R&Y A/C Compressors heats up the internet

Jan. 3, 2019
Anyone who can figure out a better way of supplying affordable A/C in the Sunshine State will have Floridians beating a path to their door. In this case that door says R&Y A/C Compressors, and the path to it is the internet.

Florida is hot. Florida needs air conditioning. So anyone who can figure out a better way of supplying affordable A/C in the Sunshine State will have Floridians beating a path to their door. In this case that door says R&Y A/C Compressors, and the path to it is the internet.

“Our business is unique,” explains Prosper Mamane, who has partnered with his cousin Jacob Shaked to run R&Y. “We have very little competition, and we’re in a emerging market in the fact that e-commerce for automotive parts is in its infancy.”

At a Glance:
R&Y A/C Compressors

www.rycompressors.com

North Miami Beach, Fla.
Location
Roy Shaked
Owner
1
No. of locations
29
Years in business
9,000
Square footage

“We’re not wholesale,” adds Shaked. “What we do is 99 percent business to consumer. We sell online through eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart and our website. We also sell locally and to other shops within Miami-Dade County.”

According to their website, R&Y A/C Compressors distributes “a comprehensive line of replacement mobile climate control products.” Their principal product is remanufactured A/C compressors, which they do in-house. And who are the consumers? Again, thanks to the internet, there’s a new and growing breed of do-it-yourselfers armed with YouTube videos; what R&Y likes to call “weekend warriors” on the site.

“What we’ve found through our data, from our customer surveys, and speaking to customers in person,” explains Shaked, “is that many people find us on the Internet, not so much word of mouth. And they want to purchase the part on the Internet because at the end of the day the one thing that controls everything else is price. As long as the quality of your product is good and the price is reasonable, consumers are willing to take a chance at purchasing parts online.”

The whole thing got started in 1987 when Shaked’s father Roy started AAA Radiator & Auto Air Conditioning in North Miami Beach. “The demand was there, the supply was low, so he figured that was the first step for the business,” Mamane says of the original service shop. “But after a year or so they concluded that they needed to be rebuilding their own parts, because that’s where the real business was. There are a lot of shops, but how many of them can rebuild their own parts, supply their own demand, and do it in a quick amount of time?”

Named after Roy and Yosef, an early business partner, R&Y grew as an enterprise just around the corner from the shop. It quickly became symbiotic between the two — “one company couldn’t work without the other,” says Mamane. “My company’s biggest customer was my uncle Roy’s shop, and the shop was reliant on this place to get the parts that he needed with a quick turnaround time and an affordable price. For many years before the internet, they were basically one company, just with two buildings.”

Today R&Y has more than 8,000 square feet of warehouse space to rebuild compressors. “We have around 20 people that we employ between the office, the books, and the inventory,” cites Mamane. “We have rebuilders, master rebuilders, floor men, like any other company. And then my uncle Roy has about 20 techs at his shop that he employs full time in about 15-16 bays.”

It was after working at his uncle’s shop for a few years that Mamane had an epiphany, perhaps partly inspired by an achievement of his cousin’s. “We jokingly say that Jacob’s the Christopher Columbus of the family,” he laughs, “because he got his dad to sell refrigerant on eBay in 2005, one of the first such sales ever.” Shaked is a bit more modest: “I can’t conclusively say that, but I’m pretty sure we were.”

Regardless, after Mamane moved over to R&Y five years ago, he saw the potential of online sales and began developing it as a market. “I went to school for marketing and advertising, which is ironic because I have little to do with marketing and advertising here,” he notes. “But I always like to find opportunities, especially in emerging markets like this.”

Mamane saw the future of sales as being online and not in brick and mortar; “(Sites like) Amazon Prime are now part of everyday life,” he observes. So it made sense for Shaked, the guy who started it all, to come onboard to handle the all-important catalog. “He actually studied to be a lawyer, but had a change of heart and found a better opportunity here,” comments Mamane.

According to Shaked, R&Y first got online back in 2002 with an eBay store. “We weren’t really doing much on eBay back then; I guess (it too) was in its infancy,” he muses. “But around the mid-2000s we started selling more and more online, and after 2010 we really started selling compressors online. It was fairly easy because they have a section, ‘eBay Motors’, with all the structured data that makes it simple to input your parts and create a listing. Then Amazon came around doing essentially the same thing—“

“—and we jumped on that early,” interjects Mamane.

“After that we created our own website, rycompressors.com, to have another sales channel,” Shaked continues. “And this is actually picking up significantly now because we’ve invested a lot of time and money to make sure that it functions properly and looks good. We do a lot of SEO — search engine optimization, we a lot of pay per clicks. That’s essentially how we market and brand ourselves to the customers.”

“The key to the whole game is our catalog,” says Mamane. “Because if I tell you that a part fits your vehicle and it doesn’t, that’s a $30 mistake for me since a compressor weighs 15 pounds to ship.” Like all online stores, they ship for free. But they have a valuable R&D resource in the AAA A/C shop.

“That gives us a real advantage,” Mamane points out. “As the years go on we’ve seen just about every single car that exists in America, and my uncle’s done them thousands of times. And every day he tells us what he finds — ‘hey Prosper, I see this problem with this compressor.’ That’s the unique niche that we have and take advantage of. It’s really my uncle who created this bad boy, and we took it into the 21st century through e-commerce.”

Sponsored Recommendations

Best Body Shop and the 360-Degree-Concept

Spanesi ‘360-Degree-Concept’ Enables Kansas Body Shop to Complete High-Quality Repairs

ADAS Applications: What They Are & What They Do

Learn how ADAS utilizes sensors such as radar, sonar, lidar and cameras to perceive the world around the vehicle, and either provide critical information to the driver or take...

Banking on Bigger Profits with a Heavy-Duty Truck Paint Booth

The addition of a heavy-duty paint booth for oversized trucks & vehicles can open the door to new or expanded service opportunities.

Boosting Your Shop's Bottom Line with an Extended Height Paint Booths

Discover how the investment in an extended-height paint booth is a game-changer for most collision shops with this Free Guide.