My attempt at building a billion dollar company!

December 2015 I finally sold my ecommerce auto parts company after 9 months of stressful due diligence. For the first time in 26 years I was an employee. Roll on 18 months and I had quit. Instead of the sale enabling me to pursue my tech dreams it had put multiple layers of management between an idea and deployment.

Fortunately the time hasn’t been wasted; I’d joined a boxing gym and discovered running. As a serial entrepreneur this was something new and I now found that ideas were coming to me without any conscious effort.

It was only a matter of time before I ‘started again’, not due to financial need but more to prove a point that a theory I’d had about vehicle parts could be done.

In order to prevent any hasty departures from an early pseudo retirement I made a list that needed to fulfilled before I started again:

• No staff – I’ve had the enormous payroll stresses.
• No stock – It requires space, lots of money, it keeps coming back when you think you’ve seen the end of it….
• No premises – I’ve had my £2million mortgage stress thanks.
• No customer service questions. I’ve dealt with 2000 emails a day.No returns – the biggest unseen cost.High Barrier to entry – no point building perfection if it can be copied.
• Low start up costs – if all else fails I’ll continue retirement.
• global opportunity – it’s gotta be big!
• Scalable – it’s gotta have legs!
• Generate revenue – the tough one.

THE PROBLEM that needs solving

At least 2/3rds of vehicle part applications have more than one part that may be compatible, determined by various criteria which varies across all parts and is usually hidden within their specifications.

This leads to the industry standard high returns rate of 20%+

This problem comes about because every part manufacturer seems to create their own application catalog. Each describes the fitment application differently meaning comparing one part to another can be time consuming and complex.

The solution

I created a small team of three that have developed a system that analyses ALL available parts and presents one question to determine which part type is required.

We can then present whole groups of compatible parts, enabling the customer to choose a specific brand, price or location to suit their needs.

By reducing the information required from the customer to a maximum of a single question we will be the first to enable the of use VOICE to order the correct parts. After all, despite the parts being available on amazon, if someone (Alexa) were to read out the specifications for even three different parts, a human isn’t able to remember the specs and then compare their differences.

How it works

We have a server crawling the internet bringing back the part information to our server. Our analysis engine PartIQ (intelligent question) sorts the parts based on their specifications and calculates the differences between them. This information forms the basis for the single question that will be asked.

What are aftermarket and OE parts?

The primary difference between an Original Equipment part supplies by a main dealer and an equivalent part supplied by a third party is that the manufacturer, using the vehicle identification numbers can identity EXACTLY which part was originally fitted and therefore supply an identical match. Unfortunately this VIN based information isn’t available outside of the dealer networks.

So where are we now and what have we learnt?

There are TWO ways to go on a long journey to a destination unknown. The first is to meticulously plan a route, alternative routes and try and pack for every possible hiccup.

The second is to jump in your car and head north confident in the knowledge that’s the rough direction and that you can worry about the specifics when you’re a little closer.

From day one I knew my theory of creating a system to analyse all the parts would be of great use to a company such as Amazon who spend approximately £20 million on automotive returns alone but first I had to prove to myself that the system worked so we created a platform www.CompareTheCarPart.com to test the theory- and yes! Technically it works amazingly! Now instead of being shown dozens of seemingly compatible but essentially different parts, you’re asked just one question and THEN shown all the parts.

This platform is the logical foundation for our Alexa app.

I’ll update on how that development is going over the next few weeks.