Mick’s Garage: Scaling to 25,000 Orders a Month with Custom eCommerce Technology (episode 614)
Ciaran Crean is the co-founder & CEO at Mick’s Garage a car parts & accessories store. Founded in 2004 they now sell regularly via their custom website into over 34 countries. With over 10 million listings the range has expanded way beyond just car parts now including far more categories like outdoor sports equipment, camping gear, and roof racks – all meaning they ship a whopping 25,000 orders a month on average.
Mick’s Garage has built its growth around keeping its technology and development in-house, allowing the team to experiment quickly with new verticals, improve the customer experience and test new ideas. In this episode, Ciaran shares how they approach AI, product data, international expansion and the operational challenges of running a 10-million-product eCommerce business.
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Dive in:
[04:30] Building custom eCommerce solutions
[07:06] Launch of dedicated UK website
[10:16] Launching and Growing New Verticals
[14:11] Revenue sources and supply chain management
[20:18] Efficient order processing system
[22:35] Using AI for customer engagement
[24:20] Listen to Ciaran’s Top Tips!
Build around your customers, not the limitations of your tech
Mick’s Garage operates with millions of product listings and highly complex fitment data. Ciarán explains why an off-the-shelf platform could not give customers the experience they needed. Instead, the business built its own technology around how customers actually shop for car parts. The key lesson is not that every eCommerce business needs custom tech. It is that your technology should solve your customer’s real problems rather than force customers into a system that does not fit.
Use focused websites to unlock growth in new categories
Mick’s Garage found that its huge product range could sometimes work against the customer experience. A customer looking for a roof rack did not necessarily want to navigate a site full of brake pads and timing belts. The team tested a dedicated website for roof racks and quickly saw a much higher conversion rate. This led to more vertical websites, each built around a specific customer need and product category. It is a smart example of how eCommerce brands can use focused experiences to unlock growth without starting the business from scratch.
Give new channels time to move from paid growth to organic growth
Ciarán shares a clear growth playbook for launching new verticals. At first, Mick’s Garage uses Google Ads and merchant feeds to create demand and gain market share. As the site matures, customer acquisition costs can fall while SEO, repeat purchases and word of mouth start to grow. This means a new eCommerce venture should not be judged only by its early return on ad spend. Understanding where a business is in its lifecycle can change how you measure success and where you invest your marketing budget.
Control the customer experience when your supply chain gets complex
Mick’s Garage learned that sending orders directly from multiple suppliers created problems. Customers could receive several packages, use different carriers and wait days between deliveries. Bringing products into their own warehouse gave the business much more control over the experience. Their technology then helps them combine stock, cross-docked products and orders into an efficient fulfilment process. For eCommerce businesses with complex supply chains, this is a powerful reminder that the cheapest fulfilment model is not always the best model for customers or long-term growth.
Use AI where it makes the customer or team better
Mick’s Garage is not using AI simply because it is the latest trend. Ciarán says the business avoids relying on AI for generic product descriptions because it believes its own product knowledge produces better results. Instead, AI is being used internally for development and research, while the company is also testing a customer-facing AI tool that helps shoppers find the right roof rack for their vehicle. The lesson is to start with a clear problem and then ask whether AI can solve it better, rather than looking for places to add AI.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Prioritize email marketing, with clean lists, strong engagement and relevant offers; continue investing in and testing Google Ads.
Tool Top Tip
- Monday.com for team collaboration and workflows, Tableau for business intelligence, and Adobe Scan for mobile
Carbon Top Tip
- Mick’s Garage shreds incoming cardboard and reuses it as packaging for fragile products to minimize packaging waste.
Interview links
*Thank you to Jamila Jamani for the guest introduction!
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