Whatever the exact nature of your automotive business, your customers will wish to benefit from the best-quality parts for the most competitive price – and of course, you must also source such parts for reasonable prices yourself, if you are to sell them on at decent margins.
Auto parts can be shockingly expensive, but this doesn’t always have to be the case. So, here are some of our favourite tips for reducing your spending when you are seeking out vehicle parts.
Draw upon the most trusted industry channels
Of course, this is much easier to do if your business has been sourcing auto parts for a while, and therefore has a good idea of the ‘lie of the land’. If you are much less experienced, there is unfortunately no real alternative to doing your research and learning through first-hand experience.
The right industry channel to use will vary according to the exact auto part that you are looking to source at any one time.
If you are in need of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) parts, for instance, you might have little real choice other than purchasing directly from the manufacturer or an exclusive distributor. But when it is aftermarket parts that you need to source, it makes sense to use the most trusted local wholesale suppliers you can find – such businesses’ close geographical proximity also potentially greatly helping you to save money.
Once you have identified the most appropriate industry channels to use, it is essential to carefully manage your inventory to avoid overstocking or running out. To ensure that parts are easy to locate and properly stored, you can use car part labels. In this way, you can keep track of your inventory and identify the parts you need. Keeping track of the parts inventory and comparing it with demand can assist you in avoiding over-purchasing.
Do some good old-fashioned networking
While you can do a lot of your research into car parts online, the automotive industry continues to operate largely on the basis of close business relationships and word of mouth.
Sure, a rival auto parts seller or fitter based across the road from yours may not exactly be eager to spill all of their secrets as to how they obtain cheap car parts. But a business at a similar stage of growth to yours, situated in another part of the country or in a complementary area of the automotive sector may be happy to share notes with you. This, in turn, could be a great basis for a long-lasting and mutual beneficial partnership between your respective companies.
Pick up bargains from scrapyards
Scrapyards – or wrecking yards or junkyards, depending on where in the world your business is based – are very much the auto-parts equivalent of a flea market or car boot sale. They aren’t exactly the kind of place you’d head to for a steady supply of a specific in-demand part, but they can turn up some real undiscovered gems for what may be very little money at all.
So, why not pinpoint two or three local scrapyards, bring your tools along and keep an eye out for those rare or especially in-demand parts that you might simply need to polish slightly and then keep in your business’s stock for when a customer inevitably requests one of them?
Have them delivered with a groupage or part-load service
It isn’t just the parts themselves on which there is considerable scope for you to save money! That’s because the means by which you have them transported can also have a significant impact on your business’s outgoings over time.
T S Europe, for example, offers an especially respected part-load transport service in Europe, which works on the basis of consolidating your shipment with other cargo. This enables you to save money compared to if you had paid for all of the space – even space left unused – on a full trailer, with the only real disadvantage being a slightly longer transit time to delivery.
While the above steps aren’t the only ones that could possibly help you to reduce your expenditure when obtaining car parts, they should nonetheless get you thinking about how to be more resourceful and imaginative about this crucial element of an automotive business’s operations.
For even more inspiration, why not read this Autocar article on the significant difference a little bit of research can make to your efforts to find affordable car parts, whether as a business or individual driver?
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