by jdpetey » Wed May 01, 2019 2:58 am
We are a smaller dealer on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. There are three wholesale stores competing against one another. Not able to compete with them for Body shop business. Have one local collision shop that remains with us. We do however have a decent number of mechanical shops that call on us for dealer only items.
I don’t believe they would receive same day service, which they expect, from the larger wholesalers. They are simply not close enough. Trade was too low, so I went with list-25 on non MPL parts years ago. In some cases it equates to trade, other items it splits earnings down the middle.
On the MPL parts, left at the MPL prices, the wholesaler gets a 60% markup if they sell at list. If we sell at List-20%, once again it’s a split.
Now we don’t sell an abundance of these (MPL) parts to wholesale, but when we do it would be more beneficial to us. I don’t believe they would question these items.
We have also been able to condition some of them on the one day out when not in stock.
In the last few years, a couple larger, outside Pittsburgh, investment groups came in and bought up the larger auto group packages, only to discover their business model would not work as well in our market. Now they have been selling off their underperforming stores back to the local larger wholesale outfits
Now these larger wholesalers have built wholesale warehouses and redirect all their wholesale business to these facilities. Their satellite stores, some of which have body shops, are now reducing their inventories to primarily mechanical parts for their in house shop.
With that trajectory, a lot of experienced parts personnel will be relegated to menial tasks, making the owners wonder why they would require employees that demand higher wages. No? I am concerned for some of my established contacts that are experiencing this trend.
The wholesale business that we have been doing may need reviewed more thoroughly before we concede ‘all’ sales to the big dogs. Some of the good reputation that we have with most of them may still pay off in other ways.
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