briggs,kohler,honda parts deals

one of my help wants me to set up a small engine shop to also do outside work. whats the best way to get a franchise or buy parts right? we have franchised dealers a few miles away. i farm out several thousand dollars in labor each year,buying most parts off e-bay. advise please,we are getting ready in florida!

Get hooked up with Stens corp. They have a lot of OEM parts and "will fit" parts and they ship quick. Best of all,the price is right.

You will have to contact a distribuitor representing each line in your area. They might not let you have the product line in your area if there is another dealer close by. Territories are 'somewhat' protected. Meaning, it you commit to buy enough from them you can probably get in anyway.
I do know Briggs used to want their dealers to stock a minimum of $10,000 in parts, in addition to purchasing a small number of complete engines each year.

In addition to name brand parts, my local parts house has parts by a company named ROTARY. Good quality parts for a lot less than original. Rotary has a large catalog.

Maple Grove Distributing Company
Galveston, Indiana
I have used their parts for several years.

good luck and i hope you are good at dealing with the public. it can be very stressfull to say the least and non paying. you have to commit to any distributor to get hooked up so to speak and deal with alot of paperwork and inventory control. franchise dealers means they have commited the dollars. 25,000 to 125,000 for each connection you want is range depending on how seriuos you are.

I wish you luck in your endeavor, as mentioned above be prepared to deal with the public. You will get many customers you will shake your head at. Over the years it seems any place that does repairs gets more headaches than what its worth. Now with the throw away machines being built you get guys buying a mower for $99 and then freak out at you when you quote them the repair for $80,$100 ect. Lots of the local repair shops here are thinking about getting out of the repair part of the business due to you not making as much as you did 20+ years ago due to less and less parts of a machine meant to be replaced & not to be repaired.

You will also need to be a good business man/ book keeper or hire people to do the taxes,receipts,billing,payroll ect.

I own a small L&G business but mainly sell parts for equipment and do little to no service work, alot of times its just not worth the hassle dealing with today's machines.

There are a couple aftermarket manufactures out that I use which require small orders of like $5,000 to start off with.
Many Name brand companies have minimum orders which require you to do annual spring orders, some upwards of $25,000 if you plan on ordering factory direct.
I would also recommend stocking all common parts as well as customers generally hate waiting for parts!

Hope this helps

If I wuz you (and I know I'm not)I woodn doit,BTDT

In my shop Stens parts are only used if OEM is not available.

Carl,
I'm no dealer, just fix my mowers. I too find good deals on ebay and I use amazon prime.

I have a commercial garage. I rented it a short time to a good mechanic. He tried repairing mowers. Good at what he did, but couldn't make enough money to pay the rent and electric.

A few old timers have a yard full of junk mowers. People bring their junk to be fixed. Find out what it going to cost to fix. Costumers say to just keep it.

There is a place that does a good business repairing mowers and chainsaws is an ariens dealer that also sells parts. Another place sells John Deeres and is an authorized repair shop for other models.

The small upstarts have a difficult time making a go of it. If I were you, only buy the parts you need to fix things costumers tell you to fix.