Feature Story:
A new online e-commerce site that will include mobile electronics with advanced tie-ins to stores is being launched by Tint World.
The new site currently offers 160 brands of truck accessories and wheels and tires, moving to 500 by the end of the year. The mobile electronics area of the new site is due to go live in early January. Tint World expects that all its current car audio vendors will be offered on the site.
“We would like one day to have as many products as Crutchfield. Our angle is to be not only an authorized seller online but an authorized installer…”said Tint World CEO Charles Bonfiglio.
Tint World currently has 55 franchise locations and expected to double that in 2018.
“It’s just the beginning for us,” said Bonfiglio. “We’ll have a very big 2018 between adding online sales and we plan to double our chain size.” The operation had been set up to open about 8 to 12 stores a year but it spend the last year creating the framework to add more stores. Now it is ready to open 30 to 50 locations per year, he said.
“We’re getting a lot of the big players. One just signed a 4-store deal in Arizona. That’s a new state for us. We have a 3-store deal about to happen in Chicago. So we’re now starting to get the multi-store owners in and they want to open marketplaces, not just a location,” Bonfiglio said.
The e-commerce site has been years in the making. In fact it first launched two years ago and was pulled down.
The original site had a more general revenue sharing system between the stores. “But that doesn’t really work for us,” said Bonfiglio. “We were having to field all the customer calls and talk to consumers and negotiate with them on installation and give them the features. [But] the stores have to be the ones to negotiate their local installation charges,” he said.
The site now asks the consumer to choose a store and the merchandise is then credited to that location. A central billing system pays the vendor and the store for the sale so there’s no extra bookkeeping for the franchisee. Consumers are encouraged to make an appointment for installation online and pick up the merchandise at the store at the time of installation.
When it comes to car audio there were other concerns. “Some stores carry certain brands in addition to our core brands so that store wants to sell that product and certain brands don’t want their products sold online directly to a customer–only if it’s shipped to a store,” Bonfiglio said. So the site was configured to handle these issues.
Eventually each store will have a chat section with interaction in social media, so a store can take requests through Facebook and Instagram. And the site will be promoted in areas where there are Tint World stores, Bonfiglio said.
The online store at www.tintworld.com also offers free shipping on all purchases over $99, and to all purchases shipped to a local Tint World shop.
Among the brands Tint World carries are Directed, VOXX, Accele, Metra, Dual/Axxera, NAV-TV, Scosche, and AAMP Global.
