Just a quick update for those of you following our investment in Frugal Mechanic: Eric and Tim don’t make much noise but they’re quietly dominating the world of auto parts price comparison. That may not sound like a big market, but DIY auto parts is actually a $19B market in the U.S. alone, and none of the big price comparison guys has shown the stomach for the extremely messy data work required to get it right.
They have a great destination site at http://FrugalMechanic.com, but the real story is in their white label auto parts search tabs for major auto-related media properties. They just inked a new deal with High Gear Media to run micro-targeted parts search across 38 of their online properties. And this is just the latest in a string of deals covering some of the best-known brands in the business.
I’m proud of the team at Frugal and fully expect them to run the table in this vertical, and maybe knock over a few other verticals with similar characteristics once they’ve taken care of auto. Keep up the great work guys…