Partstree.com Resources

The Partstree.com Story

It all started at Hill Country Outdoor Power, our retail store on Highway 290, just west of Austin TX. Partstree.com started out of a need to overcome the weather - or more precisely, the lack of rain. It wasn't raining, so the grass wasn't growing! No one was buying lawn equipment or parts and no one needed their equipment repaired. So, Andy, our managing partner, had an epiphany: It must be raining somewhere. Let's sell there! We launched Partstree.com in June, 2005 from the parts room of our store.

In September, 2005 Doug, the other partner, started advertising Partstree.com at night from his flat in London. Why Doug was in London is a story for another time. Anyway, we hit 30 orders a day within a week. Four weeks later, we turned the advertising off. We could not handle the volume and provide the same level of service we pride ourselves on at the store. We literally drowned ourselves in business, but we learned two very important things: 1) people want to buy parts online and 2) we must get computers to handle as much of the process as we can, we simply can not successfully manage this business manually.

So, Bryan, our programmer, spent the next 3 months furiously writing software, while Nick, our parts manager, and Andy mapped out how to apply our retail business software to a web business. In late December, 2005 Partstree.com was back up and processing orders.

2006 was very much a learning year for us, both for the business and our internal processes. We totally updated our website twice to improve its ease of use, bringing the same tools we used to find parts at the counter of our store to our online customers, most notably equipment diagrams with parts lists. This made it much easier to find the correct parts and dramatically improve our sales success and our customer satisfaction. We also added a dedicated customer service person to help those customers that needed a little extra help with their order - this function has blossomed into a whole Customer Service group focused on providing the best service in the industry. We added administrative support to help Susan, Andy's wife and the holder of the purse strings , deal with mountain of paperwork that comes from ordering and receiving lots and lots of parts daily. The result was phenomenal growth in 2007, we literally outgrew our store and almost worked ourselves to death. In the process, we became the largest Cub Cadet/Troy-bilt/MTD parts dealer in the United States, the largest Husqvarna parts dealer in the United States and the largest Toro parts dealer in the United States.

If that wasn't enough, in 2007 we had one more very special addition - Doug and Elizabeth welcomed Riley Elizabeth to the Partstree family - we soon put her to work testing the equipment.

2008 opened with a move out of our store to a new warehouse 3 miles down the road. Okay, so it isn't exactly new and our landlord still hasn't taken the old sign down, but it is 5 times as large and it is new to us!!!

We also added a new floor manager, several new employees, flashy new tablet computers, a conveyor system, a bagging machine, bar-code readers, a new phone system and lots of new software to tie it all together. Now all of your parts are individually bagged and labeled and scanned multiple times in the fulfillment process to make sure that we ship you exactly what you order. We also got shelf space ... LOTS of shelf space! Space for literally tens of thousands of parts, enough to ship most orders from our own stock within one business day. See the Partstree Difference for more information about our commitment to your satisfaction.

So, what's next in 2009? Well, first, there were two more "very special additions" to the Partstree.com family. On February 4th, Susan gave birth to Leah Zsuzsanna, and on April 18th, Elizabeth gave birth to Morgan Grace, so the Partstree.com family is growing quickly. Okay ... this was written by one of the proud fathers, so we have to put the pictures in!!!

As to the business, we're staying focused on improving our operations and are constantly working on all areas of the business ... our internal processes, our website and our product and service offerings. We stock almost twice the parts we did last year and are now shipping most orders within one business day. We've changed our returns policy to be consistent with our philosophy of customer service, (see the Terms and Conditions). We've also added more customer service staff to help you with your questions. We have more improvements planned, so please visit our site regularly to see how we're changing to better serve you.