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When the auto parts category was created on Mercado Libre, hundreds of sellers began opening accounts and listing products—often without accurate information about each part. Over time, the increase in sales attracted the interest of brands and wholesale distributors, who realized that marketplaces would be a lasting trend.
Instead of competing directly for the end consumer — something they have little interest in, given the complexity of selling auto parts and the need to offer installation services — these brands began investing in digital strategies to strengthen their distributor networks.
Aware of this market need, Mercado Libre, the leading e-commerce platform in Latin America, saw an opportunity to consolidate itself as a reference in the automotive category in the region.
To support this expansion process within the marketplace, the alliance between Mercado Libre and Alephee emerged — a platform that enhances business value and seeks to evolve the automotive ecosystem by connecting brands, wholesalers, and retailers in the sector, focusing on digitizing and optimizing online sourcing and sales processes.
Beyond borders: the digitalization of the commercial chain
Both platforms, born in Argentina, saw the opportunity to expand their operations to neighboring countries, as the aging vehicle fleet is a common reality throughout Latin America. The need for easily accessible auto parts to meet regional demand has become a priority for brands in the sector.
To support this expansion and reach new markets, Alephee positions itself as a key partner in the digital transformation of sourcing and online sales processes. With technological expertise and deep knowledge of the automotive ecosystem, Alephee now contributes directly to strengthening the category, beginning with the digitalization of product catalogs from brands in strategic countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and the Caribbean — markets where Mercado Libre already has a consolidated and growing presence.
According to a report published by Automec (2024), the Brazilian auto parts market generated approximately R$ 256.7 billion last year, with projections to reach R$ 269.5 billion in 2025.
In the automotive e-commerce segment, online tire sales are expected to represent around 20% of the industry’s total revenue by 2027, highlighting the growing impact of digitalization on the sale of parts and automotive services. — McKinsey Brazil
By comparison, Brazilian e-commerce as a whole is projected to reach approximately R$ 234.9 billion in 2025, with an estimated 10% growth compared to 2024.
Alephee accelerates catalog digitalization on Mercado Libre
Alephee’s strength lies in its ability to study the market, analyze trends, and anticipate the needs of the industry, wholesalers, and retailers, to offer the best services to consumers. When e-commerce was still in its early stages, the platform was already supporting several brands on their journey toward digitalization and professionalization in the online environment.
Alephee identified a common pain point among brands, wholesalers, and retailers: the need to offer a wide variety of products to the end consumer. Even with diverse inventories of spare parts and maintenance supplies, these players needed to renew the buying experience.
The complexity of creating and maintaining complete and accurate catalogs — correctly linking parts with vehicle brands, models, versions, and years — was the main reason behind Alephee’s emergence in the automotive category. Gaston Zelerteins, Alephee’s CEO, highlights:
“We identified a need among brands and sellers: publishing and maintaining digital product catalog listings was something done manually until Alephee was created. We developed a platform capable of bringing a manual and imprecise process into the online environment to ensure a better shopping experience for vehicle owners.”
With the growth of e-commerce and the digital environment, consumers began to search for more auto parts online but still found few quality results due to the low participation of sellers.
This limited participation was related to the lack of standardized digital catalogs from brands, which — until Alephee’s first projects with Mercado Libre — had no structured plans to digitalize their catalogs or standardize part compatibilities. This made it difficult to use in digital strategies and to share information with sellers, a challenge Alephee set out to solve.
Today, the platform connects more than 2,500 brands, with over 5 million SKUs and more than 300 industries and wholesalers, who together with over 50,000 retailers supply auto parts through an integrated and collaborative digital sourcing and online sales strategy.
Sales strategy begins with a good catalog and quality products
The partnership between Alephee and Mercado Libre (MELI) began with a clear objective: to create standardized product catalogs to facilitate the onboarding of brands, distributors, and sellers on the platform. The core idea was always to structure and standardize product information to accelerate the entry of new sellers and improve the online shopping experience.
From the beginning, Alephee’s operations have focused on providing a complete solution for the catalog life cycle: creating catalogs for brands such as manufacturers, assemblers, and importers to initiate the online sales process. Cataloging is one of the main steps before starting a digital transformation strategy in e-commerce.
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Assembler product catalogs: intended for digital strategies and sharing with dealerships.
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Brand and manufacturer catalogs: with complete and standardized information, facilitating sales by distributors and sellers on Mercado Libre.
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Compatibility catalogs: managing relationships between products and vehicles, reducing errors and returns, and improving the consumer experience.
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Collaborative Catalog Solution: allowing brands and sellers to create content together, with validation, editing, and collaborative improvements.
The collaborative catalog solution is especially innovative: not only do brands create content, but sellers themselves can also contribute, with brand validation and authorization for joint editing and updates. This approach strengthens the online sales ecosystem by making information building more dynamic, complete, and reliable.
Marcopolo, a long-time Alephee client, highlights that the cataloging solution was key to launching its e-commerce strategy:
“With Alephee, we managed to centralize the company’s product catalog and create complete listings with category-specific attributes.” — Micheli Cemin, E-Commerce Analyst.
Building a strong alliance
For Alephee, the evolution of automotive e-commerce is just beginning. The company is committed to working closely with brands, distributors, and sellers to explore the opportunities within the sector.
In addition to being a robust platform that drives and revolutionizes the automotive ecosystem, Alephee offers other solutions aimed at enhancing the experience of connecting, buying, and selling through its verticals: Communities, Supply, and Sales.
The collaboration with Mercado Libre includes maintaining a high standard of quality and consistency in all materials. Gaston Zelerteins concludes:
“It is rewarding for us to contribute to Mercado Libre’s growth in the automotive category. We know we’ve already built a lot together, but there’s still much more to develop throughout Latin America.”
Alephee and Mercado Libre: together driving the automotive sector in Latin America
The long-standing alliance between Alephee and Mercado Libre, which spans borders, demonstrates that much progress has already been made in the digital transformation of sales. With the right partners, it’s possible to go even further. For this reason, Mariano Vainstein of Mercado Libre highlights:
“From day one, Mercado Libre and Alephee have shared the same vision: to transform the experience of buying and exchanging auto parts in Latin America. Together, we are building the present and shaping the future of automotive e-commerce with commitment, innovation, and teamwork.”
Here, we believe the evolution of e-commerce is just beginning.
