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By Counterman
The Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association (AASA), in coordination with several key suppliers, announced the launch of
link hidden, please login to view, a website designed to help give parts professionals information and tips on how to identify and reduce fraudulent warranty claims. It’s been estimated that fraudulent warranty returns cost auto parts stores more than $600 million annually. The items returned for credit include worn OE parts, bricks and other items meant to simply fill the box, as well as parts that were damaged during installation. As more high-tech sensors are sold and as the cost of auto parts continues to rise, it will become increasingly important to reduce fraudulent claims.
The website’s goal is to educate parts professionals on how to recognize and stop fraudulent returns, as well as provide a portal to report fraudulent returns. Parts professionals also can earn “Check the Part”-branded items for reporting examples of fraudulent claims through the submission portal.
A group of manufacturers created the Check the Part initiative to help the industry address this widespread problem. The committee is comprised of members from Standard Motor Products, Dorman Products, KYB, MPA, Mevotech, MotoRad of America and FDP Brakes. AASA and the Auto Care Association have endorsed Check the Part.
The website promotes three simple steps to help reduce fraudulent claims:
Open the box and confirm the part is the same type of part that is described on the box and paperwork. Confirm the brand of the part matches the brand on the box. If the part is brand new and was never installed, it can be returned, but it should not be processed as a warranty. Learn more about this initiative at
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By Counterman
For 2019 Counter Professional of the Year Pete Chapman, the key to his success at Car Parts Warehouse (CPW) boils down to one principle: If you want to grow your business, you have to “grow your relationships.”
Cultivating customer relationships is more of an art than a science. It starts with outstanding customer service, of course. But it’s also about the little things – like making sure customers know that you value their business. And Chapman could teach a course on customer appreciation.
Chapman, who has been the manager of CPW’s Warrensville Heights, Ohio, facility since it opened in 2012, goes out to dinner with customers, and invites them to his home when he and his wife, Laura, are hosting a get-together. During the holidays, he sends dozens of Christmas cards to his customers, and delivers personalized gifts to his top accounts. Over the years, he has hosted a Christmas Eve fish fry at CPW’s Warrensville Heights facility, where he and Laura cook 40 to 50 pounds of catfish for his commercial and DIY customers.
Saying “thank you” to customers is a familiar practice for Chapman. His father, Elvin, owned a repair shop in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Growing up, Chapman remembers how parts suppliers would send gifts to his dad – ranging from confections to Indy 500 tickets.
“And I just saw the way that the different parts stores and vendors took care of him,” Chapman says. “They weren’t buying him. They were telling him ‘thanks.’”
For Tony Wiederhoeft, an outside salesperson for the Auto Value stores in Mankato and Waseca, Minnesota, customer appreciation comes naturally. Like Chapman, Wiederhoeft attributes his success to the relationships he’s developed since joining Auto Value in 2019. In March 2021, Automotive Parts Headquarters (APH) recognized Wiederhoeft as the 2020 Auto Value Salesperson of the Year.
“Once you build a relationship with [your customers], everything just kind of clicks,” Wiederhoeft says.
Depending on the day, Wiederhoeft might visit a handful of shops or he might make it to 15 or more shops. No matter how many calls he makes, Wiederhoeft has embedded customer appreciation into his routine.
“Sometimes, if they need a car pushed in, I’ll end up helping push a car in,” Wiederhoeft says. “Or if it’s a one-man shop and they need somebody to bleed the brakes, I might sit in the car and bleed the brakes.
“The way I look at it, I work for them and I work for Auto Value. … They’re more than customers – they’re friends, they’re family. I’m not there just to sell them something. I’m there for them.”
Wiederhoeft credits his employer, APH, for fostering the family atmosphere. On any given day in a normal summer, you’ll find one of APH’s events trailers setting up shop in one of its markets, grilling hot dogs and hamburgers for the local technicians. In the smaller communities where APH does business, “word gets around and we pretty much feed the community,” adds Jim Pascale, APH’s vice president of store operations.
On especially hot summer days, APH delivery drivers bring ice-cold bottled water and even ice-cream treats to its professional customers.
link hidden, please login to view Saint Cloud, Minnesota-based APH celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2020. To commemorate its centennial, APH had planned a number of customer-appreciation events throughout the year. The centerpiece of the yearlong celebration was going to be its 1952 International Metro delivery truck, which was completely restored and ready to deliver 100,000 ice cream treats to customers across APH’s six-state market. While the pandemic forced APH to scale back its in-person events in 2020, the Metro delivery truck hit the road the following summer.
In September 2021, Wiederhoeft got behind the wheel of the vintage delivery truck to delight some of his customers. Of course, he made a point to visit his top accounts. But he also swung by a few shops “that I don’t do a lot of business with.”
“I drove that ice-cream truck all day,” Wiederhoeft recalls. “We put some serious miles on it. I was in five towns in one day, and they loved it.
“ … We opened up the side panel and everybody from the shop would come out. Some of them are looking at the vehicle, some are enjoying the ice cream, some are signing up for prizes. But I didn’t have anybody say, ‘I don’t have time for that.’ Every single one of them came out to check it out.”
Getting Personal
How do you build strong relationships with your customers? It’s not complicated. You have to spend time with them and get to know them, Wiederhoeft explains.
“They tend to open up more to you when you open up to them,” Wiederhoeft says. “So I’ll buy them pizza or donuts or whatever, and sit down and just hang out with them.”
By spending time with his customers, Wiederhoeft gets a good feel for their hobbies and interests. He takes some of his shops hunting and fishing. In August, he took some of his customers to the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals drag races at Brainerd International Raceway, after receiving tickets for being the 2020 Auto Value Salesperson of the Year.
“Instead of just taking my family, I also took a couple of my customers,” Wiederhoeft says. “They had the best time of their life, and we’re going to go back no matter what this year.”
For one of his top customers, the event was his first drag race. “He was like, ‘Dude, we have to go back.’ He wants to bring a couple other people and make a whole weekend out of it this year. It’s the little things like that, I think, that make a world of difference.”
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By Counterman
While O’Reilly Auto Parts launched its dual-market business strategy in 1978, the company’s roots are in serving DIFM customers. Over the years, the company has built up enough brand equity with repair shops that O’Reilly has been able to employ a premium-pricing approach with much of its professional-customer base.
“Throughout our history, we’ve been steadfast in earning our professional customer’s business by providing excellent customer service from highly trained professional parts people with rapid access to industry-leading inventory at competitive prices,” O’Reilly CEO Greg Johnson said during the company’s Feb. 10 conference call. “This unwavering commitment to customer service has allowed us to drive exceptional value for our customers and capitalize on competitive advantages to earn pricing premium in many of our markets.”
The unprecedented events of the past two years have changed O’Reilly’s calculus on growing its DIFM business. With some smaller independent parts sellers struggling to cope with the supply chain disruptions, demand volatility and inflationary pressures of the current market environment, O’Reilly sees an opportunity to grab a larger slice of the DIFM pie.
On the heels of record financial results for the full year and fourth quarter of 2021, O’Reilly recently rolled out targeted, companywide price cuts for DIFM customers, with the goal of winning new business and capturing more sales from existing professional customers.
DIFM Market ‘Very, Very Fragmented’
Johnson outlined the new DIFM pricing initiative during the company’s Feb. 10 conference call.
He asserted that the turbulent market conditions of the past two years – characterized by supply chain shocks and wild swings in customer demand – “have been more disruptive on the do-it-for-me side of the business, which remains very, very fragmented.”
The challenging environment in the DIFM market has magnified the gap between the large national retailers like O’Reilly and some of the smaller independent players, Johnson noted.
“Against this backdrop, we have been very successful in gaining professional market share and growing substantially faster than the overall market through the strength of our industry-leading inventory availability, tiered distribution and hub network and world-class professional parts people,” Johnson added. “However, we believe that the current disruptive environment presents an opportunity for us to enhance our competitive positioning and leverage our competitive advantages to drive accelerated long-term market share gains.”
Over the past few quarters, O’Reilly has tested several DIFM pricing strategies in multiple markets, and the company was “very encouraged” by the results,” according to Johnson. “After dialing in our strategy,” O’Reilly rolled out the professional pricing initiative companywide at the beginning of February.
Johnson emphasized that O’Reilly’s “service-over-price philosophy” isn’t changing. COO Brad Beckham echoed Johnson’s comments, noting that the goal of the initiative is to turbocharge O’Reilly’s gains in DIFM market share “based on all the services we offer along with a very competitive price.”
“We strongly believe that the lion’s share of the professional business in the marketplace is won day-in and day-out through exceptional customer service and rapid inventory availability,” Beckham asserted during the conference call. “However, we believe we can generate solid long-term returns by further investing in professional pricing.
“As an important part of our professional pricing initiative, we are intentionally not positioned as the lowest-price competitor in each market, and our store and sales teams remain as committed as ever to earning our customers’ business by out-hustling and out-servicing our competitors.”
‘Not a Race to the Bottom’
The pricing initiative was a hot topic during the question-and-answer session with investment analysts.
One analyst asked if the pricing initiative could be a slippery slope leading to additional price cuts in the future. In his response, Johnson insisted that it’s not “a race to the bottom.”
“I want to reiterate that this is a targeted approach. This is a very scientific approach that we’re taking,” Johnson said. “This is not across the board. This price enhancement was done by category, by SKU. And based on our performance, our supply chain strength, we still feel that we can charge a premium to our professional customers.”
Responding to a similar question from another analyst, Johnson emphasized: “We are not doing this to be the lowest price in the marketplace.”
“We’re not saying price is not important,” he added. “What’s more important to that professional customer is the relationship we have with them, the inventory availability that we have and our consistent performance and ability to get that part to them [on time] so they can complete the jobs they’re working on. Our professional customers will always prioritize that over price, assuming that we’re competitive on price. So we feel like this move will enable us to take additional market share, both from existing customers and from customers we may not be getting business from today.”
Beckham asserted that the pricing initiative is aimed at repair shops of all shapes and sizes, from the shade-tree mechanics and independent garages to the regional players and national chains.
In particular, company leaders believe the pricing initiative could help O’Reilly make inroads with its existing customers that are sourcing parts from O’Reilly and other suppliers – “maybe a piece from our public competitors, a really big piece from the independents and then another piece of their monthly purchases from a specialty company.”
“We’re already delivering to these shops,” Beckham added. “In some cases, we’re delivering part of the job that maybe they had to get another item from somewhere else. We just see tremendous opportunity [here], and our customers are telling us that with our inventory availability, our service, our people, if we can make some adjustments [on price], we really have a huge opportunity to turn into the first and only call for those garages.”
During the Q&A session, CFO Tom McFall provided more color on O’Reilly’s approach to setting price levels vis-à-vis its competitors.
“We have a wide range of competitors and … some compete solely on price. A lot of specialty, one-line suppliers get business by being absolutely the lowest price, and that’s not our business model,” McFall explained. “ So when we say we’re going to be within a competitive range, obviously it depends on how expensive the part is.
“… And what we have to remember is the biggest cost for our professional installers is their labor. And that ability to turn those bays is what turns their profit. So we want to make sure that we’re pricing holistically, for the quality of the product, the availability of the product, the team that we offer, the services that we offer – so we look at it in aggregate.
“There’s always going to be someone … who will be the lowest price. And if that’s how you sustain your business, if somebody comes along and decides to drop the price, you’re going to be in trouble. We want to have a relationship and a partnership with our professional shops that helps them make money over the long term.”
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By Counterman
Returning from the first in-person AAPEX since 2019,
link hidden, please login to view host Bill Babcox sits down with Vange Proimos, CEO of AP Emissions, to talk about his journey from technician and shop owner to leading a privately owned, family-run business. A well-known industry advocate for many years, it was Proimos’ experience as a technician and shop owner that has informed much of his success as business owner as well.
Right out of high school, Proimos and his brothers started in the gas station business, “when Jimmy Carter was president and the gas shortages were in effect. We really didn’t sell a lot of gas, so we got into auto repair and 24-hour towing, doing that for many years,” he said.
Eventually Vange and his brothers turned the business into a specialty muffler shop, and over a 10-year period grew the business to about 21 shops. After that, EPA laws were created for aftermarket converters and according to Proimos, “no one was really doing a good job at it from the installer’s point of view.” “There were about 50 different kits to make it fit and the installer really wanted a direct fit converter.” So Proimos and his brothers began building catalytic converters, under the brand name CATCO.
From there, the Proimos brothers grew the catalytic-converter business. They sold their muffler shops to their employees, and in 1998 purchased the aftermarket division of AP Emissions, in Goldsboro, North Carolina. In 2014, his brothers wanted to retire, but Vange stayed on board and sold the business to a private equity (PE) firm, which consolidated AP with a brake business. A number of factors – including import tax duties and exploding precious metal costs – led the PE firm to sell the company and Proimos bought his beloved family business back. That was in September of 2020.
“It feels really good,” he said. “The people have really come out and helped us in every aspect.”
“Our whole goal is to understand what our customers want and need and how to get to their wants and needs,” he said. “And by doing that, our company becomes successful because they buy more products, and we make more products and our people work harder. That’s how we look at it.”
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By Counterman
Returning from the first in-person AAPEX since 2019,
link hidden, please login to view host Bill Babcox sits down with Vange Proimos, CEO of AP Emissions, to talk about his journey from technician and shop owner to leading a privately owned, family-run business. A well-known industry advocate for many years, it was Proimos’ experience as a technician and shop owner that has informed much of his success as business owner as well.
Right out of high school, Proimos and his brothers started in the gas station business, “when Jimmy Carter was president and the gas shortages were in effect. We really didn’t sell a lot of gas, so we got into auto repair and 24-hour towing, doing that for many years,” he said.
Eventually Vange and his brothers turned the business into a specialty muffler shop, and over a 10-year period grew the business to about 21 shops. After that, EPA laws were created for aftermarket converters and according to Proimos, “no one was really doing a good job at it from the installer’s point of view.” “There were about 50 different kits to make it fit and the installer really wanted a direct fit converter.” So Proimos and his brothers began building catalytic converters, under the brand name CATCO.
From there, the Proimos brothers grew the catalytic-converter business. They sold their muffler shops to their employees, and in 1998 purchased the aftermarket division of AP Emissions, in Goldsboro, North Carolina. In 2014, his brothers wanted to retire, but Vange stayed on board and sold the business to a private equity (PE) firm, which consolidated AP with a brake business. A number of factors – including import tax duties and exploding precious metal costs – led the PE firm to sell the company and Proimos bought his beloved family business back. That was in September of 2020.
“It feels really good,” he said. “The people have really come out and helped us in every aspect.”
“Our whole goal is to understand what our customers want and need and how to get to their wants and needs,” he said. “And by doing that, our company becomes successful because they buy more products, and we make more products and our people work harder. That’s how we look at it.”
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