Auto Recyclers IT Show in New England a Success
Jim Counts Speaks to the Crowd at the 2009 IT Show
If you are an auto recycler and were not in Southington this weekend then you missed a great event. The “Meet Us At IT” Show that took place on Friday and Saturday was packed with educational seminars, workshops, a lively trade show and great food.
East Coast Auto Salvage Inc. was in attendance as well as other auto recyclers from New England and around the country.
One of the highlights of the show for us was the inspirational seminars given by Jim and Robert Counts of Counts Consulting www.countsconsulting.com.
Sometimes we get stuck in a rut when it comes to the way we run our business and the way we approach sales. It can be difficult to take a step back a really analyze if what we are doing is the most efficient and productive way or if it is just a bad habit.
The Counts brothers make you rethink your approach to daily operations and costs of production. Here at East Coast we will be re-thinking some of our systems business organization and hopefully be able to make some changes to improve our operation.
Another highlight was the seminar on Hybrid vehicles given by Craig Van Batenburg of ACDC, Automotive Career Development Center, www.auto-careers.org. He brought to our attention that there are already 1.4 million hybrid vehicles on the road in the United States and near 2 million worldwide.
Crain Van Batneburg of ACDC speaks about hybrid dismantling.
Just today in the Wall Street Journal an article was published about the 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid which has been revamped to better compete with Honda’s leading hybrid, the Insight. Toyota aims to sell 300,000 to 400,000 of the new Prius world-wide per year.
This growing population of hybrid vehicles means some big changes for the automotive recycling industry. Just like any other vehicle a Hybrid also has an end-of-life. In fact a few hundred thousand hybrid vehicles have already been in accidents that have rendered them inoperable. So what happens to these vehicles? They must be broken down and properly disposed of. But by who? Well automotive recyclers of course.
As you may guess dismantling a hybrid requires different knowledge and safety procedures than with a traditional gas powered vehicle. Van Batenburg has made a career out of training automotive professionals how to work on these vehicles.
If you own a hybrid and have had to replace a part I am sure that you are very aware that the cost from the dealer can be astronomical. The more auto salvage yards that are able to properly dismantle hybrid vehicles and salvage the good parts for re-sale, the better off the consumer will be in the end.
The seminar that we attended was informational and encouraging but was not an official training. We hope to bring hybrid dismantling to East Coast Auto Salvage in the near future. When we do we will be sure to post to our blog, so be sure to check back often.
The third extremely exciting highlight of the show for us was the release of the Parts Hotlines e-commerce system for auto recyclers.
The Parts Hotline is a system that has a history of over two decades of connecting and matching inventory from auto recyclers from across the country. This has allowed the recyclers to locate out of stock parts for their customers in an instant.
Hotlines has now developed a system that will bring the recyclers inventory right to the consumer in a live on-line search with the ability to purchase over the web.
The main website for this nationwide parts search is www.partshotlines.com. If you are a consumer and have not checked out this site yet it is not to be missed. If you are an auto recycler and not a hotlines member then you can not afford to overlook this opportunity.
The other part of the new system that Hotlines is offering to recyclers is the option of installing a live ecommerce store on their website that allows the customer to look up the part they need, order it and pay for it all without ever picking up the phone.
We know that there is a growing demand by consumer to be able to purchase auto parts on the web in this manner, but as an auto recycler we have faced many challenges while trying to populate our inventory to online market places like eBay and Amazon.
Currently we only list about 2,500 parts in our eBay store (East Coast eBay Store). Part Hotline will allow us to make our 100,000 part inventory available 24/7 to our retail customers. We hope to have this new e-commerce store installed on our website www.ecautosalvage.com by the end of this week. As soon as we do we will be sure to let you know.
Overall the IT Show 2009 was a great success. We took away a lot of great information to help improve our business. The event also helped raise thousands of dollars for charity, specifically the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Hartford Children’s Hospital. To see more photos and details of the event please visit www.meetusatit.com.
Clam Bake at the IT Show
