Andy Eccher says customizing a vehicle is akin to wearing jewelry.
It’s all about personal taste and fashion, he says.
“Many people use their vehicles as a way to express themselves — as a way to ‘make it mine,’ which is a tagline we’ve used before,” said Eccher, Southeast Toyota Distributors’ distribution and accessory sales vice president.
For new Toyotas sold in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas, customization is performed at a processing and distribution center on Pritchard Road in Westlake Industrial Park. Eccher led a media tour there Tuesday.
“Accessorization is the avenue for making the vehicle ‘mine,’” Eccher said.
Eccher directed the Westlake facility when it opened about 12 years ago. He now is based in Deerfield Beach.
A significant share of his job is to work with Toyota dealerships in the Southeast to sell as many bells and whistles as possible; the more accessories, the higher the profits.
Sometimes, that’s easy, because some consumers know precisely what they want; sometimes, it isn’t — often because of lack of knowledge, Eccher said.
“It’s all about awareness,” he said.
When giving presentations to dealerships, Eccher’s key message is that accessorizing vehicles correlates with customer satisfaction and, thus, enables vehicles to be sold quicker and for more money. The company provides tours of its processing centers to ensure dealerships, journalists and others are better informed about Toyota customization options.
Often dealers aren’t aware of the accessory packages — known as the X series — available only for Toyotas purchased in the Southeast, Eccher said.
“One of the most frustrating things that we have happen is when we have dealers come to our facilities and we show them our packages, and they didn’t realize we were offering that,” he said.
Eccher says the post-recession new vehicle sales growth in the U.S. — from 10.4 million cars sold in 2009 to 16.5 million last year —makes his job easier.
“Those numbers are definitely helping move vehicles quicker,” he said.
Southeast Toyota’s three processing centers — in Westlake, at Talleyrand Marine Terminal in Jacksonville, and in Commerce, Ga. — handle 15 to 20 percent of Toyotas in the U.S. In 2014, the company processed about 459,000 vehicles. About 75 percent arrive by rail from North American manufacturing facilities and about 25 percent arrive by ship from Japan.
The Toyotas processed in Jacksonville are the Camry, Corolla, Tundra, Tacoma, RAV4, Highlander, Sienna and Sequoia.
The eye-catching X packages are conceived in the Westlake facilities’ development section — or “think tank.”
For a manufacturer-suggested retail price of $1,499, for example, the hot-selling Corolla XSP adds a spoiler graphic, blackout overlay package, red caliper covers, front and rear ground effects in black, and a door graphic.
“We get to be creative in here. This is where we get our juices flowing coming up with packages,” Tim Tuttle, the company’s new products development manager, said during a facility tour.
Southeast Toyota, which is owned by Deerfield-based JM Family Enterprises Inc., is the Japanese automaker’s top distributor. The firm is one of two franchised Toyota distributors in the U.S. — a result of the services its adds to the distribution process.
“We listen to our dealers. That’s really where our most direct input comes from,” Eccher said. “They know what customers are looking for.”
Southeast Toyota owns almost 251 acres with about 350,000 square feet of building space at the West Jacksonville industrial center. The 12-year-old facility is growing; a 20,000-square-foot central services building is being constructed.
Aside from processing and accessorizing vehicles, and sending them to 176 dealers, the company also distributes vehicle parts from a facility in Baymeadows. The company employs about 700 people in Jacksonville.