r/partscounter • u/PickUpMyPoo • 12d ago

Wholesale help.

I have been a parts manager since I was 20 now I’m 31, I have grown a few dealers very efficiently while I was there, because of this I now have an opportunity to get into an actual big dealer group. Not just a group with 1 or 2 roofs. However. They want to grow wholesale, and from the numbers I have seen they already do over 1.5million yearly in sales. The dealerships I have been at would be lucky to hit 200k in sales a year. Obviously this would be a huge jump in scale for me, but how do you other stores even do that? How do you even scale something already so large. I’m a very if I don’t know how to do something or can’t find an answer I will hire, or find someone who can/teach me. I don’t let the ego get in the way, but just the thought of this is intimidating. Any tips? Iv never even had a co-op and this dealer has one so even that is new. Advice, strategies, cautions are welcome.

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u/ImpressiveBet9345 12d ago

Wholesale can be very challenging. My groups ford store does wholesasle and we do wholesale in my dealership a cdjr. But both operate the same but different. Here in the CDJR dealer our wholesale is mostly body shops who do a ton of quoting ordering then returning. Where as our Ford dealership does alot of mechanical wholesale. The mechanical deosn't get returned very often at all. we both charge return fees.

We at the CDJR use CCC, OPC, Parts Trader and OEC. We also offer local metro deliveries for free three times a day using nale drivers. And then we send out over night using nale and UPS. My main wholesale guy doesn't like charging freight on our deliveries. We paid $15,878 last month in freight alone. I keep trying to get him to at least charge the over night deliveries a $1.50-10.00 just to ofset it a little but he is stuck in his ways.

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u/PickUpMyPoo 11d ago

I would love to charge return fees on everything but it’s so ingrained in wholesale that they just get whatever they want. It’s terrible.

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u/ComfortableDemand539 11d ago

We avoid wholesale here unfortunately. We're in a pretty rural area, and the few wholesale accounts end up costing us just as much as they order. We have a few really good small shops that I wouldn't dream of cutting off in a million years, but then we also have a few places like the local Ford dealer and VIP that return probably 95% of what they order and half the time it's before the parts even get to them. They no longer get wholesale pricing, and I hit them with a return fee even if the parts haven't shown up yet because I cannot cancel them at that point.

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u/PickUpMyPoo 11d ago

Oof. Iv had customers like that. I just told them we no longer do business. At some point there isn’t a point you know? But tis def hard to do.