The trades of used car parts began and continued from the time when the first automobiles started to appear - after all, it has always been relevant to recycle good parts. However, in Lithuania, the main period of growth and rapid expansion in this market started in the 1990s, after regaining the independence and the onset of intensive automobile imports.

One of the Ovoko partners - Saulius, the CEO of UAB "Devautoda," shares his experience and history. He has gone through various changes in this field and vividly remembers how everything began.

After this stage, the first scrapheaps began to appear. You have to understand that it wasn't like it is now, where there's a scrapheap on every corner - there were very few of them back then. So, at the beginning, I went to work at a scrap for a few years, and time flies. After working there, I realized that my own business was always better, so I started working for myself. I have tried to enter markert where was less competition, I always wanted to stand out, so the beginning of the development of scraps was the right time to open my own business. In general, I completed my automotive blacksmith training, but it didn't work out for me, so somehow, I ended up here."

Over time, the number of sales channels, their convenience, and customer orientation have probably changed the most. But in the old days, when the demand for parts was so huge and trading happened at an unimaginable pace, there was generally no need to worry about finding additional sales channels: "There were advertisements and newspapers, even at the very beginning of my work, but I didn't use them. Some people used them, but the 'Noriu' (classifieds section in newspapers) didn't really matter to me. At the beginning, I just traded simply, and then 'Autoplius' (marketplace portal) appeared, and it was already good back then. Everything appeared in the electronic space, the opportunity to see the cars that specifically interested you, and everything became simpler. You didn't have to go to a place, just for checking the specific part you were interested in; you could immediately call and ask if they had it, how much they were selling it for, and so on."

"But I believe that everyone had a different start, different ideas in the beginning. It certainly wasn't the same for everyone. There were some people who traveled abroad and saw scrapheaps, how it looked like and brought back these business ideas. I didin't travel much that time but I know that in the Netherlands the scrap businesses has been around for a long time - you would go to them and dismantle the part you want from a car yourself."

"We're also facing a shortage of people now; it's hard to find anyone willing to work. But on the other hand, the question is how many of them are really needed. The day-to-day can be very uneven; there are days when you can't keep up at all, and then there are empty days when there's no sales at all. That's when we catch up on work. Consistent work certainly requires any kind of help. But choosing people is not easy as well - if a donut maker were to come, there would be no good in that, it would be better not to have anyone at all. It takes a year at most, just to train and prepare. It's a sphere where you still have to be knowledgeable about cars and their structure. Of course, it's easier now because you can 'google' anything you don't know. Even an older person can figure it out, and there are no problems for the younger generation. This is also a change in the market, where everything is more accessible."

"Oh, I resisted this a lot; Agnius from 'Ovoko' even visited me multiple times. I even avoided him, saying that I didn't need anything, that it wasn't interesting to me. I was quite stubborn at first, but now I see that there's no way without online sales. There was a time when we thought about creating our own e-commerce system, but now I see that it's not enough to just create it. You have to work on it, improve it, take care of it constantly, and it's not that simple. So, 'Ovoko' has done a great thing for all Lithuanian auto parts entrepreneurs. It's really good; there's a lot of traffic, it's good that parts are not forgotten, you know what you have, what you don't in your stock. You never used to look for hoses for 10 euros, but now they sell. This still happens now - someone calls for something, I don't have it, I say, but they tell me, 'Well, it's on Ovoko.' Saulius laughs. "So, even the service centers are all satisfied; they send codes, and there's no need to spend half an hour explaining what you have and what you don't. If something doesn't fit, you return it, and that's it. This thing is really great, and everyone is happy with it."

Saulius recalls the decision to start working with Ovoko as long-delayed but ultimately inevitable one: "The warehouse kept accumulating and accumulating, and then it became sad - you look at those full boxes and you realize that no one sees them, no one sees what you have. Someone calls on the small part and you say you don't have it, even if you do. There is not a large stream of people coming onsite as well so those parts kept piling up. That was the turning point when we had to start putting them online so that people could see them and buy them. About four years ago we began digitizing and now we have about 40.000 parts listed. And this is still only about 30 percent of all stock."

Perhaps everyone is curious about what the future holds, but it's challenging to talk about long-term plans and market development. The head of UAB "Devautoda" states that significant changes are unlikely in the near future: "I don't see where we will go next; we're not flying to the moon yet. I think that e-commerce will continue to dominate for a long time. In the future, there may be no traditional onsite sales at all. If someone needs a service, they might come for those parts, but gradually, it's declining. In essence, this is how it is now, and there's no future here. Some others already, if the entire car isn't disassembled, don't sell those parts. It's all about e-commerce, just packing and shipping, it's simple. As for the more distant future, it's hard to predict for now; I can't imagine what could happen after this stage."

"Those very good, super profitable, and enjoyable times of unreal growth are in the past; now, we need to keep our heads down and work. Everything is changing, and it won't be the same as it used to be. Buyers are busy too; many work more intensively and can't come to buy part onsite. So reaching them is more challenging with traditional sales; you need to develop online sales."

Saulius's narrative takes us through the evolution of the automotive parts trade in Lithuania, from the early stages of the emerging market to the modern e-commerce, where trading and communication methods are entirely different from the beginning. It all began with local markets/bazaars, and we witnessed a lightning-fast growth in the automotive parts trade until the market demand was filled. However, now that the times of crazy demand and grabbing parts are over, the main assistance to sellers is the opportunity of online commerce solution, giving customers the ability to see and purchase goods directly on the internet at any convenient time and from anywhere in the world. In this way, everyone can expand their sales and not limit themselves to just the local market but venture into "broader waters."