Customer Profile:
Sherwood of Salisbury
Pat Adams, Parts Director
Size of Parts Department: 20 employees
Size of Parts Inventory: $750,000
Lines Carried: Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Kia
Pat Adams has been a Parts Director at auto dealerships for 28 years. The past 11 have been with Sherwood of Salisbury. Located on the peninsula called Maryland's Eastern Shore, the dealership is 100 miles across the bay from Washington D.C. They've been using DealerMine for more than a year.
Though Salisbury is a small city (about 30,000) Sherwood of Salisbury draws business from the surrounding communities, selling Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Kia. The dealership is the Eastern Shore's leader in several categories, including being the only Group Four size Chrysler dealer, only Ford Certified Parts wholesaler and the area's first Kia dealer.
Like many dealerships, Sherwood of Salisbury weathered the downturn by consolidating operations and getting the most from its parts and service departments. But long before "efficiency" became the buzzword of the industry, Adams had her department taking advantage of the latest technology to improve profitability.
"In the past ten years the technology available to the parts department has boomed," she says. "And we've embraced it. If there's a web tool that we can use, we use it."
Adams says that their days-of-supply for each part has decreased but their variety of parts has increased. To make the best use of their warehouse space it's more important than ever to keep level of idle stock as low as possible.
One of the tools that Adams uses to achieve this is DealerMine.
"DealerMine is such an easy way for us to sell our slow moving parts," says Adams. "Each month we just upload a spreadsheet and we're able to sell thousands in parts that would otherwise just be sitting around."
She credits DealerMine with helping her idle Kia parts from 22% down to 15% (a 32% reduction) and idle Chrysler parts from 21% down to 13% (a 38% reduction).
But even more important to Adams is being able to buy on DealerMine. Some months they buy as much as $20,000 in parts.
"We're getting these parts at half price," she says. "And we don't have to wonder if we'll be able to sell them. We give them our list of parts that we're always selling. Everything we've bought through DealerMine we've turned around and sold."
Two things keep Adams using DealerMine.
First, she says there's no other service like it, especially for her Chrysler and Kia stock. She recommends DealerMine for any dealership that needs to manage their parts inventory.
Second, she loves the customer service. DealerMine sends timely reminder emails. When another dealership is about to post a really good order, her DealerMine sales rep will give her a heads-up. And she says the billing is excellent: It's itemized, easy to follow, and makes her job easier.
"We're a customer-oriented dealership," says Adams. "And I can tell DealerMine is the same way. They want to make the process go smoothly for me. They're constantly looking for ways to make my department perform better."