TheSamba.com :: View topic - Advance Auto Parts to close hundreds of stores

Sun Jan 12, 2025 6:26 am

Saw this in the Split Bus forum today. :cry:

Kommercial wrote: Announced in November.
Random link article
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&...83u-2jKbEn

Sun Jan 12, 2025 7:30 am

Yes, over 700 stores.

In addition, they sold off WorldPac after completely fucking up their catalog (intermingling incorrect parts catalogs that cross referenced a whole slew of universal fit shit that ultimately cross referenced to other cars.) & selling off everything in inventory they could.

Sun Jan 12, 2025 8:50 am

TDCTDI, OMG what a nightmare to get the wrong part from a big company like this. I usually only buy oil or other consumables when NAPA is closed. So sad.

TDCTDI wrote: Yes, over 700 stores.

In addition, they sold off WorldPac after completely fucking up their catalog (intermingling incorrect parts catalogs that cross referenced a whole slew of universal fit shit that ultimately cross referenced to other cars.) & selling off everything in inventory they could.

Sun Jan 12, 2025 10:55 am

TDCTDI wrote:

In addition, they sold off WorldPac after completely fucking up their catalog (intermingling incorrect parts catalogs that cross referenced a whole slew of universal fit shit that ultimately cross referenced to other cars.) & selling off everything in inventory they could.

Yea, they 100% gutted WorldPac (formerly Metrix) to the point of it being on point with ebay in terms of prices and quality

They were great for FAG, INA, Bosch, NGK etc but now it's a shell of its former self and were gutted of any quality name brand parts.

It's essentially unrecognizable today.

Sun Jan 12, 2025 1:49 pm

My Advance is directly across the street from Auto Zone and only a few blocks from NAPA. I don’t know why I use Auto Zone more than Advance. But, I do. Both have bailed me out when I needed them. The Zone is on the closer side of the highway to me. So backstreet access is much easier. I don’t know if my local Advance is closing. There around 4 in a 10 mile range, probably more.

Sun Jan 12, 2025 6:07 pm

I never shopped at an Advance Auto parts store. Going to Napa, Autozone or O'Reilys showed me they all sell the same poor quality Chinese or third world made parts but in their brands boxes.

Sun Jan 12, 2025 6:19 pm

wcfvw69 wrote: they all sell the same poor quality Chinese or third world parts but just in their brands boxes.
Sounds like the VW aftermarket.

Sun Jan 12, 2025 6:40 pm

skills@eurocarsplus wrote: TDCTDI wrote:

In addition, they sold off WorldPac after completely fucking up their catalog (intermingling incorrect parts catalogs that cross referenced a whole slew of universal fit shit that ultimately cross referenced to other cars.) & selling off everything in inventory they could.

Yea, they 100% gutted WorldPac (formerly Metrix) to the point of it being on point with ebay in terms of prices and quality

They were great for FAG, INA, Bosch, NGK etc but now it's a shell of its former self and were gutted of any quality name brand parts.

It's essentially unrecognizable today.

When I was living in Iowa about 6 years ago, Advance became my go to for a lot of things for my Golf...because they either had it or could quickly get it.

Example, they WERE a dealer for Mann and Hummel filters through their association with Purolator. I could get my factory Mann brand oil, fuel and air filter there same day.

That stocking level appeared to start breaking downabout 3-4 years ago.

They were also a good place for a fair range of 3M products. Last year I went in to get a 3M headlight product that they normall yhave and they noted it was discontinued as a stock item.

I have numerous autromotive clients and a few of them as well as a few sites I peruse have been predicting a downturn or flat spot in aftermaerket parts productio nand sales since last year. No one I have spoken to yet can point out a 100% sure reason why.

That being said, my end of my industry which encompasses printd electronics for everything as well as industrial white goods and medical....is seeing a "flat spot"....for new projects, R&D and large scale process improvement investments.

A few reasons why that more than a few of us can see....but I'm not really getting into that here. Ray

Sun Jan 12, 2025 10:46 pm

Perspective

700 stores closing out of near 6000 locations. I would classify that as resizing on a long term trend, not earth shattering news. Taylor Swift probably didn’t say anything that week, so that’s all the news outlets had.

How do you report a store closing list without perspective of scale and call your self a news outlet? I wish the sun would come up so I could see clouds to yell at.

Sun Jan 12, 2025 10:52 pm

Doesn't surprise me.
I was a Motive Power Technician (I diagnosed & repaired lift truck batteries & chargers - forklifts are only one type of lift truck).

Back in about 2013 ...

We serviced a World Pac in Alvin or Pearland routinely. This place was a complete joke : dilapidated building, trash everywhere, no one cared about maintaining anything, & the overstressed employees at the counter issuing more return authorizations than orders. It was my understanding at the time they were a drop ship warehouse for many companies (not sure, just a shop rumor).
Good or bad policies start at the top.

Forward to 2017 ...

Worked for an outfit that did some painting. A salesperson made a mistake & quoted $7,500 for an interior job - walls, trim, & doors. This was in a HUGE house in exclusive area with 18foot ceilings, 9inxh baseboards, plinth blocks, & crown molding. OOPS - missing a zero at best.
Owner was told 2week job. HAH - crew of 3to 4 taking 7weeks. Couldn't spray.
House owner was a parts buyer for the store beginning with O'

Didn't see salesperson ever again.

Anyhow -
The pencil pushers for auto parts & many others are only concerned with the almighty dollar. Plain & simple. It's easier to close locations that don't produce the volume they expect.
Quality - what's that ?
While cities invest in enormous tilt-wall 300K sqft distribution centers just to put up FOR LEASE banners.
Hey, look at us, we're growing !

What a joke !... !

I miss Luby's Restaurants ... stay safe

jinx

Mon Jan 13, 2025 5:31 am

Glenn wrote: wcfvw69 wrote: they all sell the same poor quality Chinese or third world parts but just in their brands boxes.
Sounds like the VW aftermarket.

Bingo.. I watch a popular Youtube mechanic in upstate New York. He works on modern cars. It's pretty sad to see him struggle with finding new parts to repair these newer cars that either fit or last more than a few days/weeks. He buys primarily from Napa but other FLAPS too. Often times, he has to go to the dealer and buy the expensive OEM parts because the aftermarket parts are so bad.
I'm not sure how shops working on modern cars today deal with the poor quality new parts today.

Mon Jan 13, 2025 8:35 am

Abscate wrote: Perspective

700 stores closing out of near 6000 locations. I would classify that as resizing on a long term trend, not earth shattering news. Taylor Swift probably didn’t say anything that week, so that’s all the news outlets had.

How do you report a store closing list without perspective of scale and call your self a news outlet? I wish the sun would come up so I could see clouds to yell at.

Yes! Very big chunk of the problem.

This is "some" of the same problem with the large scale closing of the Walgreens pharmacy chain locations as well as several well known fast food chain locations.

There are just too many of them. They can't all be equally profitable in all locations right?

So then it begs the question how did they sustain it for so long?

That's some of the other stuff going on I did not wanted to dig in too deeply here. The easy thing on the surface is that to some degree, overhead costs are high right now.

That means at the store level, you have a combination of labor costs, original financing debt costs, monthly heat and air and any other bills that go into overhead. Fuel and labor being the big easy costs to see.

Add to that, it's been practice for most stores and chains to not really stock that much and mostly pull from a central local warehouse or drop ship from a national warehouse. That kind of delivery service means fuel, labor and vehicle cost. These are just the "local" costs.

Add to that, the cost of parts coming in from all over the world have some of the same overhead costs (labor and fuel). Prices are higher.

Add to that, availability of a lot of parts is poor. So....through supply and demand....parts costs are even higher.

That last one is part of the rats nest we are seeing in manufacturing over the past 3 years. In general, not all manufacturing is back to pre-covid levels. Some of it never came back. So, companies that had say....10 production lines operating around the clock....may only have 7 operating at any time.....and not around the clock.

So.....they do not instantly make all products all the time. They jump around. A popular oil or fuel filter that used to be made at some level....every day.....now may only get produced every other week.

Why is this? Well, some of it is labor.....but lot of it is raw material availability. Sheet metals, resins, plastics etc. Those manufacturers are having the same issue.

A lot of this points right back to fossil fuel costs. If a plastic resin mfg is having problem's producing all product ranges all the time.....they cut back. They make smaller batches,less often to try to feed as many clients as possible.

All of that points right back to less product available on time.....which raises prices of those products....which means the end user either cuts corners on maintenance intervals that require those products.....or shops for a cheaper alternative. This means less parts are sold. This means less parts are ordered. This means smaller production runs.....which means smaller batches of raw materials are ordered.............a of which means less economy of scale.....and higher prices to the end user.

Which all rolls back to......the weakest stores sales wise.....will become unsustainable.

There are some other serious issues in manufacturing right now that have to do with lending, funding and investment practices that are rearing their ugly head.....but that's a different discussion.

Ray

Mon Jan 13, 2025 8:54 am

jinx758 wrote: I miss Luby's Restaurants ... jinx

So do I, so do I! :cry:

Mon Jan 13, 2025 9:40 am

jinx758 wrote:
Back in about 2013 ...

We serviced a World Pac in Alvin or Pearland routinely. This place was a complete joke : dilapidated building, trash everywhere, no one cared about maintaining anything, & the overstressed employees at the counter issuing more return authorizations than orders. It was my understanding at the time they were a drop ship warehouse for many companies (not sure, just a shop rumor).
Good or bad policies start at the top.

Yea, can confirm... that's how FCP Euro operates. I can say that for a fact as I was pretty close with the owners at one point. The son runs FCP Euro but back when they were brick and mortar the parents ran that end of it

I see Advanced closing because they flooded the market. I mean, no real reason to have 5 stores within 8 miles of each other

But retail is in deep shit now

Look at any mall... There is a YT channel where a guy goes and visits all of these malls and has for multiple years....

It's amazing. They are all but dead now.

Mon Jan 13, 2025 12:58 pm

World Pac was a wholesale only operation that had regional warehouses. I have done close to $2,000,000 in sales with them. They bought parts from the original auto manufacturers, or the companies that supplied parts to those auto manufacturers, and their catalog listed & sold all of the parts by OEM part numbers. It was quite common to get parts with the OEM logos machined off.

Part of the problem was that over about 8-10 years, World Pac acquired Auto Parts International, then CarQuest bought World Pac, then Advance Auto bought CarQuest.

After acquiring these other entities, Advance Auto converted these other store fronts, so, I’m sure that a lot of these store closures were due to redundancy.

However, when CarQuest purchased World Pac, they decided to run them as separate entities. Advance auto on the other hand, immediately started combining the parts catalogs & tainting World Pacs’ catalog with errant part numbers that cross referenced aftermarket parts #s that sorta resembled OEM part #s. Then, their inept tech team further mutilated the catalogs by omitting huge swaths of their OEM catalog due some of the aftermarket parts not fitting.

Add to this that Advnce parts purchasers no longer sought out OEM suppliers in favor of all the cheapest Chinese shit, while raising the prices to enhance the bottom line. Where World Pac used to be the most competitive, I could regularly source the same part through Rock Auto or even the dealer at a much better price.

World Pac used to carry a good selection of wear & tear parts for vintage VWs, & Mercedes, and even Weber parts through their Redline division, but they have completely give up on most of that & are now supplying shitty, make it fit parts for cars in the 2000s. (If anyone has ever worked on a water cooled VW, they know that hose diameters change from one end to the other, on damn near every application.)

Mon Jan 13, 2025 1:46 pm

I worked in R&D laboratory for a large US consumer products company for 4 decades, analytical chemistry. One year there was a shortage worldwide of acetonitrile, an extremely important organic solvent in high performance liquid chromatography. Acetonitrile is typically produced as a by-product of some plastic manufacturing in China, essentially single-source.

I did a usage spreadsheet and figured that we would have an 8-month supply (a couple of cases) with what we had on-hand. I also bought some acetonitrile that already had some acetic acid added because we could use that and just decrease the amount of acetic acid in our purified water to compensate and still meet cGMP pharmaceutical regulations.

My supervisor at that time insisted that we validate ALL our cGMP test methods using methanol instead, which would require complete method adjustment (as the chemistry was different) and complete cGMP validation, took months. Of course, by that time the shortage was over. At least I got paid for that.

Mon Jan 13, 2025 3:37 pm

TDCTDI wrote: World Pac was a wholesale only operation that had regional warehouses. I have done close to $2,000,000 in sales with them. They bought parts from the original auto manufacturers, or the companies that supplied parts to those auto manufacturers, and their catalog listed & sold all of the parts by OEM part numbers. It was quite common to get parts with the OEM logos machined off.

Not only that, but I'll add the new catalog layout on speeddial is fucking stupid

Another stupid thing they got rid of is they use to "relay" race parts that were "in network"

I have Stamford, East Berlin and Middletown....those were the "main" warehouses back in the day

But, we could get stuff out of Edison, MT Vernon same day (if ordered early enough) like if a part was in NJ and I ordered by the 7:30 cutoff, I'd have it for noon, and if I ordered at noon, I'd have it for 3-3:30

Now, it's overnight freight with a 30.00 minimum charge, meaning that if I order a 14.00 belt, there is 30 in shipping

I don't use them as much anymore, it's sad really. But here we are :?

Tue Jan 14, 2025 6:37 pm

I'm not sure how it is in your part of the world but one thing I didn't know until recently is Advance still has a lot of private owner stores. A lot are still branded as CarQuest but there are a lot of private ones with the Advanced Auto name. I used to like them because their parts seemed higher quality but the first time I had a warranty issue I stopped using them. I started using a local distributor, XL Parts

Unlike AutoZone, Orielley, and Napa, Advance compters are not on the same network. If you have a battery issue they cannot pull up your battery purchase. Nobody uses the date stickers anymore. You have to know which Advance you bought the battery at, AND they have to be able to call that store and verify. If it's across town not a big deal, but if you're crossing time zones you may have to wait a day like I did.

One near me is closing. Kinda surpsing, it's the busier of the 3. Might be good to try to pick up tools etc

Tue Jan 14, 2025 9:44 pm

Erik G wrote: Unlike AutoZone, Orielley, and Napa, Advance compters are not on the same network. If you have a battery issue they cannot pull up your battery purchase. Nobody uses the date stickers anymore. You have to know which Advance you bought the battery at, AND they have to be able to call that store and verify. If it's across town not a big deal, but if you're crossing time zones you may have to wait a day like I did
I had lifetime clutch master and clutch slave for my 1988 Mazda truck through CarQuest. When I needed to order warranty replacement, was told I'd need to go to a certain CarQuest/Advance. I had to make 4 trips there in total to get the two parts, and was out of my way a few miles.

So I'm done dealing with Advance. When these cylinders go, I'll replace through RockAuto or O'Reilly.

Tue Jan 14, 2025 11:42 pm

I remember 10 ? 15 years ago, just a block away from teh machine shop, the Carquest store was literally across the street from the Advance auto parts.

And often if one didn't have the part in stock, you could just go across the street.
Then of course, advance bought them out.
I suppose that saved wear on the crosswalk, and they had a good inventory

Last few years, rarely did they have any wheel bearings in stock anymore.
So, bye, bye

I guess..... good thing, my new work location is a block away from an Orielley :D