BuyParts24: Changing The Auto Spare Parts Aftermarket Landscape BuyParts24 represents the latest business model innovation developed within Ghassan Aboud Group (GAG)-a multi-disciplined conglomerate founded in 1994.

In today's world, evolving customer expectations heightened awareness of technological innovation, and competitive power shifts are significantly changing the automotive aftermarket. As a result, these structural changes are reshaping the way customers, automotive suppliers, and other aftermarket companies imagine and conduct business.

Never shy to execute a market-disrupting vision, BuyParts24 represents the latest business model innovation developed within Ghassan Aboud Group (GAG)—a multi-disciplined conglomerate founded in 1994. Executed from 27 years of worldwide automotive trading experience in both vehicles and spare parts, BuyParts24 is a digital auto parts marketplace that was custom built to connect the leading distributors directly with garages, workshops, fleet owners and operators. In doing so, a more direct supply route can be achieved, rather than relying heavily upon the traditional sub-distributor focused flows. The strategic agreements with UAE's key authorised distributors of major brands such as Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Audi and VW have established BuyParts24 as top of mind, parts solution partner. The ability to bring such a vast array of brands together is a testament to the new strategy, which has efficiently and effectively distinguished itself amongst a previously traditional ecosystem.

Essentially, BuyParts24 can be relied upon as a multi-vendor one-stop-shop, offering operational efficiencies and increased customer reach while maximizing market penetration and delivering a seamless trading experience for the aftermarket.

The UAE represents a sizable aftermarket opportunity with an estimated 10,000 garages and over 20 authorised genuine part distributors and several 100 aftermarket spare part brands dispersed across the country. Directly focused on these opportunities, the BuyParts24 marketplace is truly a first-mover play business to business (only) marketplace, that is both locally sensitive and infinitely scalable across the wider GCC and beyond. Whereas simpler to execute business to consumer e-commerce models can be readily identified, BuyParts24 uses unique VIN driven data methodology, coupled with AI tools in order to cement its position as the primary destination for multivendor and genuine parts search.

When considering the growth ambitions of OEM, OES or IAM sellers (vendors), the UAE represents a highly dynamic and fragmented value chain including distributors, wholesalers, and retailers who face numerous B2B consumer pain points. Some key distribution and competitive challenges include restricted margins across the value chain, parallel imports, difficulty to liquidate dead stock and limited access to a plethora of garage networks. In addition, it is impossible for sellers (vendors) to effectively segment, target and position via captive sales and marketing budgets. With a focus on solving these pain points, BuyParts24 provides innovative and instantly scalable channel opportunities via the business-to-business marketplace model.

The BuyParts24 team

At the other end of the spectrum, primary buyers, such as workshops and fleet managers face challenges of increased procurement lead times, lack of express delivery services for parts, constrained payment options and trust and transparency in part reliability. Naturally, the ability to efficiently consolidate the supply chain process with complete end to end accountability is very appealing.

Ultimately, the UAE end consumer is quality conscious and convenience-driven. In parallel, the consumer is also highly dependent on the service provider, i.e., the garages to make informed decisions to choose the right spare parts for their vehicles. To facilitate this process for the consumer, the garages need to be equipped with the right knowledge, the right access to parts and more importantly at the right time.

As a core design principle, BuyParts24 was built to be the first step in accelerating effective parts selection and thereby enabling more efficient allocation of highly valuable labour time.

Unlike anything that the UAE market has seen, BuyParts24 has innovated on multiple fronts via a digital marketplace:

> A dedicated on-the-ground team of garage scouts to support our buyers through their journey and experience with BuyParts24. Complementing technology with human interaction to reduce any initial digital friction.

> A dedicated network of warehouses, consolidation centres and logistics infrastructure across the UAE to offer and facilitate express delivery services to our customers.

> The platform is built on an advanced AI-based technology stack, utilizing stable and scalable programming languages to also include the flexibility for integrating with partner solutions.

> For the first time in the automotive spare parts market in the GCC, the platform creates an information highway for OEM and Aftermarket brands. It enables data-driven decision making for buyers & sellers and can potentially support public entities with insights on how to augment the automotive spare parts market in the region and the potential impacts this may have on city planning It also supports public entities with the need to bring standardization to the workshops and garages in terms of quality, safety, certification, and assurance.

> BuyParts24 also offers multiple payment options responding to the needs of the market, such as cash on delivery, online credit and debit cards and microcredits in the future.

BuyParts24 at Automechanika Dubai

Steven Pickering, General Manager at BuyParts24 stated, "We help reduce repair cycles through a one-stop-shop and an instant parts availability promise. Buyers instantly can view a variety of suppliers or sellers who offer various price points. They can order from the marketplace and receive their orders via express, same or next day, ensuring that they can, in turn, maximise revenue generation, time utilisation and deliver high levels of customer responsiveness."

Digital driven business models, such as BuyParts24, empower and provide sellers, distributors and suppliers with a virtual storefront improving their market access and customer outreach. The platform helps them finetune their operations and grants sellers' access to crucial data, analytics and insights, helping to lead informed, datadriven decisions.

"Our success is an initial indicator of what the market needed and has been addressed through Buyparts24." commented Steven, "In the upcoming days, over 35,000+ unique SKUs will be available on Buyparts24, directly connecting to our always expanding network of 3,000 approved garages, thereby becoming the single largest unified online aggregator of spare parts from authorized distributors in the country."

In a fast-paced, rapidly evolving, highly dynamic, and volatile market landscape, product and new business models need to have the flexibility and agility to adapt to changing conditions. The fundamentals of BuyParts24 being a completely bespoke and customizable platform has futureproofed the product's evolution and business model development. Being scalable to evolve from what it is today, that is, a multi-vendor marketplace to possibly an ecosystem aggregator.