While sports marketing has traditionally been one of the most popular ways for auto related businesses to reach out to their prime demographics, several automakers announced this week that they would cut back their sports marketing budgets amidst growing economic woes. Chevy, Ford and GM have each announced cutbacks, from eliminating support for smaller sports such as skiing (Chevy) to ending its sponsorship of NASCAR’s nationwide and truck series (Ford).
The news reports paint quite a dire picture in terms of the aftermarket’s financial stability these days, so it was good to see that O’Reilly Auto Parts today reported a 68 percent increase in sales in the third quarter. In fact, despite the current economic challenges there were several aftermarket companies to report positive year-over-year sales this month, including Proliance, TRW Automotive, Johnson Controls, GPC, Advance Auto Parts, Midas and Snap-on, among others.
Over the past few months, many aftermarket parts suppliers have announced new restructuring plans in order to reduce costs and maintain stability in these tough times. Among those to announce cost-cutting initiatives is Tenneco, which this week announced it would undertake several ‘aggressive’ restructuring actions, including plans to eliminate approximately 1,100 jobs worldwide, close five facilities and implement other cost reduction actions expected to generate about $64 million in annual savings once completed.
Federal-Mogul has seen its own share of cost-cutting and restructuring initiatives after successfully emerging from Chapter 11 approximately one year ago. This week, Federal-Mogul President and CEO Jose Maria Alapont was kind enough sit down with aftermarketNews and share his thoughts on the challenges in the automotive sector, as well as green technologies, our country’s reliance on foreign oil and what Federal-Mogul looks like post-Chapter 11.
The final story in our wrap-up of the week’s top news comes from Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance, which this week announced the creation of a new senior management position. This position will be second in command to Alliance President and CEO Dick Morgan, and will lead strategic initiatives to strengthen the Alliance’s position as an industry leader. On Wednesday, aftermarketNews broke the news that the Alliance has appointed former Affinia exec John Washbish to the newly created position of executive vice president.
