Dealership Newsmaker Q&A: Gary Schuler

Jan. 1, 2020
Gary Schuler is corporate director/fixed operations at the Dick Hannah Dealerships group in Vancouver, Wash.

Gary Schuler is corporate director/fixed operations at the Dick Hannah Dealerships group in Vancouver, Wash. The company recently signed on as a distributor franchisee for Mighty Auto Parts.

Prior to working with Mighty, did your service departments have any issues with either using or obtaining aftermarket parts?

No. The distributors are happy to deliver them. The problem was waiting for them. If you get a car in, and you need an air filter or brake pads, you have down time while the parts are being delivered. We would like to use OEM when we could, but if we don't happen to own the franchise on that brand, it was cost-prohibitive to buy parts from another franchise. Plus, they don't deliver as quickly as a CarQuest or a NAPA would.

Have you been able to leverage any of your existing wholesale parts customers into the Mighty business?

We have outside sales reps for our wholesale parts. They are now repping Dick Hannah for wholesale, and offering the Mighty parts as an alternative. But we're keeping the businesses pretty separate. We're letting the shops know that if they are looking for an alternative aftermarket supplier, we can fulfill those needs, too. We can be a one-stop shop for those customers.

What would you say are biggest challenges for Dick Hannah Dealerships on the service side of the business?

Today's customer is more demanding than the consumer was 24 months ago. The economic climate has made them more value-conscious. At times, this makes the relationship a little more difficult to manage, because they are in a situation where they don't have a lot of money to spend on their vehicles. We've had to become more aggressive on pricing, but I think customers need more value right now than ever before, because they just don't have as much money to spend. We've adjusted some pricing models, but we've also started to provide more amenities. In the past, getting a free car wash might have been considered just fluff; now, they need that because car washes are expensive. We're adding more things to our service packages, and providing more value to the customer in order to meet those expectations, which are higher than ever before.

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