Author Copperberg Editorial Team | *This article was developed using a combination of human expertise and AI-assisted writing. The concept, structure, and editorial direction were defined by our team, while elements of the text were generated with the support of advanced language tools. All content has been reviewed, refined, and approved by humans to ensure accuracy, clarity, and relevance.

For many industrial manufacturers, the traditional profit logic has flipped quietly but decisively. Margins on whole goods are being squeezed by global competition, procurement sophistication, and pricing pressure. At the same time, margins on spare parts have held steady – often four times higher than those on finished equipment.

This divergence has turned the aftermarket into the economic engine of industrial businesses. Yet the way many organisations sell and distribute parts still reflects a world where customer expectations were lower, dealers were the only channel, and non-genuine competitors were marginal.

That world has disappeared.

Today, three structural shifts are colliding: margin compression on finished goods, an expectation of Amazon-grade digital buying experiences, and a surge in easily accessible non-genuine parts. Together, they are eroding the very profit pools manufacturers increasingly depend on.

The central question is no longer whether to digitise the aftermarket, but how to do so without alienating distribution partners – and how fast.

The new economics of “gelatized” manufacturing

One of the clearest dynamics in the discussion is the widening gap between finished goods and spare parts profitability.

Margins on whole goods have, on average, been compressed by more than half in recent years. Heightened competition from low-cost manufacturing regions, evolving tariff regimes, and aggressive professional procurement functions have turned large capex deals into low-margin, hard-fought wins.

Spare parts tell a different story. Their margins have remained relatively stable. In some cases, spare parts earn four times the margin percentage of the machines, vehicles, or systems they support.

This creates a “razor and blades” dynamic in industrial manufacturing. Finished goods – once margin-rich – now increasingly resemble the low-margin razor. The recurring sale of spare parts has become the high-margin blade.

The implication is stark: maintaining or growing total margin contribution now depends on increasing the capture rate of genuine spare parts. Every percentage point of parts spend that escapes to alternative suppliers is no longer incidental leakage; it is a direct hit to the primary profit engine of the business.

The Amazon effect meets B2B complexity

At the same time, buyer expectations in B2B have shifted at a behavioural level.

Industrial buyers – often millennials or younger professionals – are accustomed to purchasing almost everything in their personal lives through intuitive, instant, and transparent digital platforms. They see live stock levels, clear prices, product recommendations, and track-and-trace as a baseline, not a premium experience.

When those same individuals are confronted with fax numbers, opaque pricing, manual quotations, or dealer-dependent phone-based ordering for spare parts, the gap is no longer perceived as merely inconvenient. It feels structurally outdated.

Only about a third of B2B customers are satisfied with their current online buying experience. That dissatisfaction is not abstract. It translates into time wasted, equipment downtime extended, and workarounds sought.

Moreover, non-genuine parts suppliers have understood this gap and moved decisively to fill it. Many are present on global horizontal platforms and specialised vertical marketplaces, providing:

• Vast catalogues of compatible parts, including highly technical items once thought to be OEM-exclusive.  
• Immediate price and availability information.  
• Frictionless, self-service ordering with consumer-grade UX.

For an end user under time pressure, the trade-off between “genuine” and “available and easy” is resolved more often than OEMs would like to believe in favour of convenience.

This is where a common OEM assumption starts to fail. Many rely on warranties and residual value considerations to secure loyalty to genuine parts. The belief is that customers will continue to use OEM parts to protect their warranty and asset value.

In practice, the pattern emerging is different. Once equipment moves beyond warranty, or when uptime is at stake, convenience, speed, and price transparency frequently trump theoretical long-term concerns. A technician who can identify and order a compatible part in a few clicks, with guaranteed delivery the next day, will often accept the perceived risk – especially when the OEM channel feels slow, opaque, or unresponsive.

The attack of the clones – and why it matters strategically

The proliferation of non-genuine parts is not just a pricing nuisance. It is a strategic threat to the aftermarket business model.

Type the name of almost any major industrial brand and “spare parts” into a large marketplace, and thousands of compatible items appear, covering complex and highly specific components. What was once a protected high-margin domain has become a crowded, digitally sophisticated battleground.

For opportunistic manufacturers of alternative parts, OEM margins represent an open invitation. Every profitable OEM SKU is a business case for a clone. As the barrier to entry falls – via globalised manufacturing, digital platforms, and data transparency – non-genuine suppliers are able to:

• Meet the customer’s desire for online self-service.  
• Ignore OEM–dealer relationship sensitivities.  
• Erode the OEM’s share of wallet in precisely the areas that sustain the P&L.

The risk is cumulative. If OEMs continue to treat e-commerce as a secondary concern or a dealer-only responsibility, aftermarket margin erosion will not be linear. It will accelerate as customers become familiar and comfortable with alternative channels.

Dealer relationships: from perceived conflict to strategic alignment

The reluctance to move decisively into digital aftermarket models is not primarily a technology issue. It is often a channel conflict concern.

Dealers remain central to many industrial business models. They provide local coverage, service capabilities, and long-standing customer relationships. Understandably, many resist any OEM initiative that appears to “go direct” and bypass them.

Two practical realities emerge:

First, dealers are subject to the same pressures as OEMs. They also need to increase their share of parts revenue. They also face buyers demanding digital interactions. Many do not have the scale or capabilities to design, fund, and maintain robust e-commerce platforms on their own.

Second, the lack of an OEM-led digital channel does not protect dealers; it exposes both them and the OEM to non-genuine competitors who have no qualms about selling directly to “their” customers.

The strategic opportunity lies in reframing digital not as disintermediation, but as enablement.

A model where the OEM provides a centralised e-commerce platform, while dealers remain the merchant of record and fulfillment backbone, fundamentally alters the dynamic. Instead of competing with dealers online, the OEM:

• Aggregates demand through a single, brand-controlled front end.  
• Routes orders to dealers based on territory, inventory, or service relationships.  
• Allows revenue and margin to accrue to the dealer while delivering a seamless customer experience.

In this configuration, a dealer no longer views the OEM’s digital presence as a threat, but as an infrastructure investment on their behalf. The OEM stops asking dealers to individually solve complex digital problems and instead creates a shared platform that raises the competitiveness of the entire network.

From brochureware to agentic commerce: six levels of aftermarket maturity

When examining how manufacturers currently sell spare parts online, a maturity spectrum becomes visible. It is less about specific tools and more about capabilities and ecosystem design.

Level 1 – Dealer locator only  

The manufacturer’s website provides basic information and a dealer locator. Customers who wish to buy parts must identify and contact a dealer themselves, typically by phone or email.

This model:

• Does not materially increase OEM part capture.  
• Does not satisfy customers seeking online self-service.  
• Offers dealers little more than passive lead generation.  
• Leaves the field open to digital-native non-genuine competitors.

Level 2 – Online catalogue, offline ordering  

The next step adds a browsable, non-transactional parts catalogue. Customers can identify the correct part and then contact a dealer with a precise reference.

This improves accuracy and reduces some dealer workload but remains offline and manual at the ordering stage. It is an incremental, not transformative, shift.

Level 3 – Fully transactional, dealer-fulfilled  

The critical turning point comes when the website becomes fully transactional. Customers can:

• Search and select parts online.  
• See dealer-specific availability and pricing.  
• Place orders digitally, with fulfillment completed by the designated dealer.

Revenue and margin still accrue to the dealer, even if the OEM ships from its own warehouses behind the scenes. For the customer, the experience begins to resemble a B2C e-commerce environment, with the added assurance of genuine parts.

At this level, the OEM closes much of the gap with non-genuine suppliers in terms of usability, making it far harder for clones to win on experience alone.

Level 4 – Extended ecosystem: parts, accessories, consumables  

Customer needs rarely stop at OEM parts. They also require third-party consumables, accessories, and complementary products – the same range that dealers already sell offline.

If the OEM platform only offers its own SKUs, dealers are forced to either:

• Maintain separate digital channels for non-OEM products, fragmenting the experience.  
• Or forego a digital channel entirely for those product lines.

By extending the platform to allow dealers and third-party suppliers to onboard their own product ranges, the OEM creates a genuine one-stop aftermarket environment. Customers can source everything associated with the equipment – genuine parts, accessories, consumables – in a single journey.

Technically and operationally, this requires capabilities traditional e-commerce systems do not provide: ingesting and normalising external product data, managing distributed inventories and pricing, orchestrating multi-party orders, and handling payouts and invoicing across multiple sellers.

But once in place, it produces three reinforcing effects:

• Customers receive a complete, convenient aftermarket solution.  
• Dealers gain a powerful digital channel for their entire offering without having to build and operate it alone.  
• The OEM strengthens its position as the central orchestrator of the aftermarket ecosystem.

Level 5 – Global replication, not local pilots  

Even manufacturers that have reached levels 3 or 4 often restrict these capabilities to one or two major markets because of complexity and cost.

However, the combined volume of smaller and mid-sized markets, when aggregated, can surpass that of flagship regions. Limiting advanced digital aftermarket capabilities to a handful of countries leaves significant revenue and margin unrealised.

A global platform strategy – adapted for local regulations, languages, and dealer structures – allows the manufacturer to capture long-tail demand, deliver a consistent brand experience, and prevent non-genuine suppliers from entrenching themselves in less strategically visible geographies.

Level 6 – Agentic commerce readiness  

Beyond meeting current expectations, the next frontier is integrating AI-driven, conversational and agentic experiences into aftermarket journeys.

As large language models become embedded in day-to-day work, technicians and engineers increasingly turn to them for troubleshooting, diagnosis, and configuration. The natural next step is to allow those same assistants – whether on the OEM’s site or integrated in third-party environments – to:

• Interpret symptoms and suggest likely causes.  
• Identify the exact spare parts or kits required.  
• Trigger or complete the transaction within the same flow.

An “agentic commerce ready” aftermarket is one where the e-commerce backbone, product data, and inventory visibility are structured in such a way that AI agents can:

• Understand the catalogue at a granular level.  
• Map issues to parts and services.  
• Execute purchases on behalf of the user, within pre-defined rules.

This is not about replacing traditional browsing entirely. When buyers already know precisely what they need, they will continue to transact directly. The strategic impact lies in complex, consultative purchases and in troubleshooting scenarios where AI can compress steps that today require manuals, spreadsheets, and back-and-forth communication.

The compounding impact on margins, relationships, and loyalty

Progressing along this maturity curve is not a cosmetic upgrade; it changes the economic and relational fabric of the aftermarket.

On the revenue side, two key metrics are affected:

Spare parts capture rate  

As digital channels become easier, richer, and more ubiquitous, a higher percentage of a customer’s total parts spend is directed through the OEM–dealer ecosystem instead of alternative suppliers.

Gross merchandise value in the extended aftermarket  

Once accessories, consumables, and third-party products are integrated into the same platform, the total transacted volume grows beyond traditional OEM parts. The platform becomes the primary digital destination for the installed base’s operational needs.

Indicative ranges discussed suggest that:

• Moving from a static catalogue (level 2) to a fully transactional dealer-fulfilled model (level 3) can increase parts and accessories GMV by 10–20%.  
• Extending to a multi-supplier ecosystem (level 4) can push that to around 50%.  
• Adding global deployment and agentic capabilities (levels 5 and 6) provides potential for two- to four-fold increases, depending on starting point and category dynamics.

Beyond revenue and margin, the relational impact is significant.

Customers experience a reduction in friction across the lifecycle: faster identification of the right parts, higher transparency, and a genuinely omnichannel journey encompassing digital, dealer, and service interactions. Satisfaction and loyalty metrics such as NPS tend to rise when the brand is seen as easy to do business with in moments of need.

Dealers benefit from incremental revenue and a level of digital sophistication they might struggle to achieve alone. Instead of battling non-genuine marketplaces with fragmented, underfunded websites, they are equipped with an industrial-grade platform that keeps them at the centre of the relationship.

For OEMs, the alignment of customer experience, dealer satisfaction, and shareholder expectations becomes structurally easier to maintain. The aftermarket is no longer a set of disconnected transactions but a coordinated, data-rich value network.

Why “doing nothing” is no longer a neutral option

In many organisations, the barrier to action is not disagreement with the analysis. Internally, most stakeholders will acknowledge that:

• Customers expect to buy online.  
• Spare parts are critical to profitability.  
• Digital competitors are gaining ground.  
• Dealers need support, not sidelining.

Yet transformation stalls because of IT backlogs, organisational inertia, and a perceived lack of urgency.

The risk is that inaction is treated as preserving the status quo, when in reality it accelerates decline. If customers cannot easily find and buy genuine parts online, they will increasingly turn to channels that satisfy that need – regardless of authenticity. If dealers are left to solve e-commerce individually, many will underinvest or fail to reach the required standard, leaving the door even wider open to alternative suppliers.

The result is a business model where manufacturers sell low-margin “razors” while allowing competitors to monetise the high-margin “blades” of the installed base.

The alternative is not an overnight reinvention of the enterprise. It begins with a decision to act – to explore architectures that enable collaborative commerce with dealers, to engage integration partners who understand multi-party ecosystems, and to prioritise aftermarket digitisation as a strategic initiative rather than a peripheral IT project.

Conclusion: owning the aftermarket future

The shift toward a service and outcome-oriented industrial economy places aftermarket performance at the core of brand value. Equipment may be engineered to perfection, but in the customer’s eyes, the real test begins when something fails, needs replacing, or must be maintained quickly to keep operations running.

In that moment, the ability to:

• Identify the correct part in seconds
• Confirm availability and price transparently
• Place an order instantly via the preferred channel
• Receive fast, reliable fulfillment – often through a trusted local dealer

defines the perceived quality of the brand as much as the original product.

Manufacturers that treat e-commerce and AI-enabled journeys as optional layers risk ceding this critical space to non-genuine suppliers and transactional marketplaces. Those that re-architect their aftermarket around collaborative digital platforms, dealer enablement, and agentic readiness position themselves to protect and grow their most important profit pool.

The economics are clear, the customer behaviour is visible, and the competitive landscape is already shifting. What remains is a leadership choice: to regard aftermarket e-commerce as a defensive necessity, or to seize it as a strategic differentiator that aligns customer experience, channel health, and shareholder value.