The Paint, Body and Equipment Specialists (PBES), a segment community of the Auto Care Association, reported record attendance for its 2016 annual conference. The conference, held May 10-12 at the Denver Conference Center in Denver, drew more than 150 attendees, exceeding the 2015 conference.

The 2016 conference theme was: “Differentiate to Win.” Attendees heard education sessions on topics that included current and future industry demographics, color trends and challenging concepts for how businesses need to think about themselves and their value propositions to create competitive differentiation.   

“Being different, both personally and professionally, was what the 2016 PBES Conference was all about,” said Keith Bell, U.S. sales manager-east, AkzoNobel, and chairman, PBES Committee. “I am so proud to have been a part of this industry experience. Our team worked diligently to secure topics and add more networking time to ensure that this experience would provide practical and immediately usable information. I feel confident that we delivered what we set out to achieve.”