![]() We do a lot of SEO - search engine optimization, we a lot of pay per clicks. “And this is actually picking up significantly now because we’ve invested a lot of time and money to make sure that it functions properly and looks good. ![]() “After that we created our own website,, to have another sales channel,” Shaked continues. “-and we jumped on that early,” interjects Mamane. Then Amazon came around doing essentially the same thing-“ It was fairly easy because they have a section, ‘eBay Motors’, with all the structured data that makes it simple to input your parts and create a listing. “But around the mid-2000s we started selling more and more online, and after 2010 we really started selling compressors online. “We weren’t really doing much on eBay back then I guess (it too) was in its infancy,” he muses. “He actually studied to be a lawyer, but had a change of heart and found a better opportunity here,” comments Mamane.Īccording to Shaked, R&Y first got online back in 2002 with an eBay store. So it made sense for Shaked, the guy who started it all, to come onboard to handle the all-important catalog. Mamane saw the future of sales as being online and not in brick and mortar “(Sites like) Amazon Prime are now part of everyday life,” he observes. “But I always like to find opportunities, especially in emerging markets like this.” “I went to school for marketing and advertising, which is ironic because I have little to do with marketing and advertising here,” he notes. Regardless, after Mamane moved over to R&Y five years ago, he saw the potential of online sales and began developing it as a market. “We jokingly say that Jacob’s the Christopher Columbus of the family,” he laughs, “because he got his dad to sell refrigerant on eBay in 2005, one of the first such sales ever.” Shaked is a bit more modest: “I can’t conclusively say that, but I’m pretty sure we were.” It was after working at his uncle’s shop for a few years that Mamane had an epiphany, perhaps partly inspired by an achievement of his cousin’s. And then my uncle Roy has about 20 techs at his shop that he employs full time in about 15-16 bays.” “We have rebuilders, master rebuilders, floor men, like any other company. “We have around 20 people that we employ between the office, the books, and the inventory,” cites Mamane. Today R&Y has more than 8,000 square feet of warehouse space to rebuild compressors. For many years before the internet, they were basically one company, just with two buildings.” “My company’s biggest customer was my uncle Roy’s shop, and the shop was reliant on this place to get the parts that he needed with a quick turnaround time and an affordable price. It quickly became symbiotic between the two - “one company couldn’t work without the other,” says Mamane. Named after Roy and Yosef, an early business partner, R&Y grew as an enterprise just around the corner from the shop. There are a lot of shops, but how many of them can rebuild their own parts, supply their own demand, and do it in a quick amount of time?” “But after a year or so they concluded that they needed to be rebuilding their own parts, because that’s where the real business was. “The demand was there, the supply was low, so he figured that was the first step for the business,” Mamane says of the original service shop. The whole thing got started in 1987 when Shaked’s father Roy started AAA Radiator & Auto Air Conditioning in North Miami Beach. As long as the quality of your product is good and the price is reasonable, consumers are willing to take a chance at purchasing parts online.” And they want to purchase the part on the Internet because at the end of the day the one thing that controls everything else is price. “What we’ve found through our data, from our customer surveys, and speaking to customers in person,” explains Shaked, “is that many people find us on the Internet, not so much word of mouth. And who are the consumers? Again, thanks to the internet, there’s a new and growing breed of do-it-yourselfers armed with YouTube videos what R&Y likes to call “weekend warriors” on the site. We also sell locally and to other shops within Miami-Dade County.”Īccording to their website, R&Y A/C Compressors distributes “a comprehensive line of replacement mobile climate control products.” Their principal product is remanufactured A/C compressors, which they do in-house. We sell online through eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart and our website. “What we do is 99 percent business to consumer. “We have very little competition, and we’re in a emerging market in the fact that e-commerce for automotive parts is in its infancy.” ![]() “Our business is unique,” explains Prosper Mamane, who has partnered with his cousin Jacob Shaked to run R&Y. In this case that door says R&Y A/C Compressors, and the path to it is the internet. So anyone who can figure out a better way of supplying affordable A/C in the Sunshine State will have Floridians beating a path to their door. ![]()
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