Los Angeles— Auto Supply Co. (ASC), now with four locations, has been serving the Los Angeles community for 77 years, making it L.A.’s oldest independent family-owned auto parts business, Co-owner David Scher said.
“In 1932 our grandfather Sam opened an auto salvage business in what is now our parking lot,” Scher said. “And we’ve continued to thrive by focusing on the basics: personalized, expert service, good value, and reliable parts availability.”
“In 1961 our father, Stan, closed the salvage business and opened the auto parts store,” said David Scher’s brother and co-owner, Steve Scher, adding that he has worked at the store most of his life.
The Los Angeles location has continued to grow since then, David Scher said. It now covers nearly a half-block and houses a fully stocked warehouse with hundreds of radiators, motor and transmission mounts, batteries, and electrical parts, he said. Plus, the business has a large retail showroom and a recently modernized machine shop, he added.
“We had a choice--close the machine shop or invest in modern equipment,” Scher said. In the past 15 years, many traditional stores with machine shops have been replaced by major retailers who don’t even have brake lathes, he said.
“So we invested $80,000 in new equipment, and the investment is paying off,” he said. “For example, our new pressure tester allows us to check for cracks without disassembling the heads, and now we can weld cracked heads immediately.
“Over the years, ASC has grown through careful acquisitions, rather than starting stores from scratch,” Scher said. Their second retail location was purchased in the late ’70s in East Los Angeles, he said, and their Bell Gardens location was added in 1999; in 2000 they purchased a store in Huntington Park.
“Today our L.A. store accounts for about 50 percent of our business, East L.A. about 25 percent and the other 25 percent is split about evenly between Bell Gardens and Huntington Park,” Scher said.
“Our business is about 55 percent retail and 45 percent wholesale right now because people are keeping their cars longer and doing more of their own work,” he said. “Our retail business is expanding while our installer business is flat. However, we expect our installer business will resume its growth soon. It’s inevitable.”
To help ASC’s customers become better trained, Scher said they offer technical clinics in Spanish several times a year. “We used to have a local trainer who held clinics every other month, which was great. Since he’s moved, we’ve relied on the manufacturer’s trainers to help us, and we just held a very successful seminar with our wholesale customers on marketing in a down economy.”
Scher said ASC stocks more than 250,000 parts, tools, chemicals and accessories. “We have $4 million in parts on hand, and we’re investing more,” he said. “It’s one of the advantages we have; it takes a lot of cash to keep growing a business, so we funnel our profits right back into our operation.
“ASC prides itself on being the best place to buy quality name-brand auto parts like Goodyear, Raybestos, Hastings, and Standard Ignition,” Scher said. “But we also offer generic brands, which have the same products in the box at a substantial discounts.
“We have also invested heavily in the Dorman OE Solutions line,” Scher said. “Dorman offers a line of application-specific aftermarket hard parts for all domestic and import cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs that fit and function exactly like the OE equivalent.”
While experienced counter people have always been an important part of the company’s business, ASC also has a very intuitive Web site set up for both retail and wholesale customers, Scher said, adding that it is staffed by knowledge people and backed by telephone support with an online catalog, account, shipping and warranty information, and tech tips.
“The Web site is a new stage in the growth of our company as we move into the 21st century,” he said. “It’s the easiest way to locate and buy quality, name-brand auto parts at significant savings on the Internet.”
Scher said they have had moderate success with the retail portion of the online business, “But our wholesale customers aren’t taking advantage of the site dedicated to their installers as quickly as we’d hoped,” he said.
To keep ASC’s name in front of their regular customers, Scher said he uses several marketing techniques including direct mailings to retail customers who haven’t purchased in the past three months, in-store marketing in the form of new product flyers promoting special prices, “pull-through” sale catalogs with the company imprint from his suppliers, and even the Internet.
“We were interviewed by BestDealsTV, and we posted the video on our Web site and on You Tube; we get a lot of response from that.
“We are expecting double digit growth in 2009. Soon people in our local economy will be back to working full time. Our mission now is to get ready for it,” Scher said.
