Have you ever dreamed of being able to expand to a new marketplace, list your products and have inventory managed across all of your channels in almost-real time?
Vintage Parts did just that — with 20,000 listings on eBay — in one month after working with ChannelAdvisor.
We sat down with the Vintage Parts team to learn how they achieved this feat and saw their sales take off. Read on and be inspired.
Expanding to New Channels
Vintage Parts specializes in selling original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts for cars, trucks, motorcycles and boats. The company carries more than 10 million parts and pieces.
Vintage Parts has thrived on a solid foundation of relationships with manufacturers and authorized dealers for over 50 years.
“For a long time we had our own custom website that worked very well for our dealers,” says Vice President of Sales and Marketing Pete Fogarty. “They know their part number, and we already have their contact information on the website. All they had to do was punch in that info.”
It was later when the management team wanted to expand the business beyond manufacturers and sell directly to consumers that some complications arose. For retail customers, who prefer to see an image before purchasing to ensure the part matches their search, the website wouldn’t work as smoothly.
In addition, Fogarty says Vintage Parts was looking to expand to new channels and reach a growing DIY market. But when the team began to expand to auction-based and “buy it now” sites, Fogarty realized they had their work cut out for them. The time spent entering thousands of part numbers along with images and descriptions — and constantly managing a fluctuating inventory — felt overwhelming.
It was time to find a way to better manage their marketplace listings so they could scale.
Streamlining Inventory Management
To help streamline inventory and listing management, Fogarty says his team seriously considered only one option: ChannelAdvisor.
“ChannelAdvisor made it easy for us,” he says. “The team knows all the right people and has the right structure in place, and took over to cover all the heavy lifting for us.”
Together with ChannelAdvisor, Vintage Parts reports that it began to streamline inventory so it would stay up to date across multiple platforms. “When I sell out of inventory, there’s no more left in the world,” Fogarty says. “So inventory management is extremely important.”
Increasing Sales
Before ChannelAdvisor, Vintage Parts was manually uploading approximately 3,000 to 4,000 items a year, according to Fogarty. Within a month of working with the ChannelAdvisor platform, the Vintage Parts team had approximately 200,000 listings, approved by the OEMs, on eBay. Their inventory stays synced across channels, with updates occurring every 15 minutes.
And their sales took off.
After experiencing success in its initial launch on eBay, the company has begun to explore options for expanding to additional marketplaces such as Walmart.
“We’re very thrilled with everything that I’ve seen so far,” Fogarty says. “Without ChannelAdvisor, we wouldn’t be able to tap into new marketplaces.”
The Vintage Parts story shows how expanding to a new marketplace can be easy with the right platform. For even more inspiration, read the full story.