Content area
Full text
DALLAS - Chief Auto Parts, a chain of 550 auto parts stores, has come of age, joining the modern era of auto parts retailing.
Five years ago, Chief hovered on the brink of bankruptcy, operating tiny, convenience parts stores. Chief befitted its heritage as a chain owned for a critical decade (1978 to 1988) by the 7-Eleven convenience store chain but was ill-suited to compete with chains of the 90s that stock thousands more skus of necessary parts in stores that were at least three times as big.
Under a new president, David Eisenberg, who hailed from the drugstore industry, Chief Auto began a transformation in 1992 from a convenience parts chain into what he calls a chain of "serious parts stores."
In advertising campaigns in Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif., Chief promoted itself as The All New Chief."
Chief is "the newest old chain," Eisenberg is fond of saying.
Now, Chief is back in the running under new investor owners that have plunked fresh cash into the operation since 1994 to pay for the opening of new, larger stores and for the inventory to stock them. In the transformation, sku count jumped to 16,000 from 8,000.
Under its new ceo, Chief began catching up operationally:
* Signing Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman as its spokesman just days before his team won the 1996 Super Bowl;
* Putting in a parts counter-the hallmark of a "serious parts store"-instead of just a front checkout register for self-service purchases; * Installing a long overdue electronics parts catalog;
* Establishing a reputation as a chain that specializes in national brand parts, rather than private label goods of unknown quality;
* Venturing into the latest trend among parts retailers, selling wholesale to commercial auto repair shops.
The investment group that owns Chief, Trust Company of the West Fund, a group of private investors from a 1994 buyout from GE Capital, still harbors plans to take the chain public. Those plans were aborted last year when the stocks of other aftermarket chains, most notably AutoZone and Discount Auto Parts skidded, and the IPO market soured for aftermarket chains as a whole.
With the recovery of their shares, Chief hopes the time could soon be ripe, possibly in 1998, for...