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0 Items in cart: $0.00Pictures Pictures Pictures! A picture says a thousand words right? Of course it does and in the ever changing world of buying, selling and communicating, pictures and video have started to play a vital role in our lives. Everything around us uses photography to convey a message, sell us a product or to accent our daily lives. Pictures play a really important role in the automotive industry for buying and selling parts. For over a hundred years, mechanics have used diagrams to fix cars while salesmen have used brochures to sell cars. Without photography in the Auto industry who knows where we’d be right now.
By now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with auto parts and especially used auto parts. Well a lot of people don’t realize that taking pictures is a huge deal for us in the parts business. Dealerships have diagrams to see what their new parts look like and how they fit together. Aftermarket manufactures usually have file photos of each SKU to show what the part looks like. As a used seller we don’t have any documentation on the parts we sell. Often time’s we can’t even ID the part until it’s removed from the vehicle.
Relaying the correct part information to our buyers is one thing we put a lot of time and effort into. Every single one of our 50,000 used auto parts is different. Every part has a different amount of wear, different colors, part numbers, sizes etc. It can get mind numbing at times to think about it. When you buy used auto parts online, knowing what you’re getting is half the battle. Unfortunately in our industry it’s much easier to have a bad experience then a positive one but at Tom’s Foreign we’re out to change that.
Our inventory is ever changing so meeting the demands of our internet customers has been challenging. Imagine having hundreds of parts coming in and going out each day, every one different in its own right. Our solution has been to work the picture taking process into our everyday business. All of our employees understand the importance of clean parts and how a picture can be the difference between making a sale and not making a sale. We use wireless camera technology, custom photo booths and custom software to stream line capturing pictures. Each part that we handle off the car gets cleaned and then photographed before it’s stored inside our warehouse.
When you’re shopping for a used auto part online it’s very important that you know who you’re dealing with and what you’re buying. The sellers you want to deal with are the ones that are going the extra mile. Taking pictures of our inventory was no small task, our point and shoot cameras have each clocked over 1 million pictures and counting with our server housing over 300,000 pictures of our current inventory. The feedback we’ve gotten from our customers has been exceptional and it’s made all the extra effort worth it.
So next time you’re searching for a used auto part online, take a look at who it is you’re buying from. Are they using generic file photos? Do they have some long speech on their website about how hard it is and how it raises costs? Or do they just completely refuse to do it? These aren’t places you want to buy from. Whether you buy from us or not, buy from someone that goes that extra mile. Help us push our industry forward by demanding the best from your used auto parts seller.
