CRP Industries is a major supplier of quality OE automotive products to the automotive wholesale distribution channel in North America. It continues to maintain its long-standing partnership with the Continental ContiTech group and is credited with helping Continental establish the ContiTech brand in the replacement parts market. CRP also supplies OE quality product lines including Rein Automotive A/C and Under Car parts and Pentosin technical automotive fluids. As CRP Industries’ largest division, CRP Automotive provides a wide range of OE-quality replacement automotive parts to the NAFTA market, including timing belts and timing belt kits, serpentine belts, air conditioning parts, cabin air filters, anti-vibration and suspension parts and wheel bearing parts, as well as high-tech automotive fluids. In this exclusive Executive Interview, Schildge discusses the company’s unique position in the marketplace, footprint in the U.S. and relationship with ContiTech. 
Daniel N. Schildge is the President of CRP Industries Inc. He was appointed to the position in July 2008, after serving in a variety of capacities with the company, including COO. Schildge is directly responsible for the strategic and tactical management of CRP Industries and accountable for the development and implementation of the company’s infrastructure, including all systems, processes and personnel. He is a graduate of Harvard University’s Owner/President Management Program and holds an ME in Aerospace Engineering and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University. A former U.S. Naval Officer, Schildge served as a submarine officer on the USS Columbus.
CRP Industries has been in business for over 60 years and was founded in 1954 by my grandfather, Dr. Adam Schildge. Automotive parts and accessories have always been at the core of our business. What started out as a small company offering 200 sizes of Continental tires has grown into an industry leader that supplies over 10,000 OE-quality replacement parts through the OEM and OES channels, as well as independent WDs. Our product lines include a prestigious list of well-known and trusted brand names such as ContiTech, Pentosin, Rein Automotive and Meistersatz.
Over the years, we have provided our European supplier partners with a gateway to the North American market for their products, while providing our distribution partners with high quality product lines, fair pricing, excellent customer service and exceptional sales and marketing support.
In our business model, we function as the NAFTA market business unit for many of our supplier partners. While this may be unique today, it was a common scenario 60 years ago for European companies that wanted to do business in the U.S.
CRP Industries functions on three core values, namely quality, service and trust. We hold ourselves accountable to a defined product management policy and an ISO9001:2008 quality management system. Our benchmark is based on whether or not we would put the parts we sell on our own vehicles and entrust the safety of our family to those parts.
We believe that CRP is big enough to help and yet small enough to care. That’s why we deliver on intangibles such as fast order processing, new product development, sales support, up-to-date cataloging and packaging. We are very flexible and can easily respond to our customers’ needs on a daily basis.
Finally, we never stop building trust. We’ve been serving the aftermarket for over a half a century with premium brands such as ContiTech and Pentosin. Our customers know CRP, and they know our people. We are reliable, consistent and always there to stand behind what we sell.
We presently operate in two distinct areas of the marketplace.
Our Original Equipment Service (OES) Division sells and services several car manufacturers and sub-system suppliers within the NAFTA market. We provide our OES partners with value-added services by helping them source difficult to import parts and/or handling logistically challenging parts.
Our Replacement Parts Division sells to the largest import replacement parts specialists as well as traditional warehouse distributors in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Many of our relationships extend more than 30 years and have been the foundation for establishing the ContiTech and Pentosin brands in the North American aftermarket.
Having such a unique position in the marketplace, what do you consider to be CRP’s most valuable strengths?
We have many strengths, and I have to start with our product brands. We provide high-quality and recognizable import brands such as ContiTech and Pentosin, along with programs that meet the needs of our marketplace.
Our highly experienced and skilled sales, product development and operations staff constantly focuses on meeting and exceeding the needs of the customer.
We have an exceptional inventory of hard-to-get import parts at four distribution points in the NAFTA market, which makes for quick order shipping/turn-around.
Our operations are second to none. With more than 300,000 square feet of warehouse space and streamlined processes based on a clearly defined quality management system (ISO 9001:2008 approved), no order or requirement is too big or too small for us to handle.
Finally, our flexibility – as I said earlier, we are big enough to help and yet small enough to care. This has become our internal motto, one in which our entire team believes in and helps to differentiate us from the rest of the pack.
At the end of the day, I would say our strengths can be summarized in one simple statement: “We deliver what we promise.” We can do this because we have brands that we can stand behind and an infrastructure of people, processes and facilities, which allows us to meet and exceed the expectations of our distribution customers. We believe the way to measure how well you are doing with your customers is the ongoing vote of confidence they give you by ordering and then re-ordering your products.
We also make sure that our customers know exactly what we’re selling to them. If it is a ContiTech timing belt kit, they know that the component parts are OE-quality. Take, for example, our Pro Series Timing Belt Kit program. We offer a warranty period that’s identical to the original car manufacturer’s replacement interval; sometimes this might be 95,000 miles. How can we do this? By making sure we only use OE-quality components. I believe in the parts we sell, and our people believe in the parts we sell.
As a "gateway" to North America for a number of European partners, tell us about the company’s distribution footprint in the U.S.
We provide NAFTA market distribution through warehouses in Cranbury, N.J., Fremont, Calif., Mississauga, Ontario, and Puebla, Mexico. Our total warehouse space is more than 300,000 square feet.
In 2009, we moved into a new 108,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art distribution facility in Cranbury, N.J. The building is an operational cornerstone for supporting our growth goals. The operational efficiencies we are already recognizing from this new warehouse will allow us to continue to deliver the high level of service our customers have come to expect from CRP.
For example, we used to have a weekly customer order, a full trailer load that required two employees two days to process. Today, one employee can handle that order in one day. The customer benefits from a faster and more reliable order turn-around, and we benefit by being able to cycle orders more quickly and better allocate our resources.
Is it fair to say that CRP itself flies a bit under the radar? What is the company’s marketing strategy?
For many years, we flew “under the radar,” especially when compared to our competitors. We have been and continue to be an import parts supplier to the wholesale distribution channel. Today, we are certainly better known and this has brought with it new challenges. I believe as we strive to compete in today’s very competitive market, this will help us continue to make performance improvements in all areas of our organization. However, we will not sacrifice to our core values for the sake of competition. Our integrity is very important us. We know and realize that success in our industry is not only about quality products, but also about relationships and the trust our customers have in us.
We employ a “push and pull” marketing strategy in which we work with our WDs to market and sell our products while we create a demand for our products at the professional service level. It is our belief that integrated marketing campaigns are the most effective and consist of trade magazine advertising, marketing partnerships, distributor promotions, e-marketing, trade shows, distributor open houses and product and sales training.
Our goal is to get in front of the final decision maker, the professional repair technician, whenever and wherever we can – whether it is riding along on distributor sales calls or participating at a repair technician technical conference. This is also key for our product development activities, because our best product development decisions have originated and/or were pre-qualified by the service techs.
One of your partners that is probably best known in this marketplace is the ContiTech brand, which made a number of expansions to its timing belt kit program in the past year. Tell us more about this. Do you think providing complete kits is something we will see more of in the marketplace going forward, and if so, why?
We have a 60-plus-year relationship with ContiTech. As their North American distribution partner, we directly manage the product development activities of the ContiTech timing belt kit program for this market. We invest a great deal of effort in product application research and quality OE component sourcing.
Earlier in this decade, there was limited market acceptance and interest in a timing belt kit, which usually consisted of a belt, a tensioner and idler bearing. Today, the timing belt product category has experienced a significant shift from sourcing the parts individually to ordering the complete kit. The rationale is simple. The kit makes the job easier. There’s only one part look-up for the technician and counterman. Everything the job needs is in one place, and the parts are correct. No guess work. No hassles. Everybody saves time and wins. And we all know that time is money.
Three years ago, we introduced a new timing belt kit called the ContiTech Pro Series Timing Kit. This kit was the result of service tech feedback we received from various field visits by our product development team. It initially started with engines where the water pump was driven by the timing belt. Since a pump replacement was also recommended by the manufacturer, it made sense to included the water pump and any additional gaskets or hardware that might be required to do the job.
Initial distributor market acceptance was lukewarm to say the least. But as we gained distribution traction, many of our wholesale distributors experienced an immediate demand for the kit as professional technicians began to realize the time saved in sourcing and estimating a timing belt work order. The parts store was also saving time. In some cases, a typical timing belt service could involve more than eight component parts, which, without the benefit of the kit, would have to be searched and ordered individually.
The key differentiator about the ContiTech Pro Series timing kit is that it provides a definable value to all parties in the distribution channel. And the car owner receives the ultimate value of having a warranty that is identical to the car manufacturer’s original timing belt change interval.
