spark360 Behind The Scenes: Gold Auto Parts Recyclers

Walking into the huge Gold Auto Parts Recyclers warehouse in East Dallas may remind you of the final scenes from “Citizen Kane” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” We’re talking about a structure that looks like it stretches for a couple of football fields in length. You could just imagine Orson Welles intoning “Rosebud” as you walk down the aisles. (I could have swore that I heard the opening notes of the familiar Indiana Jones march from “Raiders” as I first walked into the warehouse, but it was probably just the oppressive Texas summer heat making me a little woozy.)

Everywhere you look in this building, there are racks filled with used auto parts in various stages of assembly and disassembly. Huge fans set high on the walls attempted to move the hot, humid air that wrapped around and through Gold’s warehouse when the spark360 crew arrived to shoot b-roll for our company profile, but it was a losing cause. My thanks to spark360 producer/editor Steve Miller, photographer Tom Graybael and assistant Jonathan Moon for enduring the sweltering temperatures. The ultimate irony is that they sweated buckets capturing what I found to be a fascinating process: how Gold Auto Parts remanufactures used automotive air conditioning compressors – the very part that helps keep cars nice and cool during a typically scorching North Texas summer.

Of course, the Gold employees have to deal with this climate every day of their summers, so they have my respect, as does Gold partner/CFO Lane Weitz, who let us interview him in the warehouse.

It was much cooler inside the Splash Media studios where I interviewed Gold’s president and managing partner Jerry Amman on our spark360 virtual set. A colorful, down-to-earth guy, Amman’s enthusiasm is infectious, and I hope that comes through when you watch our question-and-answer session. It became clear during our chat that Amman used that entrepreneurial spirit to take his company to another level by starting sales of their remanufactured AC compressors directly to consumers over the Internet, even as a recession was bearing down on the economy.

“Were we scared? Yeah,” Amman told me. “Did we have to work hard? Really hard. But when the economy turned down, I was able to plug into my employees and have my employees plug into me and my excitement and my enthusiasm – ‘Guys, now is not the time to be afraid. Now is the time to go to work, and let’s figure this out.’”

Amman’s company is doing just that, and I figure that any company that can fill a warehouse with a capacity of more than 100,000 auto parts units must be doing something right – in this case, building a business out of used and remanufactured auto parts. And to do all that in the middle of a Texas summer is a heroic effort worthy of a certain fedora-wearing, whip-cracking archaeologist, you know?

- Renay San Miguel