Bell Honda

Shifting Gears of Ecommerce

Joe Tesensky saw a shift in the way consumers were buying auto parts online. He started noticing a decline in referral traffic to his ecommerce site, and a steady increase in sales on his thriving eBay store. People were browsing on search engines and purchasing their parts on marketplaces. So, he expanded his ecommerce operations by selling on Amazon. “People are going straight to Amazon, not searching on Google.”

At first, getting a small selection of his auto parts inventory onto Amazon wasn’t easy. It was a manual process to keep his inventory levels updated. “I would export my inventory to an Excel spreadsheet and then import it into Amazon manually, every day,” Joe says. “If the inventory is not in sync, you sell something you don’t have or you miss a selling opportunity on something you do have in stock.”

In addition, the way he was shipping and fulfilling orders was inefficient. Because his shipping software was not cloud-based, he could only access it from one terminal in his department. When it came to picking and fulfilling orders, it was clumsy for his team to access a single terminal in their warehouse. Overall, it was very manual and inefficient to scale sales on Amazon.

The Breakthrough Solution

To grow sales on Amazon, Joe utilized Altos Digital’s software and services.  This made it effortless to synchronize inventory on Amazon and easily list thousands of auto parts. “Within a couple of weeks Altos Digital had all our inventory on Amazon,” Joe says. Now, their internal dealer management system (DMS) communicates their on-hand inventory quantities with Amazon to match what they have on the shelf. The system even automates the prices so they stay competitive and profitable.

“Within the first 30 days of using Altos Digital’s solution we saw a 200% increase in sales without eating away at our profit margin.”

To improve the efficiency of order fulfillment, Joe switched to ShipStation from their old shipping software. The new cloud-based shipping platform made it much easier for Joe’s team to handle the high order volumes, compare live shipping rates, and fulfill orders on time.

“With ShipStation, you can create a shipment and print labels from any device.”

ShipStation has helped to eliminate human error in the warehouse. Now Joe and his team save the bin location for every product in ShipStation, which enables them to print it on each packing slip. When they batch a group of orders, it saves time being able to organize by location. Pickers can stay in one section of the warehouse, grab all the product, and move to the next group. They use a scan gun to pull up the order right where they are to ensure they’ve picked the right part every time.

Explosive Growth and Revenue

Altos Digital and ShipStation gave Joe the software and support to drive extraordinary sales, profit, and efficiency. In 2015, they had $1.5 million in online sales. Since implementing Altos Digital, ShipStation, and Amazon, they’re approaching the $5 million mark in annual sales! 

Learn more about selling on Amazon and other marketplaces with Altos Digital:

Learn how to make your shipping faster, easier and more affordable with ShipStation: