Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Brent Hutchinson · Don Kyatt Group · August 2026
A parts business built on branches and stockists reads from the outside as distribution-led. That is a strong channel and a passive one: it serves whoever already knows to walk up to the counter. This map is the rest of the market across Australia. Who actually fits and consumes these parts, what segment they sit in, roughly how many there are, and which of those segments no list will ever hand you.
Automotive service and repair workshops
The core trade buyer, and the one a counter already serves well. The number opposite is the registered population rather than the buyable one. A large share are non-employing sole traders, so the workshops with staff, bays and a real parts account are a materially smaller and considerably more valuable subset.
Who signs: workshop owner, service manager, parts interpreter, and at multi-site groups the purchasing manager.
27,000 to 29,000
Australian automotive service and repair businesses; the employing subset is materially smaller than the headline count
Agriculture and primary producers
The segment that runs light vehicles hardest and furthest from a dealer network. Most buy through a local workshop or a rural reseller rather than direct, which means the reachable decision often belongs to the reseller, while the end user's stated preference is what moves the reseller.
Who signs: farm or station owner, farm manager, workshop foreman on larger operations, and the rural reseller's branch manager.
168,000 to 173,000
Australian agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses; the large-fleet subset that buys parts directly is a small fraction of that total
Mining, civil and resources fleets
The highest-consumption buyer on this page and the least visible one. Light-vehicle fleets in remote operation replace driveline, suspension and brake components on a duty cycle rather than on a failure. Being straight about the limit: businesses are registered, fleets are not. Fleet size is published nowhere.
Who signs: fleet manager, maintenance superintendent, supply and contracts lead, and the site services contractor who holds the maintenance scope.
No public fleet register
operators are countable, fleets are not; reached site by site and contract by contract, which is exactly why the segment stays underworked
Emergency services, government and utility fleets
Slow to buy and very slow to leave. These fleets run on panels and standing offers, and every state and territory runs its own. Getting onto a panel is a named process with a named owner and a published renewal date, which makes this one of the few segments where the timing is knowable in advance rather than in hindsight.
Who signs: fleet manager, procurement officer, maintenance contract manager, technical standards lead.
Panel by panel, state by state
no single national list; each jurisdiction publishes its own arrangements and its own renewal dates
National service networks and buying groups
The layer sitting above several thousand individual outlets and negotiating once on behalf of all of them. Small by count, disproportionate by volume, and invisible in any business count, because a franchised outlet is registered as its own separate business.
Who signs: category manager, national purchasing manager, supply chain director, network general manager.
A small number, very high reach
franchise networks and buying groups are not enumerated separately; each sits above hundreds or thousands of the workshops counted above
International distributors and stockists
A brand present in many markets carries a distributor recruitment problem in each of them, and no country publishes a register of aftermarket parts distributors. This is identification work rather than list work, which is why most brands grow it through inbound interest and trade shows and then find the map has holes in it.
Who signs: managing director, purchasing director, category manager, and the owner at family-held wholesalers.
No register in most markets
aftermarket distributors file under general wholesale codes; reached by name, market by market

Where the openings are

1
A counter reaches the person who already walked up. Branches and stockists are a strong channel for the workshop that knows the brand and a silent one for the fleet buyer, the network buyer and the overseas distributor. None of those three walk up. Their decisions get made in a procurement office, frequently before a vehicle has even been bought.
2
The registered count is not the buyer count. Roughly 27,000 to 29,000 automotive repair businesses in Australia, but a large share are non-employing. Working that segment properly means filtering down to employing workshops with bays and a trade account, which is a data job rather than a purchase, and it is the difference between a raw export and a list worth calling.
3
The highest-value segments are the ones with no list. Fleets, buying groups and overseas distributors are all real, all buying and all absent from any public register. Anyone working from an off-the-shelf export reaches the counted segment and misses these three entirely, which is precisely the reason they stay open.
Built from public market data covering Australian business counts and industry classification, current to the 2025 publication year. Counts are banded deliberately. Business counts include non-employing sole traders, so they describe the registered population rather than the buyable one, and fine-geography counts are perturbed for confidentiality. Fleet size, buying group structure and overseas distribution are not covered by any public register and are described rather than counted. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
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