Leading South African motor businesses - from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and component makers, through to retail dealers and workshops - are considering the implications of an extraordinary e-mail message inviting them to join a pioneering business-to-business (B2B) marketplace on the Internet.
There is a mounting behind-the-scenes scramble for strategic positions in providing online B2B e-commerce facilities for the motor business in SA as well as around the world.
Now a local family parts distribution business that has grown since 1947 out of a bicycle store in the Free State has gone public with a functioning Web system for both the trade and private motorists. It has notified a wide range of local motor business interests that it is opening up its system and offering it as the South African standard.
The man behind the project is Victor Greenwood, the 39-year-old MD of Gyro Automotive Systems, Johannesburg, who has already done a million rand deal with Midas and is predicting a monthly turnover for his www.sparesnet.com of between R35 million and R65 million by the end of this year.
He will be one of the presenters in the special automotive e-commerce session at the CAR Conference at Auto Africa on 25 October.
The Sparesnet system had its origins in the long-established Goldco Motor & Cycle Supplies family parts business. To remain neutral in the new online B2B parts market, Goldco ceded all rights in the system to Gyro Automotive Systems.
At Gyro, Greenwood and his ten-person team have spent nearly three years capturing and processing the catalogues of parts makers, importers and distributors - in some cases, he says, having to make hundreds of corrections to the data. Gyro also developed software to facilitate online searching through OEM parts lists covering most of the cars and light commercials on SA`s roads.
Greenwood says that nearly 140 businesses are already participating in Sparesnet and taking orders by e-mail.
The end result - as demonstrated to CARtoday.com - is the ability for a motorist or workshop to build online the list of parts needed for a particular job, get prices from one or more sources, place orders for low cost delivery anywhere within SA, estimate the labour requirement and prepare a quote or confirm a job and book it into the workshop schedule.
Registered members of the motor trade have password access to this virtual automotive market and get trade prices, while private motorists are given the prices charged by retail outlets. Both - by manipulating the ability of Windows software to create multiple screen displays - can do comparison shopping.
It is possible to place orders online with importers, wholesalers and distributors, and manufacturers.
"My aim is to increase efficiencies that will save enormous amounts of money for the trade and private motorists in SA," says Greenwood. "I do not want to disrupt how the motor trade does its parts ordering - my family has been in the parts distribution business for three generations. But the Internet offers ways of eliminating waste, cost and time for everyone`s benefit."
He plans to list his Gyro company next year and is recruiting more participants in Sparesnet so that it is established as a standard in the automotive sector.
"All in the motor business can work towards a common goal, while continuing to compete with each other within their sectors," maintains Greenwood.
All the banks that are financing cars and insurance companies are being invited to participate.
"Our system need not interfere with the existing networks or in-house systems that are in place, but create another distribution channel to offer more buyers and sellers choice," Greenwood says.
He is also developing a special breakdown emergency service for motorists and fleets to enable the Web-based database to facilitate communications between drivers in trouble and the towing services through the new Wireless Application Protocol cellular phone system.
The Gyro business plan envisages revenues generated from two sources: commissions on orders placed through it over the Internet, and dividends and increases in share value coming from its own envisaged growth as an e-business.
"Gyro is not going to interfere with the market structures in place," Greenwood emphasises. "Each client controls his own site and who can or cannot order from their own online e-business systems. I have developed an additional common automotive market in which everyone can join - something that provides a standardised, easy-to-use electronic online ordering system all the way from manufacturers through to the consumer.
"We intend to service a market worth R196 billion, initially in SA and then exploiting the international potential because we own the source code and software application for a working automotive B2B business."
Share