Mike Musheinesh has worked at DetroitAxle a long time, starting in his early teens. Now as CEO, he leads the auto remanufacturing business his father started in 1987.
What began as a five-person operation now employs 400 people across three warehouses. Not only does Mike pinpoint eBay as the key driver for their continued growth, but also as a positive sign for Detroit’s future.
7 Questions with Mike Musheinesh of DetroitAxle
- How did you start selling on eBay?
I started working with my pops at 13 or 14. That was when I left high school. Working with him at a young age really helped to put things in perspective.
We were servicing the local Metro Detroit market. Our radius was 40 or 50 miles. My father was really content just serving X amount of customers. He had his philosophy, and I thought that we can build on his philosophy by expanding more.
The expansion happened back in 2006 or 2007. After joining eBay, our radius turned out to be tens of thousands of miles.
My brother is the one that put us up on eBay. I thought it was a long shot. That first week, our sales were at one or two a day. About a week later, it went up to 14 orders a day. We were like, “Wow, this is interesting.” After the third week, it was doing 20 or 30 orders a day. By eBay's third month, we were doing 200 orders a day.
In that time, it literally made everything that we had done for 20 years secondary to what eBay provided us.
Now we'll do 7,000 orders a day. Each order consists of 8 to 12 different parts. Our range has expanded. It's pretty intense.
- What does a typical day look like for you?
I'm out of bed at 7 o'clock. I get ready to go to the first facility in Mt. Elliot. The Mt. Elliot facility’s been up and running a while, so it's more streamlined and operated “pick, pack, and ship.” It has a lot of technology in it.
After that, I go over to our Ferndale facility. Ferndale is for remanufacturing and rebuilding transmissions and rebuilding rack-and-pinion steering gears and drive shafts. That’s where the battle is. There isn't software that can do your job. This is pure labor and nothing else.
Being able to scale it is the new challenge. How are you able to build a hundred transmissions a day when a transmission is typically filled with thousands of parts within it? There’s no one person that understands how to rebuild every transmission ever made.
We're in the business of training people on one or two particular units, and we've been having great success with it. Now we have young men coming here, and after 3 or 6 months, they're able to build a whole transmission unit on their own, tested and qualified. And they're making fairly good money, so it's a win-win. The only way to be able to get this young man to be able to make $20 or $25 an hour is being able to sell the transmission he assembled. And there's no better place to do that than eBay.
- What’s one thing you would tell yourself when you first started your business?
One thing I learned is how important your men and women are. They'll work for you. They're the backbone of the operation. And they're the ones to take your business to another level or not. They need to be happy and to receive a fair, livable wage.
You must pay your people well and treat them well. If they do well, so does the company.
- What does community mean to you and your business?
We come from the community. We are a part of the community. To be able to do good for the community, it's something that we must do.
Detroit had an unnecessary bad rap over the years. I think Detroit is the land of opportunity. I think Detroit is the best place in the world. I love this city, and I wouldn't want to go anywhere else. This city has the best people. We've had it hard over the years because of what happened with the auto industry, but thanks to a platform such as eBay, I think we're coming back.
- What’s your secret selling power?
First, the customer's going to ask you “How much is it?” Second, they’re going to ask you, “How fast can I get it?” And third, they're going to ask you, “Do you have it?”
If you answer these three questions for the consumer, then you're going to get the sale.
You have to be competitive. You have to give the customer the value he needs. You must have a large inventory. This is where most of the money that you generate needs to go back into.
And getting it there fast—ask your delivery people, “How late are you willing to come pick up our packages?” That's what it's going to take to win. “We'll take care of it tomorrow” is not the right philosophy.
- What’s your process for sourcing or producing merchandise?
We have remanufactured products and have aftermarket products. It's a two-pronged approach.
The aftermarket products are predominantly from China and India. We have an office in Shanghai with about 40 employees. We have vendor relations people to get parts straight from the factory, see what they're producing, and make sure we’re getting the best of the best.
On the other hand, our remanufactured products are sourced within the US. That's a challenge in itself to get a product here and rebuild it.
- What’s your favorite quote— motivational or otherwise? Why?
I always use it. It’s from Eisenhower. He said, “Hindsight is much more accurate than foresight, but a lot less useful.”
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This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
