Moving the Business Focus Of Dixie Sales From Automotive To Outdoor Power Equipment Service Parts.
In the 1970’s, an organization called the Greensboro Jobbers Association, met once a month at various local restaurants for dinner and a meeting. There were about a dozen automotive parts jobbers in Greensboro who were members. Many of these businesses sold automotive engine repair parts including “hard” parts such as internal engine parts like pistons or valves, plus other parts like oil and air filters, spark plugs, carburetor rebuild kits, generators, alternators, brake shoes and discs, etc. DSC did not sell any automotive engine “hard” parts, just parts that were generally used in the DSC automotive service department for electrical, brake and front-end, tune-up and speedometer and taxi meters. Jobbers had parts counters for wholesale sales to independent garages, car dealers, and consumers.
Most jobbers also had a machine shop for boring out cylinders, pressing-in bearings, etc. The automotive service department at DSC had “drive-in” service capabilities and did very little machine shop services other than “turning” i.e. truing-up brake drums and disc rotors.
A very expensive service provided by automotive parts jobbers was “hot-shot” delivery. A car dealer or independent garage would call a jobber and ask if they had a particular part or item. If the jobber had the part then the customer expected delivery within an hour or less. Keeping a pickup truck and a person available for hot-shot delivery plus often acting as a delivery man to pick up parts for the Dixie Sales service department was very expensive. Dixie Sales also offered hot-shot delivery to outdoor power equipment (OPE) repair shops. I remember many times seeing a delivery man go out to deliver a part costing less than $5.00. The practice was very hard to put a stop to, because it was seen as a competitive “edge” in service. Fortunately, once most of the parts being sold were outdoor power equipment parts, hot-shot delivery ended at Dixie Sales. The case was made easier by the fact that there really wasn’t any local competition for OPE parts and we asked our OPE parts customers to make daily pickups of needed parts or stock more inventory.
Some jobbers also had route delivery salesmen, who traveled a set territory different days of the week, delivering what was ordered that week or had been received recently from a supplier. DSC had two in 1969. These sales/route delivery positions at DSC were jobs that L.H. Jack Starmer and his son Ernest performed in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the 1970’s these jobs were held by Robert (Bob) Wallick and William (Bill) Cheek. Customers would call in their automotive or OPE parts orders, and our salesmen would deliver the orders on their daily routes.
Car dealerships could buy parts directly from the car manufacturers they represented. But they also had no hesitation in purchasing parts as needed directly from local parts jobbers like DSC. Car dealerships were important customers to auto parts jobbers including DSC, as were independent garages in small towns surrounding Greensboro like Burlington, Liberty, Siler City, Reidsville, Eden, Colfax, Yanceyville, etc. The only auto parts jobber that at that time slightly resembled the auto parts chains of today like Advance Auto were the NAPA part stores which also had machine shops on site. Many of these small independent garages had also diversified into repairing outdoor power equipment.
Auto parts jobbers purchased their parts from automotive parts warehouses distributors, often referred to as WD’s. Some of the WD’s actually owned some or all of their jobbers outright. Some jobbers like DSC had an automotive service department and thus were a potential customer for other jobbers. DSC purchased their parts from automotive parts warehouse distributors in Winston-Salem, Raleigh and Charlotte. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, warehouse distributors began selling the customers of jobbers i.e. independent garages and new car dealer service shops at pricing close or even better than their direct to jobber pricing.
What was at issue was the huge spread between WD cost on an automotive part and the inflated suggested retail list price. Most businesses did not sell anyone at a part’s actual list price. In a printed price list for automotive parts, the list price was shown, then a trade price, a dealer price, and a jobber price. And there was also the actual cost a WD purchased a part at that was much lower than the jobber price. In the 1970’s, WD’s were selling jobbers at a discount off of jobber price i.e. jobber less 10% or less 15%, 20% or even less 25%. And the WD still made money. In our automotive service department, we typically sold automotive service parts to consumers on their repair orders at trade price because we made a very good profit selling at that price level. If we sold a part like an air filter over the parts counter to a consumer, the price was also typically the trade price, not the inflated list/retail price.
Slowly but surely, WD’s began selling directly to jobbers larger customers and eventually all their customers at jobber pricing or better. The negative impact on profitability of jobbers was immediate. And it caused jobbers to reexamine their role in the automotive parts sales channel. If the function of jobbers was no longer needed in the channel, then jobbers had to reinvent themselves, become part of a bigger organization by being purchased or merging, accept a reduction in or elimination of volume, and no matter your choice, the result was always lower gross margin.
We decided in the early 1970’s we had two choices we could make: we could become an auto parts warehouse distributor as DSC once was years before and sell large volumes of parts at very low margin. Or we could continue to sell automotive service parts through our automotive service department at fair margins, sell automotive parts to other current customers on an opportunistic basis at some margin and focus on growing the outdoor power equipment parts distribution business.
How Dixie Sales Got Into the Outdoor Power Equipment and Engine Parts Business
Odell Hardware was a Greensboro based hardware business incorporated in 1884 that evolved in the 1940’s into a hardware wholesaler selling directly to independent hardware stores across the southeast. They asked Dixie Sales to carry repair parts for Motomower lawnmowers that they were wholesaling in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Motomowers were manufactured in Richmond, IN. Dixie Sales soon added repair parts for Pincor, Reo and Continental lawnmowers.
Briggs and Stratton manufactured ignitions, locks and keys for automobiles and eventually began producing small air-cooled engines for the powered washing machine appliance business. Some of the engines were used on motorcycles or motorcycle prototypes. Automotive locks and keys were sold to large automotive parts warehouses who then resold them to automotive parts jobbers who sold them to consumers, small independent garages and car dealerships. Most auto parts jobbers had a retail counter for walk-in consumer business, a drive-in automotive service business or more likely, a machine shop capable of pressing bearings on and off axles, or grinding or milling internal automotive parts like pistons or brake cylinders, or boring out piston cylinders. They also often employed a hot-shot delivery man that delivered parts to garages or car dealers on demand, and sometimes a route auto parts salesman who called on independent garages and car dealers on a regular consistent basis, often delivering parts ordered by the customer earlier in the week or on a previous visit.
At Dixie Sales, in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, first Jack Starmer and son, Ernest were salesmen traveling the small six county area (counties of Guilford, Randolph, Chatham, Alamance, Caswell, and Rockingham) calling on independent garages, car dealers, and some lawnmower repair shops (usually found at the small country automotive service shop. Ellis Snyder passed away in 1963 from liver cancer. Ernest Starmer, who was one of the route salesmen several days a week, went to the hospital bed of Ellis almost daily learning how to do the payroll and some simple bookkeeping. When Ellis passed away in 1963, Ernest took over the business and became the general manager. Not until 1969, did Ernest take a vacation, because of the burden of running Dixie Sales by himself. His father Jack Starmer, passed away on January 25, 1965, and Emmett Snyder passed away on May 1, 1972.
When the large automotive parts warehouses needed distribution for Briggs and Stratton air cooled engine parts, they logically turned to their parts jobbers; although not all auto parts jobbers were interested in carrying those types of parts. Dixie Sales had Briggs and Stratton locks and keys beginning in the 1920’s. in the 1940’s, Odell Hardware, by then a hardware wholesale distributor came calling looking for someone to carry lawn mower parts for their hardware store customers, it was logical for Dixie Sales to carry those parts lines. When air cooled companies like Clinton, Lauson Power Products (Tecumseh) or Kohler began producing engines, they too needed distribution for service parts or for selling engines to small local original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s) of engine powered equipment like lawnmowers. They too turned to automotive parts warehouses, often the very same ones selling Briggs and Stratton parts and engines. And they turned to those same automotive parts jobbers who had shown an inclination to diversify. Typically they chose only one parts jobber in a city or in rural areas one jobber who served several counties to handle lawn mower and air cooled engine parts.
To formalize the relationships between these large regional automotive parts warehouses and their chosen jobber partners for lawnmower and engine parts, the manufacturers called the warehouses Central Parts Distributors, the chosen Jobbers were called Service Distributors, and the service dealers who actually worked on the lawn and garden products and who signed an agreement with the Service Distributor and also with the Central to perform warranty service on a particular type of engine or equipment were called Authorized Service Dealers. Most of these Authorized Service Dealers were initially small independent garage (automotive service) customers of the jobbers who wanted to diversify their businesses and who had a long-time relationship with the jobber. Most of these small independent automotive service centers were already servicing outdoor power equipment and small air cooled engines. Central Distributors would sell only to Service Distributors; Service Distributors only to dealers at a dealer price, and also to consumers at a retail price over their own automotive parts counter.
There were about twenty-six Briggs and Stratton service distributors in North Carolina and eight to ten in South Carolina, all assigned and contracted by the current Briggs & Stratton Central Distributor, Carolina Rim and Wheel in Raleigh, NC. Each service distributor was assigned a handful of counties around their location that they were responsible for i.e. setting up contracted (authorized) warranty service centers. I believe Dixie Sales was assigned Guilford County that Greensboro was located in, Rockingham County to the north, Caswell County to the northeast, Alamance County to the east, Chatham Country to the southeast, and Randolph County to the south.
Carolina Rim and Wheel, primarily an automotive parts warehouse, was bought out by Automotive Electric Associates (AEA) in Charlotte, a larger automotive warehouse and its name was changed to AEA of Raleigh. Briggs and Stratton parts remained in AEA of Raleigh for many more years until they were consolidated into the Charlotte distribution center.
DSC was able to become an MTD service distributor instead of an MTD service dealer. That change in designation in the late 1960’s allowed us to purchase parts from the MTD Central Parts Distributor at a better discount and resell the very same parts directly to service centers and OPE dealers. It also allowed DSC to sign a contract with a service center allowing a service center to perform MTD warranty service, purchase parts from DSC at a service dealer discount off of list price set by MTD, and become known in their trade area as a local source for MTD product service and service parts. The more formal contractual relationship between DSC and a service dealer created a co-dependency between the two businesses. If DSC provided a high level of service, knowledge and high parts order-fill to one of its contracted service centers, then future business was assured. And the contracted service dealer on MTD became a target for becoming a contracted service dealer for other outdoor power equipment service parts lines.
It would suit our suppliers of OPE engine and mower parts if we remained a small regional parts supplier to small repair service shops and consumers; traveling our five or six county area; and not think about growth, becoming larger and eventually perhaps becoming a threat to the Central Parts Distributor itself. And most of the 26 Briggs and Stratton Service Distributors did just that; my words would be “looking into the face of opportunity with blinders on.” The issue for me was how to provide the very highest level of customer service. It was easy to see that the Briggs Central, by telling us we couldn’t sell outside our small county territory, ensured that we would never be able to invest in an inventory of parts that would provide exceptional parts service to our customers. We would only be able to invest in a small inventory of parts, limiting our sales growth and service abilities.
The only way to be able to afford to invest in additional inventory was to have the sales to justify the investment. Being a service distributor for Briggs and Stratton, Kohler and Tecumseh, gave us the ability to be able to sell these parts at dealer price to a contracted warranty service center within the Central’s assigned territory, even though our engine centrals were requesting us not to sell outside our small assigned county territory. Additional volume and the need to sign contracted service dealers as an Authorized Service Distributor or Central Service Distributor for OEM’s like MTD, Murray, Noma, Huffy, Gilson, and numerous others allowed Dixie Sales Company to look at its selling territory as being the largest OEM territory we had.
From six counties for the engine lines to adding in the early 1970’s North and South Carolina for MTD expanded our vision, our horizons and our volume. Signing dealers for numerous product lines, and having engine centrals whose territories were generally two states NC and SC, made it easy for DSC to sell its product lines to all service dealers, whether contracted or not, maintaining pricing ethics by selling only contracted service dealers at dealer price and selling all others at trade price. Remember that contracted service dealer price was normally List price (retail) less 40% except for short discount or net price items, and trade pricing to non-contracted service centers normally was List price less 25%. Service Distributors typically bought at List price less 55% and Central Distributors typically bought at List price less 65%.
As our inventories became deeper and broader in outdoor power equipment and engine coverage, our customer service levels improved to what I considered to be among the best in the country in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. Orders in those days were still received via telephone, fax machine or mail. What happened over the years was the spread of our positive reputation for customer service and for having a part in inventory when no one else did. What occurred was what I called the “seventh call syndrome.” A dealer would call their supplier and place an order for a part or multiple parts. The regular supplier many times did not have the part in stock. Remember the local or regional service distributor was stocking parts for their small multi-county territory, not for a state or multi-state region. They couldn’t generate enough capital on a limited sales base to invest in larger inventories. Thus the service center would go down their list making supplier calls searching for certain parts. Service Centers soon realized that there was one place who almost always had the parts they were looking for. And they thought “why do I continue making lots of calls and wasting my time, when I should just be calling the company who has the part and who treats me like a good customer on the phone.
It didn’t matter if it took three days longer to get the part from Dixie Sales than it did from their assigned supplier, paid full dealer price and full freight. They quickly learned, without a Dixie person visiting them or calling them or price cutting that the best parts supply and the best customer service was to be found in Greensboro, NC. Dixie Sales Company quickly moved to the top of their call lists. If good service and mediocre service costs the same, which would you choose?
Jim Starmer Joined the Business in 1969 and Richard Starmer in 1972
1969 was an interesting year. I (Jim) graduated from Wake Forest University. The Vietnam War was raging. The draft was in effect and all young men not in college over the age of 18 were assigned draft lottery numbers. I was getting married in June to Linda Taylor from Knightdale, NC.
Draft deferments for teachers had recently been eliminated, and thus my thoughts of becoming an American History teacher and a very good one at that, disappeared overnight. I had a low draft lottery number in the mid-sixties, and in the summer of 1969 had already gone to Charlotte, NC to have my army draft physical, which I passed with flying colors, except for almost passing out when they were drawing my blood. That could be because the medics couldn’t find a vein and, while I was watching, spent what seemed like hours probing around inside my arm with a very long needle.
During my college years I was not seriously considering working for the family business. All I could visualize happening there were seven very good automotive mechanics and a lawnmower mechanic working in one half of the building at 329 Battleground Ave, a shop clean-up man, and an assistant service manager and Uke Anthony, the service manager who had been there for many years. And a bunch of automotive parts taking up the other half of the building located at 327 Battleground Ave. The entire building at 327-29 Battleground Avenue always had the overwhelming smell of oil and grease in the air, even in the offices and bathrooms. How could one grow this type of business when there was no room for physical expansion?
My Dad had offered me a job to begin in July, 1969 for the then princely sum of $150.00 a week. If I got drafted into the Army, I knew I would soon be in Vietnam with the U.S. Army. In the fall of 1969, the wonderful lady Myrtle McClintock, who was the cashier at Dixie Sales for many, many years, received a phone call from her oldest son who served in the local Military Police National Guard Unit. The message was that she was supposed to tell her youngest son George and me that the local MP Guard unit would have 12 openings available in the next few weeks. George and I took the written tests on a Saturday and we both became part of the new group of future military policemen. We took our basic training in early 1970 at Fort Jackson near Columbia, SC and our military police training at Fort Gordon outside of Augusta, Georgia. Our readiness commitment required one weekend a month and two weeks every summer for training for the next six years. But it kept George and I out of the war in Vietnam.
When Richard came into the business full-time in 1972, he went directly into the service parts end of the business. When I started in 1969, I asked Dad (J.E.) what I would be doing first. I have never forgotten his response: “You’ll be doing everything I don’t like to do.” That was an honest answer as it turned out, but it didn’t supply me with much useful information initially. It turned out that what Dad didn’t like included all aspects of company bookkeeping and record-keeping, reconciling bank statements, and talking to all non-vendor sales people that would just walk in the front door with the intention of making a sales-pitch for their products. It also meant learning how to deal with all types of customers in the automotive service department as well as our small engine and mower parts dealer customers.
1970’S INTRODUCTION OF ELECTRONICS TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND PRODUCTIVITY
I began looking for ways and reasons we could use our fax machine that we had purchased at great cost to communicate with Lowe’s Companies and Mao Shing, with other suppliers. My first pitch was to Sandy Potter, the parts manager at Western International who made AMF and Dynamark push and riding lawnmowers. She canvased her organization in Des Moines, IA and found one fax machine currently in use in the entire plant in their export department. I convinced her that for communication purposes and for expediting orders that normally by USPS standards took a week to get to Iowa from NC would now get to her in a matter of minutes, cutting days off order lead time. We were her largest parts customer in the United States and she quickly saw the value of improving customer service by substantially reducing our order lead time.
Our campaign for convincing our suppliers that fax machines for communicating and reducing order lead time continued full-speed-ahead. In the following years, faxing orders to suppliers became the defacto standard in the industry. And then it was time to encourage our customers to reduce their order lead time by faxing their orders to their suppliers like DSC.
Our marketing campaign to our contracted service centers to encourage them to understand the value of using a fax machine to send us orders began in earnest in the mid to late 1970’s. Eventually we negotiated a contract with a local office machine dealer to purchase fax machines from them in quantities of 10 per order. The price was about $279.00 each to us. We would resell the fax machines to our dealers at our cost, and provide them with six to twelve month dating depending on their financing requirements.
Prior to placing fax machines throughout our service center base, we were one of the first in the OPE industry to have Code-A-Phone recorders that used recording tape spools, in use in our building tied to toll-free 800 numbers so that service centers could call in at any time of day or night and leave an order on the recorder. These actually became quite popular with our service centers. Orders still had to be transcribed, but use of Code-A-Phone recorders served a useful purpose for quite a few years. Remember that there were no PC’s or emails at this time. They were not a topic of conversation or much interest. Of course that would change over the coming years.
Another device we used at the Greene Street location and that traveled with us later when we moved to our Distribution Center in Browns Summit in 1988 was a phone “call sequencer.” Exponential growth, even from a smallish base at that time, challenged us constantly to maintain the exceptional customer service and parts availability we provided our customers and that they expected. The call sequencer was a stand-alone piece of equipment that incoming phone calls, having going through our simple phone switch at the time, would go to before the call triggered a ring. If we had five people dedicated to answering our phone lines, then in the call sequencer a certain number of phone lines was assigned to each person.
Typically it might be a total of five calls, so if the agent was on one line, the call sequencer “stacked” the next four calls and they would ring the agent in the order they were received when the agent finished their last call. Incoming calls filled the available sequenced spaces as they became open. So if you were using 5 phone agents during the season to answer phones, you would have 25 toll-free line terminations going to the sequencer with 5 active lines and 20 calls/lines in queue. Any other incoming call on those assigned lines received a busy signal unless or until one of the 25 existing lines became open. Being able to keep some customers from getting a no-answer was important. Busy lines were acceptable to most customers. And knowing you were in the sequencer because of messaging was a positive action for most customers compared to a no-answer call.
Retail counter sales in-season were so strong that we eventually put up a take-a-number system for queuing retail customers. There were display cases in front of the Greene Street retail counter with items like popular mower blades and trimmer line for purchasing. But retail customers would come from as far as Raleigh to buy parts they hadn’t even checked to see if we had in stock. Of course, at that time, that would have required a phone call before driving to Greensboro.
COMPUTERS AT DSC (INVENTRON AND TRIAD, BURROUGHS B800, PICK OPERATING SYSTEM AND SOFTWARE)
As the OPE side of the business began growing, it became apparent that we were going to need some type of electronic inventory control system to help us order and control our inventory. In 1969, DSC was still using an old Cardex system with flat drawers and a small card for each item in inventory to keep perpetual inventory, record sales and orders, keep min-max quantities for each item, and to record backorders. The system had been in use for many years at DSC and actually worked quite well. But as the number of sku’s and transaction rates began to grow, a totally manual system wasn’t going to be able to keep up much longer.
Computer systems in the 1970’s were only used and afforded by large companies. In our industry, there was a distributor of Snapper equipment in Shelby, NC, Porter Brothers, that was one of the largest OPE distributors in the country at that time. Porter Brothers had an IBM computer that used punch cards to enter data. As transactions were entered during the day or at the end of the day with punch cards, summary data was accumulated. During each night, printouts would be created with the quantities for actual balance-on-hand, back-ordered items, on-order items etc. Just like today, knowing the BOH, what items were back-ordered and who ordered them were key to providing superior customer service. But when you called Porter Brothers and asked a question requiring inventory data, they could only provide the information they had as of 5 PM the day before. Today’s information and records would be available on a printout the next day. I never thought much of their IBM computer system and its capability because the data was never current and thus not trustworthy.
I determined quickly that real-time information on what was in inventory (BOH), on back-order or on order would provide us with a competitive customer service advantage that other distributors lacked. I looked at what service parts distributors or OEM’s were using for inventory control in various industries. Most were not using any electronic record keeping at all.
There were two companies that had systems that met some of my criteria including an affordable cost while providing real-time data. One system was marketed to automotive parts distributors and jobbers, and was called Triad. It was primarily an inventory control system and I remember very little about its capabilities. The other system was hard-wired (not programmable) inventory control system called Inventron headquartered in New Jersey. We saw some demos in Greensboro at 327 Battleground, and I was invited to New Jersey to their offices for further demonstrations. We ended up leasing a couple of displays and a CPU from Inventron.
The display screen had about twelve fixed fields with space for four digits in each field. There were no descriptions shown for each field. I believe there was space for the part number and a description also at the top of the screen. Orders had to be hand-written on an invoice/pick-ticket, the order pulled, and the quantity of each part number picked and sold was entered manually into Inventron, extended selling prices showed up on the screen and were added to the handwritten ticket, and all pertinent fields were updated. Back-ordered items or non-stock items had to be added to the inventory register if they were not already there along with descriptions, pricing, quantity back-ordered, etc. Once ordered, the on-order field had to be filled in manually.
What all these steps accomplished was that we could always enter a part number and know the exact BOH to tell a customer if a part was available. No one else and no large IBM computers in use at very large companies could provide real-time BOH information about inventory. But Dixie Sales could. We had a competitive edge that for several years was ours and ours alone to promote and use.
For the several years we were using the Inventron system, we had many visitors who came to see it in operation. It was such a simple system, hard-wired, and un-programmable, yet it provided DSC a huge advantage with dealers in the marketplace. And our competitors knew it.
DSC had been using Burroughs’ ledger-card accounts receivable systems for many years with great success, moving up in machine capabilities to more and more automated and computerized models. But as the number of dealer and retail charge customers increased, this manual process grew in size and complexity. Near the end of a month, I was typically at DSC most of the night before statements were to pulled off the ledgers adding service charges to past due accounts. We eventually outgrew the process and the ledger machines.
A Greensboro-based software business had created a software package for use by automotive parts jobbers (wholesale-retail auto parts stores) and car dealers, primarily for inventory control, accounts receivable and invoicing. Their software was written in COBOL and worked only on Burroughs computers. We leased a B800 Burroughs computer and installed it in our 335 North Greene Street building we had moved the OPE parts into in 1979. The rear of the 335 North Greene Street building faced the front of our 327-29 Battleground Ave building.
The B800 required an operator with some basic COBOL programming knowledge each day we used it. The automotive parts software quickly proved inadequate. The software would not print pick tickets that we could use to pick orders in the warehouse. So all orders were still handwritten, picked off the order form, and then manually keyed into the B800 for accounts receivable purposes and to update inventory. The accounts receivable data generated from invoices had to be transported monthly to the software providers located on South Elm Street, because they had to run each end-of-month accounting reconciliation in their facility and print our statements off-site there also. Our general ledger, monthly trial balances, check writing, and general accounting were all done manually by me.
We had actually regressed in our capabilities to provide real-time inventory data to our customers and now could provide no better data communication than our competitors.
I had a friend named Ron Silver who ran a small foreign car parts distributorship for BMW auto parts in High Point, NC. We often discussed similar business issues we had running our businesses and he suggested I come to High Point to see the software he was using. It sounded as though it solved many of the problems we had with our current system and software including printing pick tickets, and excellent parts back-order tracking.
I went to High Point one evening and met Ron at his business. I was absolutely amazed at his software’s capability. He too had taken a software package for automotive parts and had added to it using his own along with an Atlanta friend’s programming skills. The result was a software package that met all his needs, and in turn more than met all our needs. The only thing missing in the software was an accounting package. It did have complete accounts receivable functionality and would print statements. But there was no check writing, general ledger or trial balance functionality. Ron sold us his old computer and the software on it, while he migrated to a larger, faster and newer MicroData computer using the exact same software he had been using for years.
We literally unplugged the B800 and shoved it in the corner of our Greene Street offices. We continued to pay the lease on it for almost two more years. But the old MicroData computer and software we bought from Ron revolutionized the way DSC did business. All data was real time, and other than the accounting functions I mentioned were missing, it did everything we needed done to run our business.
The strongest function in Silver software was the automatic purchase order process. Using data computed by the system or criteria set by me (Jim), such as a vendor and sub-vendor code, available balance, giving more weights to active months than inactive months, best stock level in days, best reorder point, best order quantity, safety stock, automatic part phase-out (obsoleting) of items on which sales were slowing down, simplified ordering and inventory control.
I would order on Sunday afternoons, sitting out by my Mom and Dad’s pool with Dad; both of us napping as the mood struck us, but finishing the review of all parts that appeared on the printouts in a matter of two to four hours (depending of course on how many times we napped!) The order quantities I changed were keyed on the following Monday morning, and purchase orders were faxed Monday afternoons. Another purchase order run was made on Thursday to cover all back-order situations that arose during the week.
I truly believe that our success in the industry in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the foundation of our industry-leading customer service, was the efficiency of the automatic purchasing system in the Silver software. I know how it was created and the thought process and testing that they used to create this superb ordering system. DSC had the parts when no one else did. And the customers always remembered what suppliers were consistently dependable. I still have in digital format, the ordering rules and setup for the Silver software automatic ordering system. I am still amazed when I review it at how complete and efficient it was.
Back order control and management was another strong point of the Silver System that provided us with a terrific competitive advantage.
How good was that software? We used it continually for over 20 years, upgrading the hardware as needed, and using the same software. The first computer in our Browns Summit distribution center when we moved in, in 1988, was this very same system and software. It grew with us when our revenue was less than $1M to approaching $30 M, and allowed us to handle the extraordinary growth we were blessed with in the 1980’s and 1990’s. But there was still one major missing component of this software. There was no accounting module other than accounts receivable.
In the early years of using the Silver software, accounting functions like an aged trial balance, or writing checks and managing payables or keeping a general ledger continued to be maintained manually. Ordering algorithms were superb as was back-order record keeping. The pick ticket module worked beautifully. The initial computerized solution for accounting systems were stand-alone PC-based accounting software packages such as Quick Books and Southware. They worked just well enough for us to get-by using them, but all the data had to be entered manually as there was no connection between the software and our MicroData system and software, ensuring they were temporary solutions at best.
MicroData eventually went out of business and we ported the Silver Software to a CPU made by Sun Microsystems that would run the Pick operating system our software was based on. The Sun CPU was extremely fast. But several years into using it, it failed during out busy season. We were down for more than a few days, and we lost two days of keyed data which eventually had to be rekeyed, plus thousands of additional transactions that had not been entered at all for the week or so the system was down. That was all it took to start seriously looking for the best software package we could find. We knew exactly what the Pick software did well. And we knew exactly what was missing from it. The search began.
Many of the very large Briggs & Stratton, Tecumseh, and Kohler engine distributors were using a software package called CODIS, specifically designed for the southern California Briggs Central Parts and Engine Distributor. The more we saw of it, the more we realized that it did everything the Silver software did, plus it was designed around a very strong accounting software core and appeared to meet all our needs. While the cost appeared high, we knew we could grow for many years using CODIS software. Once the decision was made to purchase CODIS, It took several months of preparation and training to make the move to CODIS, but it happened on October 27, 1997. The original hardware was a DEC Alpha System with R.A.I. D. hard drives. In 2014, we continue to use Codis as our operating system software, but the hardware has been upgraded many times since 1997 as Dixie Sales continued to grow rapidly.
Moving OPE from 327-29 Battleground Ave Across the Street to 335 North Greene in the Late 1970’s.
As the bicycle parts business for Lowe’s and the outdoor power equipment parts business to primarily dealers, service centers and some consumers continued to grow, we explored ways to expand our service parts capacity in the parts department at 327 Battleground Avenue. We took a large section of newer metal shelving and integrated a mezzanine over the top of the existing shelving to support the mezzanine and metal grating that was its floor. Each 3 foot shelving section above was bolted to brackets attached to each 3 foot bottom section underneath and the grating for the floor above was supported by the existing racking and ran above the aisle below the grating sections. The mezzanine was about 40 feet by 40 feet with two separate stairways up to it. The mezzanine absorbed the growing parts sku’s and quantities, but we had already begun thinking about a better solution.
The 327-29 Battleground Avenue building was built in 1952. I believe there were three or four houses on those two lots that were demolished when the building was built. The 327-29 Battleground Avenue building was a little over 15,000 square feet in size. The 327 section had a parts counter, two small offices located at the back of a large general office which had a cashier window for taking payment for automotive service jobs, a small mezzanine above the offices, and then open general parts storage on steel shelving behind the parts counter.
Automotive service was performed in the other half of the building with a 329 Battleground Avenue address. There was a door near the offices that led to a ramp one could walk down to the automotive service department. At the bottom of the ramp was a tiny office and a larger office, both used by the Service Manager and the Assistant Service Manager. There was one other pass-through to the service department about 2/3 of the way back that was a very large sliding door leading to a ramp going down to the service department large enough to drive a vehicle back and forth.
There was a large door at the very back of the parts department, but there was no loading/unloading dock at all until the late 1970’s. The walls of the entire building were built of cinder-blocks, with huge windows running down the outer wall of the parts side and down the outer wall of the service side of the building. These windows began about 6 feet off the ground and rose to probably 9 or 10 feet high. The front of the parts department was clear plate glass with a large amount of glass block used in the front building design.
There was an empty building across the street from DSC on Battleground Avenue with a street address of 335 North Greene Street. It was a brick building approximately 15,000 to 20,000 square feet in size. It began life as a Colonial grocery store probably in the early 1950’s. Next it became a Leith Lincoln-Mercury car dealership (Leith being based out of Raleigh, NC.) Then it became a catalog show room for a locally owned company called Levy and Sons, which was very similar to a catalog/showroom company called Best Products, a national company headquartered in Richmond, VA.
These catalog showrooms issued a product catalog showing retail and “wholesale” prices for various products including small appliances, TV’s and radios, jewelry, bicycles, which could be purchased in the store. Best Products purchased Levy and Sons, and eventually moved the business to a location on High Point Road near Muirs Chapel Road intersection, but not before they added an addition to the Greene Street location in the rear with about 4,000 square feet of floor space and a ceiling height of about 25 to 30 feet. Once Best Products moved, 335 North Greene remained empty for probably more than 10 years.
This empty building appeared to be the most logical space to move our outdoor power equipment parts business and bicycle parts we inventoried for Lowe’s Companies. We used a commercial real estate broker who knew the building’s owner and in 1979 leased the 335 North Greene building for a 15 year term. We believed we would not outgrow the space, and took a lease with a 15 year term with no increase in monthly rent during the 15 year term because the building had sat empty for so long.
Moving lawn mower and small engine parts across the street was pretty simple from a logistics standpoint. We had to have a part's counter built at the front of 335 North Greene. It was about 36” deep with shelves underneath and narrower “returns” about every six to eight feet forming individual work areas with microfiche readers and price books initially. The entire top of the 60 foot long counter was formed from sheet metal. Wear, tear and dents from dropped heavy metal mower parts or engines usually didn’t show up at all. The counter was virtually indestructible.
A wall ran from each end of the counter to the front displays/walls, leaving about a 20 foot deep area behind each wall. On the right side behind the wall near the offices, we eventually had our first desk work stations used as a one or two person call center. Walk-in retail traffic was so heavy during the spring, summer and fall that people working the counter who waited on retail walk-in customers and answered phone calls from dealers and consumers couldn't effectively do both.
We moved a person off the counter and behind the wall to only answer phones. I believe we eventually had as many as 3 people behind that wall answering inbound calls before we moved out of the Greene Street location. At the same time reduced the number of people working the retail counter by the number of people we moved to only answer phone calls.
A wall ran from each end of the counter to the front displays/walls, leaving about a 20 foot deep area behind each wall. On the right side behind the wall near the offices, we eventually had our first desk work stations used as a one or two person call center. Walk-in retail traffic was so heavy during the spring, summer and fall that people working the counter who waited on retail walk-in customers and answered phone calls from dealers and consumers couldn't effectively do both.
We moved a person off the counter and behind the wall to only answer phones. I believe we eventually had as many as 3 people behind that wall answering inbound calls before we moved out of the Greene Street location. At the same time reduced the number of people working the retail counter by the number of people we moved to only answer phone calls.
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