AutoZone’s 1,000 Stores Hide Another Real Estate Map of Mexico

An auto part must travel hundreds of kilometers to end up just a few meters from the vehicle that needs it. Before getting there, however, it had to make the opposite journey, converging with thousands of other parts in large industrial facilities before being dispersed across the country. That contradiction between gathering and distributing helps explain the real estate geography AutoZone has built in Mexico.

Recently, as the company announced that it had reached 1,000 stores nationwide, it broke ground on a new distribution center in León, Guanajuato, on a nearly 195,000-square-meter site. The coincidence reveals two scales of the same real estate network: stores spread across nearly the entire country and industrial properties concentrated in far fewer locations.

According to company data, although eight out of every 10 AutoZone stores are in the North, Central, and Bajío regions, the network extends across 22 states. By contrast, the industrial properties SiiLA identifies as occupied by the company are limited to five locations in just three markets.

At its core, this reveals two different forms of proximity. To sell, AutoZone needs to be close not only to the customer, but also to the customer’s vehicle, with direct vehicle access and immediate parking that facilitate both parts purchases and some of the services offered at its stores. That is why roughly nine out of every 10 AutoZone stores in Mexico operate in freestanding properties with their own parking, according to a SiiLA estimate based on the company’s real estate criteria and the observed distribution of its network. The remainder are located primarily on the periphery of shopping centers, either in buildings within parking lots or in spaces with direct exterior access, as at Portal Centenario in Mexico City.

At its industrial properties, distance works differently. AutoZone does not manufacture the parts it sells, so the goal there is not to bring a part closer to a vehicle, but to receive inventory from different suppliers, organize it, and position it to reach hundreds of points of sale. The configuration of these spaces reflects that function. Four of the five properties identified by SiiLA have at least 204 loading docks combined, while three have cross-docking systems that allow merchandise to be received, sorted, and redistributed without necessarily remaining in storage.

However, the points from which that network is supplied are not distributed like the points where sales ultimately take place. While the North accounts for 40% of AutoZone’s stores, it represents 63% of the industrial space the company occupies. The Bajío shows the opposite relationship, with 22% of stores but just 9% of that space, while the Central region accounts for 19% of stores and 28% of the identified industrial space.

The Nuevo León facility will expand precisely that less visible side of the network. With an announced investment of $183 million, the project will serve the Bajío and Western regions, where roughly a quarter of the company’s stores in Mexico are located.

AutoZone’s case thus shows that a chain’s expansion doesn’t unfold across a single real estate map, but across several overlapping ones, shaped by the different requirements of selling, supplying, and distributing across a territory. León now adds another piece to that geography.

To analyze how these and other real estate networks overlap across Mexico, visit SiiLA Market Analytics or email us at contacto@siila.com.mx.