For years, my friend Charlie owned and ran the Exxon station in town. In his spare time, he rebuilt and repaired vintage Corvettes. Suffice it to say he accumulated lots of parts which he merrily tossed haphazardly into a storage barn. Though his health is good, he quickly realized he’d overbooked himself with retirement car projects. His accumulated parts inventory was disorganized. He couldn’t find parts he needed, and had multiples of parts he didn’t need.  Years before, we’d discussed inventorying and organizing his parts; but, he didn’t have the time or motivation. Faced with more limited retirement income and the need to buy expensive parts to complete his projects, he got motivated.

It took months to inventory, photograph, and organize his parts. In the process, he happily found some of the parts he thought he needed to buy for his projects. I helped him create an MS Access database for his inventory. Yeah, he made the usual data entry mistakes, sloppy typing, not realizing that naming consistency is the key to success, etc. But, once he saw the impact of his careless work, he fixed his mistakes and paid more attention. As a former business owner, he understood the concept of “garbage in garbage out;” he just hadn’t been personally responsible for the garbage before.

As we took inventory and built the database, he put aside a few parts each week and I showed him how to auction them on eBay. From his ownership experience, he already knew how to deal with customer questions and complaints, and he pre-empted many by providing clear photos and carefully worded descriptions—especially for used parts that had damage or repairs. He wasn’t excited about communicating by email, but eventually fit email time into his daily schedule. It took awhile for him to learn the secrets for successful packing and shipping—especially with bulky parts like fenders. But he managed.

Realizing that he had more parts to sell than he could possibly auction on eBay, we created the PennyVette.com website. It’s named PennyVette because he’s the creative soul who covered a midyear Corvette with pennies.

Getting his database of parts displayed online took several iterations and help from the programming staff at TnR Global . They created a searchable and sortable database, which let Corvetters easily find the parts they needed. Best of all, at any time, we could update our MS Access database offline, then upload to instantly update the online database.

We chose not to create a shopping cart, because he felt more comfortable if customers contacted him before buying. From years of Corvette experience, he knew many hobbyists thought they needed one part when they actually needed another, might need additional parts to complete a project, and didn’t always understand damage and repair implications.  For some restorers, damaged or repaired parts were just what they wanted; not so for others.

With a few months of online selling experience under his belt, and his inventory under control, Charlie re-evaluated his car projects. He then sold a few project cars online, keeping only those he really wanted to finish himself.

Who’d a thunk it? A retired computerphobe launching an online sales career to support his retirement hobby! I guess with proper motivation, just about anyone can learn new tricks!

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