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LAKESIDE AUTO SUPPLY
DISTRIBUTOR PROFILE
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WHO WE ARE
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Lakeside Auto Supply is an independent aftermarket parts distributor (a
warehouse distributor, or "WD") founded in 1987 and headquartered in Toledo,
Ohio, with a second branch in Findlay opened in 1998 to cover the southern
half of our territory. We carry six vendor lines, run six outside territory
managers, and stock and deliver to about 120 active accounts across northwest
Ohio. We don't manufacture anything and we don't do retail counter walk-up
traffic in any meaningful volume -- our business is stocking the right parts
in the right bins and getting them to a shop's back door before their next
job needs them.

LOCATIONS & DELIVERY
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Toledo branch is the main warehouse and handles the northern and eastern
routes -- Sylvania, Maumee, Perrysburg, Rossford, and the Toledo city shops.
Findlay branch stocks a smaller mirror inventory and runs the western and
southern routes -- Bowling Green, Napoleon, Defiance, Van Wert, Lima, and the
smaller county-seat towns down through Kenton and Bucyrus. Both branches run
twice-daily delivery routes on weekdays and a Saturday morning route for
accounts that need it. Will-call pickup is available at both counters for
accounts that would rather run in than wait on a route.

LINE CARD
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Six lines, covering the categories a typical independent shop or tire dealer
needs most:
  - Callahan Brake Parts ......... brake friction: pads, rotors, shoes
  - Ridgeline Suspension ......... shocks, struts, coilover kits
  - Northwater Filtration ........ oil, air, fuel, and cabin filters
  - Anchorpoint Battery .......... batteries across passenger and light truck
  - Ironway Chassis & Steering ... tie rods, ball joints, control arms
  - Beacon Wiper & Lighting ...... wiper blades, bulbs, lamp assemblies
Callahan Brake Parts is the biggest line by dollars across our account base,
though not every account carries it -- see the current priorities section.

CUSTOMERS & CHANNEL
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Our accounts fall into four buckets: independent repair shops (the majority),
tire dealers who also turn wrenches, a handful of small private fleets, and a
couple of jobbers who resell out of their own small counters in towns too
small to support a full Lakeside route. Account size ranges from a two-bay
small-town garage doing a few hundred dollars a month to our largest fleet
account doing tens of thousands. Most of our business is DIFM (do-it-for-me)
-- shops installing what they order, not retail pop-in traffic.

BUYING GROUP
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Lakeside has been a member of Great Lakes Parts Network since 2004, which
gives us group purchasing terms on all six lines and access to the group's
seasonal promotional calendar, including the Callahan Spring Brake Blitz that
ran March through May this year.

COMPETITIVE SET
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Our main competitive pressure comes from two directions: national retail
auto parts chains (Roadrunner Auto Parts is the one that shows up most often
in our territory, usually opening a store near an independent shop with an
aggressive DIFM install promo for the first sixty to ninety days) and other
regional independent distributors competing for the same shop accounts on
price and fill rate. We don't try to win on price against the chains -- we
win on knowing the account, carrying what they actually need in stock, and a
territory manager who shows up.

WHAT A GOOD ACCOUNT LOOKS LIKE
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A good Lakeside account orders across three or more of our six lines,
reorders on a predictable stock-order cycle, and has a territory manager who
actually gets in the bays and talks to the techs, not just the counter. The
accounts that grow are usually the ones where a TM found a real reason to be
there -- a rebate program, a fill-rate problem we fixed, a competitor's price
scare we answered -- not just a habitual drive-by.

CURRENT PRIORITIES
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1. Get ahead of Northwater Filtration's backorder problem before it costs us
   accounts that are already substituting a competitor filtration brand on
   the affected line codes -- this is a supply issue on Northwater's end and
   needs to be escalated as such, not treated as a selling problem.
2. Figure out where Corridor Auto Repair stands after Roadrunner Auto Parts
   opened next door with an aggressive introductory promo -- an account that
   went quiet needs a real conversation, not just another routine stop.
3. Close the white-space gap on Callahan Brake Parts -- several otherwise
   healthy accounts across multiple territories buy four or five of our six
   lines and have never carried Callahan at all.
4. Keep the Spring Brake Blitz momentum going into the summer stocking
   season and get better at logging what's actually being pitched in the
   field -- reporting on the promo has been inconsistent by territory
   manager, and that gap makes it hard to tell what's working.
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