RevolutionParts has announced that it has sold nearly $3 billion in automotive parts to date, demonstrating the effectiveness of its business model, which seeks to transform the way parts buyers and sellers connect.

RevolutionParts
RevolutionParts RevolutionParts

The company provides auto dealerships with a unified platform to list parts for sale across multiple online selling channels and access to some of the industry's most accurate catalog data. This multi-channel platform helps dealers reduce the time spent completing admin tasks by streamlining operations. RevolutionParts currently works with over 1,800 dealerships across the US and Canada, helping create new revenue streams to generate more revenue through online auto parts sales. In 2022, it fulfilled over 3.2 million orders, totaling more than $600 million in annual sales through its platform. Around half of these sales came from repeat buyers, which RevolutionParts says is proof of consumers' trust in its platform and business model.

This multi-channel approach could prove to be the key to helping dealerships future-proof their business. According to Ibrahim Mesbah, co-founder and CEO of RevolutionParts, auto parts sales tend to rise during economic difficulty. With a looming recession, there is a growing demand for auto parts as people are more likely to hold on to their cars longer, opting to fix them instead of buying a new car. Thus, it's a really good time for dealers to embrace ecommerce and meet the demand for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts. Aside from increased sales and profitability, dealers can also benefit from increased brand growth. RevolutionParts does this by setting up an online parts store for dealers to provide customers with the great online shopping experience they have come to expect. It also lends them the expertise of its marketing team and ecommerce experts to drive more sales volume.

Mesbah says the COVID-19 pandemic also heralded an ecommerce boom, with auto parts sales growing by 30%. However, that growth tapered off to around 10% to 15% for the past year.

"The COVID boom wasn't sustainable, and a lot of ecommerce companies saw their growth slow down, which I believe is the market normalizing. If you draw a trend line and pretend the pandemic didn't happen, we'd be right where we should be."

Mesbah says that before RevolutionParts was founded, dealers didn't have a piece of the online parts market or the expertise to create a web store to sell parts. RevolutionParts was able to create a market segment that allowed dealers to effectively capture online OEM part sales and start to take some of the business back from the aftermarket segment. They achieve this by allowing dealerships to sell their parts across multiple online channels and enabling them to tap into a new customer base that is outside their locality.

"We are excited about being able to help our dealer partners grow by removing friction and making it easier for them to tap into a new revenue source, especially as we're likely headed into harder times where people are expected to avoid making big purchases. These partnerships give us access to data, which enables us to build on our platform and reach more buyers. Moving forward, we will continue working on gaining more partnerships and work with more automakers so that we can enhance the shopping experience and drive even more sales volume."