Until it launched a retail web site for its accessories business, Mike Castrucci Chevrolet sold common items like Nascar-style caps and bug-guards for Chevy vehicles to walk-in customers in Milford, OH. Now, through its TheGMMall.com, it’s marketing a broad range of items for all GM vehicles, including camping equipment and $1,200 Corvette leather chairs, to customers as far away as Maine and California, Bob Ernst, IT manager, tells InternetRetailer.com.
When Castrucci launched the site last March, Ernst started loading products from GM’s wholesale accessories catalog, expanding far beyond the collection of Chevy accessories it had offered at its dealership store.
“With the store, people only knew we sold Chevy accessories, but with the web site, we get customers for all of GM,” Ernst says. “We thought we would just be selling regular items like truckbed liners and bug-guards, but you have no idea what you can sell until you make products available.”
For example, Castrucci is selling $200 tents specially made according to GM specifications to fit on the back of its pick-up trucks. “We never thought tents would sell for pick-ups,” Ernst says.
TheGMMall already offers more than 1,600 products and averages $100-$150 per purchase, but Ernst says he adds new items to the site every day. “We still have another 1,000 or 1,500 items we could sell,” he says.
Castrucci operates TheGMMall on IBM’s WebSphere Commerce Express platform, which is capable of running up to five separate web sites, IBM says. Castrucci, which also owns a Ford dealership, is looking into launching a site dedicated to all Ford Motor Co. accessories.
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