Dear Start My Car,

I don’t know if you know this, but our products are defined as a “Drop in replacement part.” What this means that the product needs to be exactly the same as the one being replaced.

How does this work? Well, traditionally a mechanic removes the broken part and heads over to a spare shop. The salesman identifies the product based on the vehicle model. If he doesn’t have a match, he’ll take a few similar ones off the shelf and compares them to the sample, in the hope that he finds the correct one.

In some ways it’s an art, assisted by experience. If the salesman has experience, the chance of a correct part are good. But if he is a novice - he might use the “get out of jail free” cards and say “Agents only” or “scrap yard” . 

One of the struggles that we had at Start My Car when starting to sell replacement parts online is that the product matching was very broad. Where an item can fit a few different vehicles and they would be catalogued as such, for example “Front brake pad for Hyundai i10 and Atos”. In the early days we followed this model, however what works for a spare shop (as they can physically compare all the Hyundai i10 and Atos options to the sample in front of them) doesn’t necessarily work online and we had to come up with an alternative method.

This is when the Start My Car matching engine and Car Parc was born. We’ve structured our car parc to be as vehicle specific as possible and as soon as we identify a change in a specific model it gets added as a new vehicle in the car parc. This takes the guessing out of the equation and if the accurate model and year is selected, the accurate parts are supplied.

I hope that these background pieces are helpful and give you some perspective and insight into our industry.

Next week we’ll discuss how we assist to make sure the correct vehicle model is selected.

Have a fantastic and safe weekend.

Regards,

Baruch.