As a regular columnist to aftermarket business, and a long time contributor to our sister publication Motor Age, Mitch has his pulse on service dealer issues. Write him a note with any comments or questions you might have. (For Mitch's Motor Age columns, click here.)
It seems odd to me that, in a time where almost everyone agrees information is power, two of the biggest problems facing the distribution side of the industry revolve around what seems to be an abundance of the wrong information or a distinct absence of the right information.
According to one of my suppliers these twin problems account for more than 30 percent of his returns, and if you add to that the parts that are ordered on speculation and then returned if or when they are not used by technicians and/or shop owners managing their businesses by hope, by golly or by God, instead of by skill, you have a recipe for disaster guaranteed to destroy bottom line profits.
As frustrating and upsetting as warehouse distributors and jobbers suggest this problem is, I
