Auto Dealer Monthly

APR 2013

Auto Dealer Monthly Magazine is the daily operations publication serving the retail automotive industry. This automotive publication serves dealer principals, officers and general managers with the latest best practices.

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4. PARTS AND ACCESSORIES IS A MATURING INDUSTRY. 3. PARTS AND ACCESSORIES IS A HIGH-VOLUME, LOWMARGIN BUSINESS. Car dealerships are fairly unique businesses. Most dealers only log about 100 transactions per month, but they make a few thousand dollars on each one. There are few other commodity businesses that generate anything close to those kinds of margins, or succeed with so few monthly transactions. Most online retail businesses have razor-thin margins, numerous product lines and an enormous number of SKUs ��� pretty much the exact opposite of a traditional car dealership. Amazon is the biggest online retailer of them all, and that company is still trying to fgure out how to sell online proftably. Thousands of SKUs require thousands of pages of website content and a pricing/discounting database to manage the inventory. Again, this is not an area in which most dealers have much experience. There are already a number of fairly sophisticated websites focused on this business model. . If you search Google for a brake light or foor mat for any vehicle, you will fnd multiple sites that already cater to the online parts and accessories consumer. Many of these sites are selling across manufacturers, so they have the beneft of additional scale that dealers looking to sell their own OEM���s parts would not. Again, these are important considerations to take into account when considering building a parts and accessories site. So if you���re going to start selling parts and accessories online, make sure you���ve thought through the issues I outlined above. Meanwhile, I strongly encourage you to market your service departments aggressively online. None of the challenges that I highlighted for parts and accessories are relevant for the service department. In fact, in many cases the feld is tipped in the dealers��� favor, if they are willling to invest in that business. We���ll Roll Up Our Sleeves To Get You 100% Service Absorption! 7ERE NOT LIKE OTHER TRAINING GROUPS 7E DONT JUST WALK IN GIVE A SPEECH AND LEAVE you to fend for yourself. 7E HELP YOU SOLVE PROBLEMS x BUILD YOUR BOTTOM LINE x AND REACH THE TOP PERFORMER INDUSTRY BENCHMARKS 7HEN YOU JOIN OUR + #LUB WERE WITH YOU IN YOUR DEALERSHIP EVERY MONTH TO MAKE SURE YOU REACH YOUR GOALS x AND FOR ONLINE TRAINING #ALL OR EMAIL TODAY AND START EARNING THE 3ERVICE 0ROlTS YOU DESERVE TOLL FREE: 1-888-553-0100 DREED DEALERPROTRAININGCOM s WWWDEALERPROTRAININGCOM APRIL 2013 ��� AUTODE ALE R MONTHLY.COM 11

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