Pep Boys & Advance Auto

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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by wnetmacman »

luckysaver wrote: May 4th, 2022, 1:18 am Covina and West Covina (CA) Pep Boys stores getting co-branded as well. Both stores are along Azusa Ave.

Advance Auto Parts has the retail shop while Pep Boys has the service bays.

Advance used to be part of Sears in the 1980's until it was spun off in the '90's and a just few years ago bought the Die Hard product line from Sears. Coincidence that the rebranded Covina Advance-Pep Boys store is about a block south of the former Sears Auto Center (now an indoor archery range) so they've kind of returned to the area.

luckysaver
Close, but not quite.

Advance Auto has always been an independent company. Western Auto was owned by Sears in the 1980s but when spun off in 1998, were purchased by Advance. Sears was trying to make WA a standalone repair company and had opened a good number of standalone stores, whose repair bays can still be seen on a number of current Advance stores today.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by ClownLoach »

luckysaver wrote: May 4th, 2022, 1:18 am Covina and West Covina (CA) Pep Boys stores getting co-branded as well. Both stores are along Azusa Ave.

Advance Auto Parts has the retail shop while Pep Boys has the service bays.

Advance used to be part of Sears in the 1980's until it was spun off in the '90's and a just few years ago bought the Die Hard product line from Sears. Coincidence that the rebranded Covina Advance-Pep Boys store is about a block south of the former Sears Auto Center (now an indoor archery range) so they've kind of returned to the area.

luckysaver
You'll keep seeing this. Advance bought all California Pep Boys retail stores over a year ago. They did not however commit to reopening all of the stores - about 50 of the California Pep Boys locations permanently closed and in those locations the Pep Boys auto repair bays also closed. I think COVID has dramatically slowed down the ability of Advance to get in, remodel the spaces, restaff and reopen the stores. It appears that when the stores closed a lot of the help was let go and everyone else went to the Pep Boys auto shop including the General Manager. So for Advance this is probably worse than just a normal new store opening because they had to remodel the spaces, most of which were neglected, run down, smelly, and dark, then staff up and reopen. With the labor shortage I would imagine that Advance won't buy many more of these Pep Boys parts stores; they only bought California because their operations here were just franchise shops under a different name. The Pep Boys stores will probably continue to turn into market expansions for chains not in a particular area yet, which is why we've seen AutoZone and others take over the stores elsewhere. I heard O'Reilly also has taken some of these stores outside of California.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by Jeff »

ClownLoach wrote: May 6th, 2022, 11:55 am
luckysaver wrote: May 4th, 2022, 1:18 am Covina and West Covina (CA) Pep Boys stores getting co-branded as well. Both stores are along Azusa Ave.

Advance Auto Parts has the retail shop while Pep Boys has the service bays.

Advance used to be part of Sears in the 1980's until it was spun off in the '90's and a just few years ago bought the Die Hard product line from Sears. Coincidence that the rebranded Covina Advance-Pep Boys store is about a block south of the former Sears Auto Center (now an indoor archery range) so they've kind of returned to the area.

luckysaver
You'll keep seeing this. Advance bought all California Pep Boys retail stores over a year ago. They did not however commit to reopening all of the stores - about 50 of the California Pep Boys locations permanently closed and in those locations the Pep Boys auto repair bays also closed. I think COVID has dramatically slowed down the ability of Advance to get in, remodel the spaces, restaff and reopen the stores. It appears that when the stores closed a lot of the help was let go and everyone else went to the Pep Boys auto shop including the General Manager. So for Advance this is probably worse than just a normal new store opening because they had to remodel the spaces, most of which were neglected, run down, smelly, and dark, then staff up and reopen. With the labor shortage I would imagine that Advance won't buy many more of these Pep Boys parts stores; they only bought California because their operations here were just franchise shops under a different name. The Pep Boys stores will probably continue to turn into market expansions for chains not in a particular area yet, which is why we've seen AutoZone and others take over the stores elsewhere. I heard O'Reilly also has taken some of these stores outside of California.
Downey and East Los Angeles both are AAP coming soon. Downey also has a stand alone Pep Boys Auto Repair off Paramount and Firestone.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by bryceleinan »

Reno, NV is converting to AutoZone according to recent building permit filings… Sparks, NV isn’t anything as of yet.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by storewanderer »

bryceleinan wrote: May 9th, 2022, 9:43 pm Reno, NV is converting to AutoZone according to recent building permit filings… Sparks, NV isn’t anything as of yet.
That explains why the Reno unit has all of the windows blacked out but Sparks windows are just visible.

Since Sparks already has Auto Zone nearby and O'Reilly with a couple locations nearby I can see why they passed on it.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by Alpha8472 »

Pep Boys auto service has been somewhat awful for me every single time. They are always understaffed. They lose your online appointment only to reject you and tell you to come back another day. They do shabby work and blame it on something other than employee error.

A simple thing can take 6 hours and it might not even get done in one day. Once they blamed the work not getting done because they mixed up my car with another car of the same model. They did work on the other car instead of my car. Then they told me to wait even longer. How do you make a mistake like that? The cars do not even have the same keys. Pep Boys seems to have trouble hiring good people. It seems like every customer is complaining when I go there.

As I waited in their store for hours, I noticed that there were no customers buying anything. Their retail stores were awful in price and selection. Good luck trying to find any employees to help you.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by bryceleinan »

storewanderer wrote: May 9th, 2022, 10:05 pm
bryceleinan wrote: May 9th, 2022, 9:43 pm Reno, NV is converting to AutoZone according to recent building permit filings… Sparks, NV isn’t anything as of yet.
That explains why the Reno unit has all of the windows blacked out but Sparks windows are just visible.

Since Sparks already has Auto Zone nearby and O'Reilly with a couple locations nearby I can see why they passed on it.
Sparks has the hub locations for both chains. Rock & Prater for O'Reilly (former Grand Auto), McCarran & Prater for AutoZone. I don't know that Advance will come in - they do have the CarQuest on Longley / Rock area.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by ClownLoach »

So Advance Auto Parts now has billboards on the freeways in LA area stating they are now open.

Only problem is that when I drove by two of these new stores this weekend they still have not opened. Signs are up, stores are full and merchandised, but they have a few pallets of heavy goods like batteries shoved against the front doors and no specific opening date posted. That is a lot of expensive merchandise being left to sit unsupervised. Clearly they can't hire anyone to run the new stores. I'm wondering how little they are offering. Pep Boys I have on good authority paid quite handsomely at the Store Manager level because you were considered to be running two businesses,and they kept these same managers to only run the surviving service bay. I'll bet Advance is paying the store manager less than Pep Boys paid their Assistant Managers... Then all the rest of the jobs are minimum wage dealing with heavy parts and toxic chemicals. I'll pass on that job!
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: May 11th, 2022, 11:05 pm So Advance Auto Parts now has billboards on the freeways in LA area stating they are now open.

Only problem is that when I drove by two of these new stores this weekend they still have not opened. Signs are up, stores are full and merchandised, but they have a few pallets of heavy goods like batteries shoved against the front doors and no specific opening date posted. That is a lot of expensive merchandise being left to sit unsupervised. Clearly they can't hire anyone to run the new stores. I'm wondering how little they are offering. Pep Boys I have on good authority paid quite handsomely at the Store Manager level because you were considered to be running two businesses,and they kept these same managers to only run the surviving service bay. I'll bet Advance is paying the store manager less than Pep Boys paid their Assistant Managers... Then all the rest of the jobs are minimum wage dealing with heavy parts and toxic chemicals. I'll pass on that job!
That kind of makes sense that Pep Boys kept the manager on to oversee the service business. Advance could have brokered a deal to let the assistant managers over the old stores become store managers with Advance.
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Re: Pep Boys & Advance Auto

Post by ClownLoach »

Well I finally found a converted Pep Boys that had actually opened as Advance Auto. They did not even have an exterior sign installed yet, just the red paint on the storefront and a banner in Lake Forest.

This store as Pep Boys had reduced their sales floor to only 3 aisles all along the front which pretty much consisted of only fluids, cleaning supplies and very small cheap parts like fuses. Everything else had moved behind the counter and the shopping experience was dreadful since you basically had to go to the counter for everything but there was never any staff.

Advance put the store back to about 10 aisles with a combined parts and checkout counter on the left, very much like an O'Reilly. Selection was brands I am not used to seeing, such as Purolator filters prominently featured, but their detailing and cleaning supplies were all very high end and a great selection. Simple black and yellow signage that probably wasn't expensive but does the job and makes this new store easy to shop. Seems like they're shooting to be a higher end brand than O'Reilly who I always perceived as mid-tier, with AutoZone lower tier and Walmart bottom of the barrel. LED light bulbs were the best assortment I have seen at retail. And the two employees working were friendly and greeting every customer, although they seemed young and probably not very experienced I'd take them over the grouchy rude former Pep Boys employees that used to work there. I liked the store and clearly once the word is out they're going to get a lot of customers into these stores. I just wonder how badly the toxic Pep Boys name is going to impact these stores - they're going to have to make it crystal clear they are not affiliated with Pep Boys in any way to get their angry former customers back into the same 4 walls. Not easy when Pep Boys shares one of those walls.....
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