Event delivered valuable insight on the changing automotive aftermarket landscape.
From April 2-4, over 300 aftermarket professionals made their way to The Henry, in Dearborn, Mich., for the 2019 Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association (AASA) Vision Conference.
The event featured an action-packed agenda, giving attendees the opportunity to hear insightful seminars from an outstanding calibre of speakers, as well as plentiful networking opportunities and some great take away information.
Every participant at this year’s event received a preview copy of the AASA / Roland Berger analysis, “Digital Transformation: The ‘New Retail’ Future of the Aftermarket (and How to Win),” as well as presentations from the conference.
AASA member only sessions, saw attendees having the chance to listen to “Customer Spotlight” speaker Mark Finestone, Executive Vice President of merchandising for automotive parts chain AutoZone, as well as Adam Goetsch, director of Automotive for Amazon.
Another major highlight was Tenneco Inc. and Parts Warehouse Inc. received the AASA inaugural Channel Excellence Award, presented by Epicor.
The shared data analytics program between Tenneco Inc. and Parts Warehouse Inc. (PWI), focused on inventory and sales optimization of Monroe ride control components. This first-time award saw Joe Pase, IT Executive Director, Tenneco, and Fletcher Lord III, PWI Vice President, accepted the honours from Epicor.
“Upon implementation of the resulting stocking strategies, PWI immediately experienced significant, sustained improvements in out-the-door sales, average unit sale, inventory turns and market share,” said Lord. “We’re very proud to have our joint efforts with Tenneco recognized with this AASA award.”
“We relied on Tenneco’s category expertise and proprietary market intelligence combined with an uncommon depth of insight provided by PWI and the Alliance headquarters team,” Pase commented. “We commend AASA for establishing this award and promoting future efforts such as this in our industry.”
The Tenneco / PWI project was one of three joint initiatives by automotive aftermarket companies selected as award finalists. The other finalists were: Brake Parts Inc. /Genuine Parts Co. and Gates Corp. /XL Parts. Short videos submitted by all the AASA Channel Excellence finalists were played at the 2019 AASA Vision Conference and later posted on the AASA website.
