KMS Parts

Felix Liu, eCommerce Manager, KMS Parts: “We’d been keeping a watch on ecommerce, but for a long time could not see that the return warranted the investment. Then we started experimenting with listing items manually on eBay. We had one guy, with a small camera, and we listed 600 items and made some modest revenues, but it worked, to a degree. Then I thought: is there any way we can make this 100 times bigger? We looked at the possibilities, I did a lot of due diligence, saw a lot of demos, and we went with Volo. The implementation team was extremely efficient. The Volo implementation person was very good, very professional and very patient. It took around 2 months from start to finish.”

“We’re now at 1.4 million items on eBay. We use eBay’s LMS API [eBay’s Large Merchants Services Application Programming Interface] through Volo. A $150K month is our next target, which is around 10 times what it was when we started. Interestingly, eBay recently contacted us to tell us that we’re already in their top 100 sites in the UK for number of listings. We have a reputation for stocking hard to find parts. We offer international shipping and in fact around 5% of our business comes from outside the UK.”

“As you’ve probably guessed from the numbers I’ve been talking about, the Volo system is capable of dealing with massive amounts of data. I’m so impressed with how Volo can deal with all this data. Eventually we’ll go to 3 or 4 million master SKUs, each with a different bar code. Volo continues to handle this no problem. Because of this ability to list a virtually limitless amount of items, we were tempted to open up our car parts to all car brands. We just concentrate on the prestige German brands, Mercedes, BMW, VW and Audi, that’s our reputation. So we intend to stay focused as a German car specialist, that’s what we do best.

“We really value the support we get from Volo. As a company, we like to know how to do things ourselves. A classic example is developing our own ePOS system. At the same time, we have a few of our core people on leave, so to have Volo there is really important. Before we selected a company to work with, we tested the support to see what it was like. Some companies were a bit wishy washy. But Volo has always communicated directly and often. We get daily updates via email, we always know what’s going on. This gives us a lot of assurance.”

“Volo has a very strong reputation in our sector. Before we came on board, we looked at our competition, because your natural approach is to see how other companies are tackling ecommerce. One of our biggest competitors already worked with Volo, so we knew they knew our sector and the huge demands we would put on a system with the vast numbers of parts we stock.

“It’s almost impossible to estimate the benefits of Volo, but let me give you an example. I already told you that we had a guy manually listing items. He managed 600 items, it took him months, it generated $30,000 for us. Now the Volo system handles 1.4 million items, which is over 2,000 times more than he managed! This growth has created 13 additional jobs, 7 in the office and 6 in the warehouse and dispatch. It’s pushing all the areas of our business and has created employment. Volo has fundamentally changed the business model of KMS.”