Why don't more dealers offer parts and spares online, eBay etc?

fergie35

Member
Location
Oxfordshire
It's not just agriculture that deals with lots of different product lines.

There are hundreds of eccommerce packages that can receive a CSV file from a manufacture, and 'import' it daily to updates prices. Millions of eccommerce outfits do exactly that, triaging the fact that many of the importers and distributors are utterly useless at online marketing and customer service.
Many are just 'drop shippers', passing the order back to the supplier to be fulfilled, leaving the customer none the wiser.

Ibcos Gold might package it all up into an easy to buy package but it's certainly not irreplaceable.

Card purchase commission is a bit of a pain but in reality it's beans and certainly less than the cost of borrowing money to lend to customers in the form of credit accounts.

The thing with Gold is it does all the accounts, payroll, commission structures, wholegoods, parts, CRM, serial number stocking, workshop control including barcode scanning on and off jobs, tablet control for technicians in the field to schedule their own jobs and complete jobs etc, hire fleet management, workshop scheduler, marketing suite etc... all in one package, hence the cost and reluctance of any dealer looking to move to any other way of doing it, and probably 98% of all main dealerships use it and have been for 20 odd years, the archive and history of information stored in it is vast. It is a credible system proven without gremlins and works. I'm sure if a credible alternative that can do it all come along, people will look at it. As said earlier there is only a small audience for such software so the prices are going to go up for it now down sadly.

To add to @Cowabunga thoughts on DOS, there is a windows version, but that costs even more and has higher server requirements from what I can gather, we do have some users on it at work.
 

HolzKopf

Member
Location
Kent&Snuffit
Any business that sells to the public ignores the competition of an online shop at its peril - and it's typical of a dinosaur mentality. Some don't know the word 'progress' and some don't know the difference between that and service. How many times have we heard that a business - be it farming, building or otherwise - deals year in year out with the same merchant, dealer, shop, etc because it always has done, perhaps for a couple of generations. A bacon roll at the county show, a christmas calendar and a bottle of scotch cannot compensate for slow service, concealed pricing and overstaffing. They will fail sooner or later when the support of the 'good old customers' runs out when the 'good old customers' themselves disappear.
Today you have to offer both service, price and availability. Any product can be googled, any spare sourced - new or used and in many cases paid for by PayPal or card and despatched the same day. A fairly high value item - any tool or bit of kit e.g. a pressure washer let's say can be investigated, compared, priced and then ordered and delivered from a source, even overseas, that you have never dealt with before - or likely to deal with again. You don't need 'an account' monthly invoices or statements and, if it's no good or you've just changed your mind, send it back for a full refund.
This is commerce in 2017 and just as the high street is disappearing, ag dealers that can't react to this change to offer countrywide sales of spares and a good price and with good back-up will struggle. There are plenty of technical savvy, specialist shops online that do just that.
We all appreciate service and most of us that buy and sell online have caught a cold now and then but in the main, like it or not, it's here to stay and will progress at a rate of knots.
HK
 
Many points to address here. First fast moving parts are nearly always available online much cheaper than from local stores. Belts filters seals bearings paint tyres etc are a no brainer for online purchase.
Slower moving bits such as clutches pumps electrical are often available from dealers online at a discount or by the catalogue people such as sparex.
Dealers are usually not allowed to offer the parallel parts as part of their dealership agreement so don't tell you.
If you look you can usually find what you are looking for overseas and import it cheaper than UK sourced.
You can't have your local dealer and not support them.
The manufacturers are worried and now tying customers to the dealers with software embedded in the machines eg injector commissioning. You can buy the pirate software to diy but may be open to legal action.
I don't buy much equipment so it's irrelevant to me if the dealers go tits up and i source parts as cheaply as possible. I used to find that the dealer had to put parts on back order so i had to wait anyway so may as well buy over the net.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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