Look, selling parts online is not for everybody.
Some dealerships enjoy the thrill of waiting for the phone to ring. Some genuinely love babysitting aging inventory until it qualifies for a museum exhibit. Some wake up every morning and think:
“You know what would make today better? Chasing down more wholesale collections.”
Respect.
So before you go and complicate your life with online revenue from shoppers all over the country, here are five very solid reasons your dealership should absolutely avoid selling parts online.
1. You love obsolescence
There’s nothing wrong with keeping twelve-year-old floor mats on the shelf until the sun burns out.
Call it ✨character inventory.✨
Every parts department has that section of the bin system where old parts go to develop emotionally. You walk by them every day. They’ve become family.
Selling online ruins all that.
Suddenly, weird niche parts start moving because someone three states away actually needs them. Very inconvenient.
One dealership, Jake Sweeney Chevrolet, reduced obsolescence from 12% to under 1% on roughly $2.5M in inventory after signing up to sell online.
Terrible news if your goal is preserving dusty inventory for future generations.
Another store, Parkway Chevrolet, built specific online strategies around aging inventory and marketplace sales to move parts before they became dead money. Now they sell $4M a year online.
Honestly? Sounds awful.
2. You enjoy accounts receivable drama
Nothing gets the blood pumping like chasing down unpaid wholesale invoices.
You call.
They “mailed the check.”
You call again.
Accounting’s “looking into it.”
Thirty-seven days later you finally get paid for brake pads and emotional damage.
Online parts sales completely wreck this experience because customers pay upfront.
Very boring.
Ourisman Toyota built an online parts business doing over $8M annually with more than 32,000 orders a year, and one of the biggest advantages they called out was immediate payment at checkout.
As they put it:
“As soon as you get the sale, the money’s there.”
Sounds like a bit of a nightmare for anyone emotionally attached to receivables aging reports.
3. You definitely want more phone calls
Your counter staff probably doesn’t have enough going on already.
So why let customers order online when they could:
- call for pricing
- call for availability
- call back because they forgot the VIN
- call again to ask if the part shipped
- call one final time just to spiritually complete the cycle
Modern online tools remove way too much chaos from the process.
Dover Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram talked about how structured online workflows helped turn eCommerce from “complete chaos” into a manageable daily process.
Meanwhile, Murfreesboro Nissan grew from roughly $25K/month to over $50K/month online while operating with a ONE-PERSON parts department.
Which is unfortunate if your long-term strategy is: “Have Steve answer every question manually until he retires.”
4. You think selling online means hiring more people
This one comes up constantly.
Parts managers hear “sell online” and immediately picture:
- forklifts flying around the building
- three extra employees
- total operational meltdown
- UPS trucks crashing through the service drive
In reality, most successful online operations got there by building repeatable processes, not giant teams.
Some of the strongest online performers started small. Really small.
We’re talking one-person small.
Murfreesboro Nissan intentionally paused marketplace growth at one point because volume exceeded what one person could comfortably handle. Too many parts orders. Pretty bad problem to have, right?
Most parts departments already know how to:
- look up parts
- fulfill orders
- communicate with customers
- ship inventory
Online sales just expand the reach. That’s it.
It’s wholesale without the truck.
Without the driver.
Without the fuel bill.
Without praying somebody pays you eventually.
5. You’re totally fine letting other dealerships take your national demand
This is probably the best reason not to sell parts online.
Because somebody else absolutely will.
Right now, dealerships all over the country are shipping parts nationally while some stores are still debating whether eCommerce is “worth looking into.”
Meanwhile:
- McDavid Honda grew from $2,400 in monthly online sales to more than $145,000 per month simply by giving it an honest shot.
- Bommarito Auto Group scaled one store from $42K to over $100K monthly in a year.
- Parkway Chevrolet pushed past $4M in online sales by growing eBay and Amazon operations.
Not because they discovered magic.
Because they stopped treating online like some mysterious tech project and started treating it like what it actually is: Another profitable sales channel.
Here’s the Part Nobody Likes Saying Out Loud
The dealerships winning online aren’t smarter than you.
They’re not all massive operations.
They are not full of tech-savvy guys.
Most of them just decided they were tired of being limited by whoever happened to walk through the door or call the counter that day.
And once you understand that online parts sales behave a lot like wholesale:
- lower margin
- higher volume
- immediate payment
- scalable reach
- incremental gross profit
…it starts making a whole lot more sense.
That’s where RevolutionParts comes in as a complete parts commerce solution built specifically for dealership parts departments that want to grow without turning the operation upside down. Parts departments just like yours.
Web store.
eBay and Amazon selling.
Shipping tools.
Digital Marketing.
Order management.
All connected.
So yes.
You absolutely should not sell parts online.
Unless you like moving inventory, generating incremental gross profit, and reaching customers outside your ZIP code.
In that case, you should probably book a demo.
Still Think Selling Parts Online Is a Terrible Idea?
Good. Keep letting other dealerships ship parts to your customers. Or book a demo and see how stores are turning inventory into incremental gross profit.
