My name is Jim Lefeber. I live near Grants Pass, Oregon. Fortunately, my lovely wife Sandy, our children (Sean 16 and Kayla 10) and I love this rural Southern Oregon community. The fact is that we live in an area most people would consider as a nice place to visit for a vacation.
My family members are the shareholders of STARprises Inc., an Oregon corporation doing business as (dba) locally in Grants Pass as STAR Automotive and STAR Import Service . I am President (and floor sweeper, mind reader, purchasing manager, etc). We are a premier auto repair facility specializing in the maintenance and repair of high end automobiles. STAR has been servicing vehicles since 1975; in other words, we are well established in the Rogue Valley. I purchased STAR from the retiring owner in 1990. You can click on the above links to learn more about STAR, our services, our employees, and other interesting information.
www. Auto Part Mart .com is our venture into the world of internet commerce. You might ask, “ What experience does Jim have to be successful in servicing customers throughout the United States, and possibly the world (export)? ”. A brief autobiography should explain my qualifications.
I attended University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. After college, it took two weeks (a horribly long time for me) to find a job in Southern California. My first job out of college in 1972 was working as a parts driver for G&H Auto Parts in Pasadena, California (it was the only available job which I could find). Within 6 months I was the store manager, responsible for hiring, firing, P&L, purchasing, and everything else involved with running a retail store.
My retail experience continued, always in automotive parts. I was offered an opportunity to join Repco, an Australian company which had purchased BAP/GEON (a national wholesale imported parts distributor) in 1975. I became a product manager (making catalogs, introducing new parts), then purchasing manager. A parts importer (expediter) offered an opportunity I could not turn down (considerably more income), and all of the sudden in 1977 I was the BMW parts purchasing agent for Eurasian Automotive in Sunnyvale, California.
Another income increasing opportunity presented itself when Mr. Sigi Drimmer from IAP, Inc. in New Jersey hunted me down in Sunnyvale, offered me an opportunity in Los Angeles to be the purchasing manager for IAP West, Inc. which would become the West Coast operations center for IAP, Inc. I joined IAP in 1980. I was promoted to general manager of IAP West, Inc. in 1984. Between 1984 and when I departed IAP in 1989, our sales increased from 4M per year to greater than 16M per year. During the 80’s I enjoyed traveling around the world, negotiating large and small contracts, importing and exporting small shipments, air freight, and numerous container shipments both to and from the United States.
Today I enjoy continued relations with many of the people, manufacturers, and corporations with which I have had the pleasure to conduct business since my involvement in the automotive aftermarket. The internet has opened new and serious possibilities for me to serve much wider customer bases while living in one of the most beautiful locations of our country.