Lecavalier Auto Parts dismantles 12,000 damaged or auctioned cars a year and salvages 80% of the parts from those cars. To sell online meant creating a SKU for each part from every model car of recent years—and that’s what the Quebec-based company did as it built its web site, which went live Monday with nearly 200,000 product categories and 2.5 million individual SKUs.
The reason there are so many SKUs is that every part from every car is unique and has to be described individually. For each new part it puts on sale, Lecavalier enters into its database such detailed data as the mileage of the car it came from, if there is any damage to the part, and such other information as the color of a fender or the engine size for a mechanical part. The company takes a picture of most parts so the buyer, typically either a repair shop, insurance company or consumer, can see what it looks like.
“If you want a left door for a 2006 Toyota Camry, you’ll see the picture, the color, the type of molding, you can zoom in and out for details,” says Roger Fugere, president of Lecavalier. “Body shops don’t have to waste time, and for them time is important. They’re excited because they can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The comments are excellent so far.”
Fugere and his partner Andre Savard believe this is the first e-commerce site for used auto parts that translates information into language consumers can understand. They say there are other sites geared to repair shops and insurance companies that use industry codes and technical jargon.
“The big complexity is that the end user is not able to see what type of damage there is to the part or understand the description of the part,” Fugere says. “We had to build a complete dictionary so the end user, the body shop and the insurance company can read and understand the description of that part.”
The project took two years and full-time employees to complete, and cost close to C$1 million (US$844,000). The site is built on the e-commerce platform of iCongo Inc.
Building the site meant creating the nearly 200,000 product categories for parts of all types from many car models for each year, says Christian Ayotte, vice president of professional services at iCongo. To help users navigate the site, the Parts page asks for the car year and model, the part type, and common options, such as electric versus manual doors. In all, a search can be refined by 13 parameters, Ayotte says. Another complexity in building the site was allowing registered repair shops reserve a part, and creating business rules about when to put that part back in stock.
While the major goal is to sell parts beyond the company’s Montreal base, Fugere says he hopes the pictures of the Lecavalier facilities and employees on the site will help improve the image of the industry. “We’re not junkyards, were recycling companies that really do it well,” he says. “We recover all the oil and the Freon, and our building and employees are clean. There are a lot of pictures on the web site that show what kind of company we are, and that these businesses are doing a good job for the environment.”
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