Roy proposed expanding from the Chicago area with a nationwide catalog and placed an ad in Popular Mechanics for sixty dollars.

He bought some land at State Street and Archer Avenue, a prime location on the South Side of Chicago, and in 1915, opened The Warshawsky Company, the city's first large-scale auto-salvage operation.

[4] Its growth was sudden and dramatic, spurred by World War I--during which Warshawsky injected himself and his firm into the Liberty Bond campaign.

[5] The onset of World War I saw demand for auto parts grow exponentially, to the point where Chicago's normal supply of junked or abandoned vehicles couldn't meet it.

Joining his father at the firm, Roy decided in 1937 that the catalog should be expanded to include new parts and accessories and that it should be distributed beyond Chicago to encourage a mail-order business.

Around the start of World War II, he bought a $60 retail ad in Popular Mechanics magazine, and urged readers to mail in a quarter for a "giant auto parts catalog" that he'd compiled and laid out himself.

The feedback was overwhelming, and persuaded Roy to implement his next idea, giving the company an identity that was a little friendlier to the tongue than the family surname.

[6] At the time, JC Whitney still sold a lot of what we would later call “hard parts.” These are typically replacement items like alternators, brakes, body panels, and even complete engines, as shown in the ad above.

Until August 2019, the company’s La Salle, Illinois facility served as a public retail outlet for JC Whitney branded products.