How Independent Repair Shops Are Buying Parts and What’s Driving the Decisions

by Anthony Shaheen

IMR recently conducted a survey of 500 independent repair shops to further understand parts distribution strategy. Among the questions being answered, are shops using aggregator platforms? How are they ordering parts? And when they’re on those platforms, what drives the purchase?

Platform Usage

Just over half of shops surveyed (56%) currently purchase parts through a multi-supplier aggregator platform. That’s a strong majority, but the 44% who don’t are also notable.

Among 1-3 bay shops, only 25% report using a platform. The opposite is true for larger shops: 76% of 4-7 bay shops and 78% of 8+ bay shops are platform users.

Early-career techs (0-5 years) show the highest platform usage at 66.7%, compared to roughly 55% for both mid-career (6-15 years) and veterans (16+ years). The gap between newer technicians and the rest could reflect the fact that those who entered the trade more recently came up in an environment where these tools were already part of the workflow.

All nine U.S. regions fall within a narrow 50-61% usage range. West South Central is the softest at 50.6%; Mountain and New England sit near the top at around 60%. While region doesn’t seem to predict platform usage, it does appear to influence how shops behave once they’re on one.

How Parts Are Actually Ordered

The channel breakdown for parts ordering is as follows: multi-supplier platforms account for 47.5% of orders on average, direct supplier websites come in at 34.5%, and phone orders represent 18.1%. Platforms are the dominant channel.

Smaller shops (1-3 bays) use phone ordering at slightly higher rates, consistent with the idea that smaller operations may be less formally structured in their purchasing. Mid-size shops (4-7 bays) show an interesting spike in supplier website usage at 40.4%, possibly suggesting they’ve built direct supplier relationships without consolidating onto aggregator platforms yet. The largest shops (8+ bays) lean back toward platforms, which could focus more on efficiency and price comparison at higher order volumes.

Early and mid-career technicians execute roughly three-quarters of their orders through aggregator platforms. Supplier website usage among these groups is around 10%, which could suggest limited direct-supplier relationships and defaulting to platforms as the primary tool.

More experienced techs (16+ years) orders are evenly split between supplier websites (40.7%) and platforms (40.3%), with higher phone usage as well. These technicians have likely spent careers building relationships with specific distributors, and those relationships appear to show up in their purchasing behavior.

Regionally, most of the country follows the national pattern of platform dominance except for two regions; New England, where supplier website usage reaches 52.5%, making it the only region where direct ordering beats aggregator platforms and the Mid Atlantic with supplier websites (44.2%) nearly matching platforms (38.2%).

What Drives the Purchase Decision on Platform

Among confirmed platform users, 58.9% cite part availability as their top selection factor. Price comes in at just 10.4%. Brand did not even register (0%) as a primary driver at all.

Early career techs cite availability at 80.6%; four out of five platform users in this group appear to be on the platform for one primary reason: find the part. Price and delivery are well behind at around 5-8% each.

Veterans (16+ years) still lead with availability at 57%, but delivery speed climbs to 26.7% nearly five times the rate of early-career techs. After years of working in the trade, a technician usually knows what part they need. The question shifts toward how quickly it arrives. These two groups may be using the same platform, but they’re likely using it in different ways: one as a discovery tool, the other as a fulfillment tool.

Delivery speed increases with bay count, 14% for smaller shops, rising to around 25% for mid-size and large operations. Smaller shops show higher price sensitivity (18%) and the highest rate of defaulting to search results position (16%).

Nationally, availability wins in every region except New England, where delivery speed comes in at 60%, and availability drops to 33%. That’s essentially a complete inversion of the national norm. The Mid Atlantic follows a similar pattern, with delivery at 39% and availability at 45%. The East North Central region shows price sensitivity at 22.7%, more than double that of any other region.

Conclusion

Technician experience drives whether shops use platforms, how they order parts, and what they prioritize when they get to the platform. Early career technicians are overwhelmingly platform-native and availability-driven. Veterans are relationship-driven and speed-driven.

The Northeast doesn’t show meaningfully different adoption rates, but how shops order and what they prioritize on platforms points to direct supplier relationships remaining structurally stronger here than they are in the rest of the country.

Nationally, “availability” is the dominant platform selection factor, but for a newer tech, it means inventory; for a veteran or larger shop, it’s more about knowing if the part will show up and when.

The most stunning part of this data is that brand isn’t even in the conversation. Not a single respondent identified brand as the most important selection, landing at 0%. It doesn’t necessarily mean brand is irrelevant at every stage of the purchase journey, but at the moment of selection on a platform, it appears to carry little to no weight.

This aggregator platform environment looks like it is reframing the purchase decision. When a technician can see availability, price, and delivery time side by side across multiple suppliers in a single search, the brand on the box becomes secondary to availability and speed.