ShowMeTheParts, a division of Vertical Development Inc., and Exide Technologies recently completed a collaboration with Mid-States Distributing Co. to power a new mobile-friendly battery lookup site. The Durastart Battery Center, available at DurastartBatteries.com, provides a searchable database where visitors can query to find the batteries they need.
Mid-States, known as “The Heart and Soul of Farm, Ranch and Home,” is a 62-year-old cooperative comprised of 43 independent, farm, ranch and home retailers across the U.S. and Canada. Retail stores carry products ranging from pet supplies, power equipment, agricultural and automotive equipment and supplies, sporting goods, clothing and footwear to honey bees. Having such a wide range of products means that customers could be looking for batteries to fit anything from marine products to tractors, the company noted. A print catalog covering all the models and interchanges would be enormous, and with constant model changes, portions of it would always be out of date. That’s why Exide said it chose to work with ShowMeTheParts when creating a virtual catalog and mobile-friendly battery lookup site.
Covering 1.7 million parts with 4.4 million attributes and 8.7 million interchanges, ShowMeTheParts is one of the largest public parts databases on the market. However, it also can be pared down to fit specific needs without losing the depth of its content. For Exide, that means using ShowMeTheParts to help its retail partners find the right batteries for their customers, no matter the application.
Mid-States partnered with Exide for its Durastart label, as well as some Exide-branded products. Together, Exide and Vertical Development have created the mobile-friendly website at DurastartBatteries.com, so stores and customers alike can get parts information as soon as they start keeping stock.
“Implementing the ShowMeTheParts Web catalog in both the desktop and mobile platform provides Exide customers like Mid-States with up-to-date application information for all the segments they serve, while covering the wide range of years their customers need. That is just not practical in a print format,” said Lee Wilson, product information manager at Exide Technologies.
“Exide’s retail partners and consumers enjoy the convenience of having this data readily available and easy to access giving them the ability to search for their application and product information needs from any computer or mobile device,” he concluded.
With Exide adding information with each product release, the stores selling these batteries will always have the latest information right at their fingertips, the company says.
To take a tour of the Battery Center, visit DurastartBatteries.com.
To learn more about ShowMeTheParts, visit verticaldev.com/showmetheparts/ or call (847) 609-9540.
