STEP UP AND MEET TOM’S FOREIGN AUTO PARTS BY DAN TOLE

VOL. 5, ISSUE 1 – MARCH 2015

NewsletterArticle reprinted from the:

In 1985, Jim Eitvydas decided to buy an old Industrial Scrap yard. Over the next 30 years he would turn it into a foreign auto part leader. Jim always had an interest in cars and was a gear head from a very early age. He worked on cars all throughout high school and his early adult life. He had worked for a few local salvage yards during that time as a tow driver. In the mid 80’s he found himself working for Tom’s Used Auto Parts owned by Tommy Cristofaro. The two learned of an opportunity to buy an old scrap yard and jumped at the chance to turn it into a recycling yard. The original corporation founded in 1926 was named Kulman Luria & Son Inc. and dealt with industrial scrap. At the time Waterbury Connecticut was nicknamed the

“Brass City” and was the leading center for brassware pro-duction in the United States. Dubbed the “Brass Capital of the World”, Waterbury was booming with metal pro-duction which led to a strong scrap metal industry. By the 1980’s brass production had slowed along with the scrap business. Jim decided he was ready to enter the auto re-cycling business as an owner and in 1985 he did with his partner Tommy Cristofaro. Tom’s Used Auto Parts was only a few towns away and already specialized in used parts for GM vehicles and American trucks. The two decided that Jim would take a shot at the growing foreign car mar-ket and reopened the old scrap metal yard under its new name; Tom’s Foreign Auto Parts. Over the first years Jim had cleaned up all the old indus-trial scrap and started making plans to renovate the build-ings. Set on a little less than 3 acres, he knew the limiting factor of the yard would be space. The solution was to build up. He started racking the yard for cars and inven-tory. The main area for car storage was racked with over 220 spaces. The inside of the buildings were racked for easy and efficient storage. A third level was added to the main warehouse for future storage needs. Jim always saw the organization and storage of parts to be very valuable and made sure to keep those areas clean and updated over the years.Like many salvage yards of its time, the employees all relied on their memory to know what parts they had and where everything was. Admittedly the cars were much simpler

Jim and Diane Eitvydas, owners of Tom’s Foreign Auto Parts and Dan Tole, their E-Commerce Manager

then making the task much easier. In time the yard adopted a card system before finally switching to an early version of Hollanders HYMS system in 1989. One thing that has al-ways made Tom’s Foreign stand out was Jims dedication to being at the forefront of technology. Tom’s Foreign was one of the first around with a computerized inventory. During the mid-90’s internet boom Jim was also one of the first to register a domain name for the business. Later they would become one the first salvage yards with a website. In 2003 the desire to find new and innovative ways to sell parts hit its stride when Jim’s wife Diane decided to try a few items on eBay. She had collected a few ash trays from cars in the yard and washed them in their home dish-washer. She then listed the unused ash trays on eBay with the title “never smoked in”. To their surprise the ash trays sold incredibly well prompting Diane to try a few other items. From boxes of old owner’s manuals to car emblems, things on eBay started to pick up. eBay became a way for Tom’s Foreign to sell parts that never sold before; parts that were otherwise being thrown out. The task of listing parts on eBay had become very time consuming for Diane to do part time so in 2005 Jim hired Dan Tole, the son of a longtime family friend to do it full time. Dan was able to grow the eBay business further by see-ing the potential of the shelved inventory. He knew that getting their entire inventory in front of the eBay buyers would be the next step. Dan found ways to automate and maintain over 50,000 listings on ebay. Tom’s became one of the first to have their entire inventory for sale online and grew to a national auto parts business. The eBay business opened doors for other online marketplaces along with so-cial media outlets and the development of www.tomsfor-eign.com. To date Tom’s Foreign Auto Parts has done over 150,000 transactions online across major market places such as eBay, Amazon, Sears, and their own website. Furthering the dedication to technology Tom’s Foreign has utilized pictures and video to help market and describe parts. With more people using computers to find parts Jim realized the importance of images to describe the exact part being sold. By recruiting a programmer for some help, they were able to create an exclusive wireless picture pro-

gram to take on the task. The picture program saves time and makes taking photos of inventory much easier. Each car that gets inventoried now gets a full walk around video while each part on the shelf gets a minimum of three im-ages. The Tom’s Foreign YouTube account has over 1.4 mil-lion video views across 4100 videos. Their image server now houses over 450,000 images of in-stock inventory. To stay ahead of the ever changing e-commerce landscape Jim makes it a point to visit internet technology trade-shows outside of the industry. He says that “knowing what the rest of the world does and adapting it to our industry has been extremely important”. Tradeshows such as Chan-nelAdvisors annual Catalyst event and the Internet Retail Conference (IRCE) have helped them understand the busi-ness of selling online much better. The key for Tom’s For-eign has been finding opportunities in other industries and applying them to the auto recycling world. Moving forward Jim sees the company using technology to help better commercial sales as well as insurance com-pany relationships. He feels that having the power to show repair shops and insurance companies the quality of a part through pictures and video is the future of the business. “Times are changing and to stay competitive we have to adapt new solutions to our business” explains Jim. “It’s no longer a local business, auto recyclers have to branch out to more areas and internet technologies are allowing them to do it effectively”. Located at 35 S 5th St in Waterbury CT, Tom’s Foreign Auto Parts will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. They are open Monday thru Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM EST and also 8 AM to Noon on most Saturdays. For more informa-tion you can visit their website at www.tomsforeign.com or give them a call at 1-800-255-6656.

Set on a little less than 3 acres, racking the yard for carswas the solution for more space. The main area for car storage was racked with over 220 spaces.

Tom’s Foreign Auto Parts in Waterbury, CT

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