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Indirect sales are consolidating as the key model to scale the digital automotive supply chain. Brands, distributors, and retailers must take active roles in a network that promises efficiency, expansion, and shared growth.
At a time when digitalization is redefining commercial processes in the automotive sector, indirect sales emerge as a model that allows brands to extend their reach without losing control over their distribution network. This scheme, based on collaboration among manufacturers, wholesale distributors, and retail points of sale, proposes a new commercial logic: a digital ecosystem where everyone sells, but each fulfills a strategic role.
The heart of this transformation is the digital catalog, a tool that standardizes the offering, facilitates product publishing, and ensures that both distributors and retailers have access to updated, high-quality information to operate online. In the automotive context, where data accuracy references, compatibilities, availability is key, this standardization is essential to ensure operational efficiency and end-customer trust.
Key Roles: What Role Does Your Company Play?
- Brands:
They initiate the process. They build the catalogs, design the rules of engagement, and define which actors to invite to join their commercial network. They also enable logistics solutions and digital sales tools that strengthen their resellers. Their leadership defines the ecosystem’s reach and effectiveness. - Wholesale Distributors:
They specialize in large-scale administrative and logistical management. They act as the link between brands and retailers, especially in markets where the brand has no direct presence. In the automotive industry, they typically ensure regional availability of spare parts and components, offering coverage, efficiency, and scale. - Retail Sellers:
They know the end customer closely: workshops, dealerships, mechanics. Their contribution goes beyond sales: they provide feedback to the brand about demand, market behavior, and product performance. Their active participation enriches the commercial intelligence of the entire chain.
Towards a More Competitive Automotive Ecosystem
This model not only enables selling more but selling better. By structuring a commercial circuit with defined roles and shared tools, companies in the sector can improve response times, reduce operational errors, and scale their digital presence without fragmenting their value proposition.
In short, in the new automotive commerce, it’s no longer just about having stock: it’s about being connected, organized, and aligned to grow together.
Indirect Sales on Mercado Libre: How Brands Reach Customers Without Selling Directly
One of the strongest scenarios to apply this model is Mercado Libre, Latin America’s most important marketplace. Instead of managing direct operations, more and more auto parts brands are adopting an indirect strategy:
- Publishing their products through authorized distributors and resellers.
- Controlling published information through a unified digital catalog.
- Ensuring sellers offer their products with accurate technical data and a consistent buying experience.
Platforms like Alephee facilitate this strategy by integrating the brand’s catalog with Mercado Libre and allowing multiple sellers to use it to publish products with visual consistency, suggested pricing, and integrated logistics (including Mercado Libre Fulfillment).
In this way, brands gain presence, scale sales, and maintain their reputation intact while their sales network grows in an orderly and sustainable manner.
Does Your Company Already Have a Defined Role in This New Ecosystem?
At Alephee, we drive the digitalization of value chains across Latin America. Contact us and access more content and strategies designed for the future of automotive e-commerce.
