Finding reliable suppliers of auto parts and debugging work with them is one of the main tasks of the owner of an auto parts store and the owner of a car, which determines success and profitability. It’s great if you can get parts directly from the manufacturer, but this situation is far from always possible. Most often you have to turn to suppliers of spare parts, and then you can get lost from their diversity. So how do you find good auto parts suppliers? You should decide on your own criteria for selecting a suitable supplier, and then analyze the leading players in the auto parts market for compliance. Products must be purchased from trusted suppliers, preferably those who are official dealers of the purchased brand of spare parts. This minimizes the risk of buying low-quality products, and you will also have the opportunity to return defective parts.
The Main Rule
Perhaps the main nuance is the range. If in other niches you can find a couple of manufacturers, conclude supply contracts with them and sell them calmly, then this will not work with auto parts. The market dictates the following main rule: in your online store it should be possible to buy almost any spare part that is in nature. Otherwise, you can forget about serious business. Car services, technical service centers and other corporate clients will immediately fall off. They take a wide range of parts: for domestic cars, foreign cars, trucks, buses and special equipment. If there is not one single item in your assortment, the whole transaction will fail, and the contract will follow it. It’s a shame when a million-dollar business breaks down because of stupid pads.
Guarantee Is Important
Well, if the supplier is a major official dealer of the brand you need, this will become an additional guarantee of its reliability. Reliability will also be judged by reviews on the Internet or the experience of cooperation with the supplier of your friends or partners. An important factor is the pricing policy of the auto parts supplier: discounts and payment deferrals, the ability to take goods on credit and its limit. Ask the supplier what goods he always has in stock, and what is delivered on order – the delivery time will depend on this. Immediately find out which transport companies your supplier cooperates with, and what terms of delivery and return of goods will be for you.
What Is the Optimal Number of Suppliers?
For everyone there is an answer. Nevertheless, there is a general rule: if you want to be in favor when buying spare parts, meet all the needs of your car and provide delivery times, then there should be many suppliers, especially when it comes to suppliers of auto parts for foreign cars. When buying truck or bus auto parts from regional dealers, you can get the advantage of free delivery or prompt shipment, which is very important for online auto parts stores. Naturally, their prices will be higher, but the requirements for the buyer, respectively, too. Therefore, at the beginning of work it would be better to conclude an agreement with them. You can read more here.
In all other cases, you will have to work through intermediaries – wholesale suppliers. There are several hundred of them, you can choose a counterparty of your weight category: those who sell goods only in large wholesale, or vice versa, those who work with small batches or retail. But there are unlimited opportunities for business scaling. Along the way, you can expand the circle of manufacturing partners and get rid of intermediaries. It is in this way that most of the Internet giants have grown, and not only in the auto parts segment. True, at first the general rule of the market will work: the larger the wholesale, the lower the cost per unit of goods. Even if you take from the manufacturer, but in small batches, you will not pull a competitive price. The advantage will be felt only with volumes comparable to the volumes of competitors among large chains.
What to Choose
Choosing a supplier, debugging the cooperation algorithm is a task for an auto parts seller. The success of the business, the amount of profit depends on how the work is done. Try to choose only dealers who have a good reputation, have been working for a long time, and carefully fulfill the terms of the contract. Each region has its own suppliers, so the delivery of goods to customers is fast. Working in a particular region helps to correctly compile the assortment of the warehouse – to store spare parts in demand on the territory, rare items requested by buyers in a particular city. Read more here: https://www.jeepzine.com/parts/.
The success of the store depends on the competitiveness of prices against the background of offers from other sellers. Any seller makes his markup on the delivery price – profit depends on it. The lower the supplier offers, the more options the business owner has. But when choosing a car supplier, you need to pay attention to other points of the contract with him: discounts, promotions, lot sizes, personal conditions. It is better to look for a supplier in your region – so the delivery time will be minimal. The contract provides for two options for the delivery of parts: by transport of the supplying company or by a store courier from the warehouse of the supplying company. The second option allows you not to depend on the delivery schedule, send the spare part to the buyer faster. If an online store operates far from a big city, you need to calculate delivery methods in advance, find transport or courier services.
Bottom Line
Auto parts dealers know that the more suppliers, the better. However, you need to start by signing an agreement with two or three companies. Nevertheless, after that, there is no need to stop the work on finding partners – the development of the store will require expanding the range. Therefore, the list of supply partners should be increased.