alia176
SILVER Star
- Thread starter
- #61
Time for an update.
So, I had a chance to yak with Sean the parts manager yesterday and got a little caught up on things. He is returning to his store in Peoria, AZ after straightening out the parts fiasco at AmToy. Due to the real estate market, he wasn't able to sell his house in AZ so his family has been staying there while he's been working in ABQ. His last day is this week and he is being replaced by Luis Alvarez, who came up the ranks from a tech, to the drive up service manager. Luis and I camped together few years ago at Goose lake and he remembered me and my dog Riley. This must've been close to five years ago. Luis has a 3rd gen 4runner and a 16yo daughter who is eyeballing it
In any case, Luis is learning the parts business and the dept has stabilized quite a bit. New bodies are now sitting at the counter and Don has moved to inside the office dealing with wholesale customers.
Sean is aware of AmToy's lack of competitive in the online market and they're addressing it. Sean has checked out Camelback toyota and he likes their business model and has suggested that AmToy follows suit. Camelback has a dedicated online order person who sees the whole process from beginning to end. Once AmToy has such a person, online prices will become more competitive, even more than our old Mud discount. Currently, the online parts are being handled by couple of folks "filling" in so the process isn't quite streamlined as they'd like it to be.
Changing gears a bit, who is Sandia Toyota? Well, the large corp who owns LHM Toyota sold that branch to Group 1, who owns the LR and Lexus dealerships. Toyota doesn't want one corportation to own multile Toyota dealerships in a single area, or something like that. Group 1 is also a huge conglomerate and publicly traded company. The construction at that dealership was haulted by Covid, change of ownership and finally finishing up that nightmare.
So, there you have it folks.
So, I had a chance to yak with Sean the parts manager yesterday and got a little caught up on things. He is returning to his store in Peoria, AZ after straightening out the parts fiasco at AmToy. Due to the real estate market, he wasn't able to sell his house in AZ so his family has been staying there while he's been working in ABQ. His last day is this week and he is being replaced by Luis Alvarez, who came up the ranks from a tech, to the drive up service manager. Luis and I camped together few years ago at Goose lake and he remembered me and my dog Riley. This must've been close to five years ago. Luis has a 3rd gen 4runner and a 16yo daughter who is eyeballing it
In any case, Luis is learning the parts business and the dept has stabilized quite a bit. New bodies are now sitting at the counter and Don has moved to inside the office dealing with wholesale customers.
Sean is aware of AmToy's lack of competitive in the online market and they're addressing it. Sean has checked out Camelback toyota and he likes their business model and has suggested that AmToy follows suit. Camelback has a dedicated online order person who sees the whole process from beginning to end. Once AmToy has such a person, online prices will become more competitive, even more than our old Mud discount. Currently, the online parts are being handled by couple of folks "filling" in so the process isn't quite streamlined as they'd like it to be.
Changing gears a bit, who is Sandia Toyota? Well, the large corp who owns LHM Toyota sold that branch to Group 1, who owns the LR and Lexus dealerships. Toyota doesn't want one corportation to own multile Toyota dealerships in a single area, or something like that. Group 1 is also a huge conglomerate and publicly traded company. The construction at that dealership was haulted by Covid, change of ownership and finally finishing up that nightmare.
So, there you have it folks.