retail OTC customer is subsidizing the wages of the counter help that answers phones and pulls orders for wholesale accounts, and that there isn't this surplus profit from the wholesale crowd paying that. In that regard it's kind of a perverse model.
Your DIY guy isn't going to go to a repair shop because you don't give him the same price you give the shop. He just goes to rockauto.
BUT, the DIY guy WOULD buy from you instead of the online guy if you gave him the same best-possible deal on every trip that you gave the shops.
There's a difference between charging 15% (arbitrary number, i know it varies with product) more than online (which is probably your local wholesale pricing) if I can get it without dealing with the Internet and knowing I'm investing in keeping you around so I can continue to get it locally without hassle.
You ask me to pay 100% more than the online price and subsidize having service infrastructure for the shops, and deal with high turnover rude counterhelp, and yeah, I'll deal with the headaches of buying online and let you flounder or close locations cause, what are you doing for me?
I think the biggest reason it doesn’t happen this way is volume. The shop has an account setup and will purchase significantly more product from the store. Shops repair vehicles all day, every day and can probably purchase more in a day than many DIYers do in months. That and most DIYers, and retail consumers in general, will almost always chase the lowest landed cost.
That is basically my gripe with my local Napa. Unless you have an actual store front shop or are one of the dairies, you don't get an account. I'm neither but would be a $1000-2000 per month customer and would buy almost exclusively from them if they'd have at least humored me when asked.
depending on the area the local parts store needs to protect the larger garages, you wouldn't want to jeopardize 2-3 hundred thousand dollar account for a guy who at the most may spend a grand a year. We are in a high retail area so our pricing is more focused to the DIY guy than the same branch located in a city area.
You would think that the over the counter sale is for the person to install themselves but you would not believe how many people will purchase the parts at a reduced rate then brag to the garage installing them how much they saved by not buying the parts from them, which in turn causes that local garage to stop dealing with the part store...
You would think that the over the counter sale is for the person to install themselves but you would not believe how many people will purchase the parts at a reduced rate then brag to the garage installing them how much they saved by not buying the parts from them, which in turn causes that local garage to stop dealing with the part store...
Cuts both ways.
If one parts store does it, ok, you lose the big account to the guy who doesnt. If all parts stores do it, then the garage doesn't have someone to jump to.
Reality is, without the OTC buyer the store model fails and there are no more stores. Why not have one warehouse and drop ship if all that matters is the highest volume shop acct? Saves taxes, overhead, fuel costs shuffling parts between locations, rent, utilities, so on so forth.
It's happening one step at a time in other areas of retail. Now that places like rockauto run TV ads I'd expect the trend to accelerate.
It can go both ways if the store wants it too. I used to go exclusively to a parts place that had the same guys working there for as long as I can remember. They not only had at least one of everything you could imagine on hand, but also had a machinist on duty as well as contacts with local specialty shops. So if you brought them a driveshaft for rebuilding they sent it over to the driveshaft shop and you got a good deal from them. A couple of guys worked just on outgoing shop orders so the countermen were just for the counter. But the best was that if they saw your face often enough, and you knew their names, they gave you the "mechanic's discount" on your stuff. So it is a win-win for you and them. My only complaint was that they were so popular you could wait on line for an hour as the line stretched out the door during day hours. I learned to go at night when it was quieter. Too bad they are 25 miles away from me but when I need something RIGHT NOW I go to them. Local Wrong Island guys know them- Colvin Motors in Merrick.
Most of our branches the OTC only accounts for 10-15 percent of our business so catering to them would only shoot themselves in the foot as the garages would stop supporting us.
Again it depends on the market place, our store is a high retail branch so we focus on the OTC and we are very competitive in the market, our garages only give us about 20 percent of the market share so if we only focused on the garages we would not last as the OTC is our bread and butter.
Our store models are extremely successful both in and out of the cities, as for having one warehouse that would be detrimental to the business. When a garage has a car on the hoist they need to be serviced asap so when your branches are spread out over a couple hours delivery time one warehouse would not work.
We are not going to stop rock auto and we adjust accordingly, again i will go back to what i said before. Will the guys from Rock auto come to your town to support you? Do they donate money to the local food bank, do they support your hospital? Can you call someone at Rock Auto when your wife is broken down on the side of the road at 10 oclock at night? They wont come but guess what we will!!
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