How Hiller CDJR Turned One Tuesday Into a Six-Figure Online Parts Business
Estimated read time: 10 minutes
Hiller CDJR's online parts business is doing over $100,000 a month now, with a $200,000 target just six months out. For a long stretch, though, it looked nothing like that. More like 15 orders on a good day, sometimes fewer. Then one Tuesday, the count hit 90. More orders in a single day than the parts department had ever seen.
Even the general manager didn't see it coming. When he asked if anything had changed with the online orders, Elijah Richards-Auld told him the real number, and he was just as caught off guard as everyone else.
That one day didn't just prove the strategy was working, it changed how the whole department operated from there on out.
The Slow Build (And The Dip Before The Breakthrough)
The Tuesday spike didn't come out of nowhere. It came after months of sitting stuck. Hiller's online parts business had been parked around $35,000 to $40,000 a month for a while, even after joining eBay. Steady, but not exactly taking off.
That changed when they joined RevolutionParts' consulting program, working with Jensay and Ben on growing sales.
The account dipped below standard during the transition. "We did take a dip on eBay, we went below standard," Elijah says. "But I want to say a month after we came back, the sales just started coming in greatly."
A month of uncertainty, then the numbers did exactly what they'd been promised they would.
What Moved The Needle
Ask Elijah what the consulting program changed, and it comes down to something surprisingly unglamorous. Our photos were bad, and nobody was fixing them.
"The more we have, the more people will look," Elijah says, comparing real product photos and full descriptions to competitors still using generic stock images. It's the kind of detail easy to skip past when you're focused on the bigger strategy, but it's also the difference between a listing that gets clicked and one that gets scrolled past.
The other piece was advertising, handled by the RevolutionParts marketing agency, which helped put the newly-improved listings in front of the right people.
Customer Service As A Strategy
Hiller CDJR is a small, family-owner dealership, and Elijah is upfront about what that means for how they treat online customers.
You might be thinking, “That’s what they all say”, and you might have a point. But for this dealership, it isn’t just a nice line, and it shows up how the online store functions for the dealership.
Customers who'd never heard of Hiller find them through a listing, place an order, and realize they're in the same state. Some of them start showing up in person after that.
The online store isn't just selling parts to strangers on the internet, it's building a local customer base that didn't know the dealership existed a month earlier.
Cleaning Up Aging Inventory Along The Way
Every parts department deals with stock that just sits there, whether it be parts that were ordered for a job that never happened, or a model year nobody’s buying anymore. Hiller's been chipping away at that problem through the same online channels driving their growth.
It wasn't instant. The drop happened over about four to five months, but it's the kind of win that doesn't show up in a headline revenue number and still goes straight to the bottom line.
Growing Up With The Store
Elijah didn't start this job as an eCommerce specialist. He started around 19 or 20 years old, and the online store itself was barely a year into existence, with fewer than 1,000 orders total.
Four and a half years later, they're running a six-figure-a-month operation. Ask what he’s proud of, though, and it's not the revenue number.
That, alongside watching the business itself grow up alongside them. "Watching it go from very slow to, oh my god, this is really turning into something."
30-Day Online Sales
Lessons For Other Dealers
Ask Elijah what he'd tell a parts manager who thinks they don't have the time or people to make online sales work, and the answer isn't a shortcut, it's patience.
It doesn't happen in week one. It happens because someone stays on top of it, checking emails, answering questions fast, not letting a slow response turn into a lost customer. And it helps to have the right person doing it…someone genuinely enthusiastic about the work, not just available to do it.
Hiller didn't have a bigger team or a bigger budget than most dealerships starting out. They had time, the right support, and someone willing to stick with it long enough to watch it work.
arts manager who thinks they don't have the time or people to make online sales work, and the answer isn't a shortcut, it's patience.
See What RevolutionParts Could Do For Your Parts Department
If your parts department is still sitting on the sidelines, or you've got one dealer doing it right and the rest of the group hasn't caught on yet, book a chat with a RevolutionParts ecommerce specialist to see what setting up online could look like for you.