Business

April 13, 2008

Parts and parcel

Two Dallas-area guys’ Web-based business serves automotive enthusiasts from all over.

By Jerry Lynott jlynott@timesleader.com
Business Writer
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Steve Chopick and Dan Haddle are no-nonsense guys, even down to the name of their business, WeSellCarParts.com.

The pair of 23-year-olds is behind the growing e-commerce company based in the Dallas area, catering to sport compact car enthusiasts with enough high performance parts to fill a warehouse, if they actually had one.

Without a door or phone number, and with little startup capital, the business landed at a dot-com address.

“Our store front is on the Net,” Haddle said.

The owners, however, do live in the real world and their company earns real money. Their monthly sales numbers are rising from when they started. Last year, they reported nearly a half million dollars in sales.

Sharing interests in cars, they teamed up in 2006 to sell used parts. Early on in their venture they switched to new, aftermarket products after Haddle’s father offered them access to inventory from his car repair business, Eurotech in Wilkes-Barre.

Since then they’ve carved a niche in the automobile parts market thanks to their attention to service and industry connections. The company says it offers approximately 350 different product lines from clutches to coil springs for models from Acura to Toyota.

Their business was doing such a large volume that manufacturers sought them out, Haddle said. He and Chopick deal directly with between 15 and 20 manufacturers and a handful of major distributors.

Working at his family’s business, Custom Computers Inc. in Kingston, gives Chopick the opportunity to do a lot of the online work for WeSellCarParts.com. “Since it’s all Web-based, I can do that.”

Haddle is an accountant by day. Together they handle orders and sales and contact customers and suppliers.

“The biggest thing is communication with them,” Chopick said.

The duo is upfront with customers about shipping times and keeps after suppliers about deliveries.

One of their major distributors is in the Philadelphia area and most of the products ship in a day, Haddle said.

The appreciation shows on various car Internet forums from customers satisfied with the price, selection of products and ease of doing business with the company that ships free in the continental United States and accepts payments by credit card and the online service of PayPal.

The business runs on “canned software” rather than proprietary programming, Chopick explained. It fit the needs of the company of two people, he added.

Being Web-based, WeSellCarParts advertises with the two industry giants, Google and Yahoo. Chopick and Haddle also sponsor car clubs and car shows to get their name out.

A big boost for them has been attending the annual Specialty Equipment Market Association show. This year’s SEMA show was in Las Vegas in November.

“We picked up six lines from there,” Haddle said.

While there it wasn’t all fun and posing for pictures that they posted on their Web site. Some online suppliers put up a notice on their sites that they wouldn’t be shipping orders for a week while they were at the SEMA show.

“We were in the hotel room doing our thing, fulfilling orders and getting product out,” Chopick said.

Little guys making it big

What: WeSellCarParts.com, an e-commerce business based in the Back Mountain catering to the sport compact car market.

Who: Co-founders Steve Chopick and Dan Haddle.

Where: On the Web at www.wesellcarparts.com.

“We were in the hotel room doing our thing, fulfilling orders and getting product out.”

Steve Chopick

About the time he and his partner spent at the SEMA show in Las Vegas

Jerry Lynott, a Times Leader staff writer, can be contacted at 570 829-7237.

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