Sept. 3, 2021—A new survey has uncovered that about half of independent repair shops reported purchasing parts from publicly available websites, a decrease from 2020 but an increase from 2019.
The IMR Inc. study of 500 independent repair shops uncovered 50.6 percent reported purchasing parts from websites like Amazon, eBay, RockAuto and JC Whitney, a significant decrease from 2020 when 74.7 percent used the method. However, the 2021 figure is much larger than 2019 when only 36.2 percent of shops used those publicly available sites.
Overall, survey data showed that independent repair shops’ use of public ecommerce websites to purchase parts has declined from 2020, with the most cited reason for this decline being the resolution of major parts delays caused by COVID-19 (50.6 percent of responses). Shops also reported that public ecommerce website delivery takes too long (42.9 percent) and 43.2 percent said that their regular parts suppliers were less expensive than public ecommerce websites.
