RANCHO CORDOVA, CA — Steve Seabourne is president and CEO of AIM. Seabourne has more than 30 years of experience with AIM. For the past five years, he has had overall responsibility for the company as president. Seabourne has hands-on manufacturing expertise with active participation in all aspects of the business from teardown and assembly to purchasing, marketing, cataloging and sales. He is a double major graduate of the University of California at Davis with a B.S. in biological sciences and a B.A. in economics.
In this week’s Executive Interview, Seabourne brings us up to speed on the latest initiatives at AIM, as the company celebrates its 40th anniversary.
Congratulations on your company’s 40th anniversary. Give us some background on AIM’s history and how business has changed during the past 40 years?
Thank you. Our 40th anniversary is a great milestone for our company and a strong testament to our more than 200 employees. AIM was founded by my father, Frank Seabourne, in 1967. He started off very small with other partners and a delivery boy. The company initially rebuilt alternators and starters and sold them to local jobbers and gas stations. By excelling at delivering quality products and excellent service, AIM’s business grew quickly as a result.
By 1977 we had 25 employees and worked hard to keep up with demand, especially for units for import vehicles. It was difficult at that time to find the spare parts to properly remanufacture the import units. Consequently, we bought out a small importer in Oakland and began bringing in the component parts and complete units, not only for our own use, but to sell to other rebuilders.
As the business of selling parts to rebuilders grew quickly, a synergy was created between our parts supply business and our remanufacturing business. Understanding the needs of 2,000 other rebuilder customers nationwide and producing catalogs in-house for both the complete units and component parts has given AIM the foundation and knowledge base to become the “Experts in Rotating Electrical.” Additionally, the lower costs and availability of the parts has allowed AIM to expand our reman offering and increase our quality, breadth of line and line fill. Our coverage now includes import and domestic automotive as well as heavy duty, off-highway, marine and industrial applications
We have grown to more than 200 employees and occupy 180,000 square feet of production and warehouse space.
AIM recently changed its name. What brought that about?
Our corporate name, Automotive Importing Mfg., Inc., was the name we created for our component parts importing and distribution business. Part of the change in our branding that we moved to this year was to simply be known as AIM. For 40 years we’ve supplied premium-quality, remanufactured rotating electrical to the automotive and heavy duty aftermarket. Over the years, we have evolved into a full line manufacturer, making the word “import” no longer relevant to who we are today. Now most of our customers know us by AIM and we are reinforcing that with a new AIM logo and marketing campaign.
AIM has evolved from remanufacturing to now also offering new rotating electrical units. What factors are involved in whether a technician chooses a new or remanufactured alternator and/or starter?
Our Xtreme brand of new alternators and starters was a natural progression for AIM, supporting our Talon brand of remanufactured alternators and starters. We have been selling brand new units to the rebuilder market for 20 years. Putting it all together in a comprehensive program supported by cataloging, inventory and our new ad campaign was the next step in our marketing and sales evolution.
For the technician, the choice of a new versus a remanufactured unit comes down to price, availability and quality. Whatever the technician has more confidence in — brand new or reman — we are proud to offer them a strong choice in both categories.
What tools do you provide to your jobbers and WDs to help them succeed in the rotating electrical category?
First of all, we provide jobbers and WDs with accurate product data through our paper and electronic catalogs. Plus, we have sales collateral available for them to use such as posters and product flyers, to help reinforce the message.
Crucial to this effort was our recent announcement about the unveiling of our new website – www.aimpowerinmotion.com. The new website is loaded it with lots of useful resources to help technicians, distributors of our products and rebuilders of rotating electrical products be more effective.
For instance, we now have a “Technician’s Toolbox” section which includes tips and tools for diagnostics, along with frequently asked questions answered by AIM’s engineering team and white papers produced by our technical services team. It also features a marketing support section with company logos, images and brochures available for download.
The AIM eCat provides quick ship programs so our customers can utilize our extensive inventory. Most importantly we have AIM sales personnel and technicians in the field that work directly with jobber sales people as they call on technicians. And it is not just making the calls; we actually train jobber stores on where to look for new business and how to present the AIM line to take full advantage of the quality and breadth of coverage that AIM offers.
In the rotating electrical category, warranty failures have traditionally been high. What has AIM done to address this challenge?
We developed a comprehensive installation checklist form for technicians, to help guide them in properly troubleshooting the electrical system. In addition, we have a technical service “hotline” so customers can call in for help. Working with the customer while they are experiencing problems is much easier than trying to find out what went wrong later. Our technical service manager, Chad Janes, spends much of his time in the field working side by side with technicians to demonstrate trouble shooting the electrical system.
AIM has always been a quality supplier, but not necessarily the lowest priced in the market. We believe that it is critically important for the customer to have confidence in our product. We have seen that a lack of confidence can lead to an increase in placing the blame for failure on the unit itself, when in reality there may be vehicle related issues that are causing the unit to fail. If we can get technicians to step back and think, “Hey, that was a quality unit I just installed and the problem still exists. Maybe, I should check the battery or PCM or the fusable link as the source of the failure.” The list goes on, but the point is we have the technical support people ready to help technicians find the root cause of failures.
In general, where do you see the rotating electrical category heading in the next three to five years?
There may be more consolidation in both the supply side and demand side of the business, but I believe that is nearing the end. As the category matures it is also becoming more sophisticated because of the electronics in alternators and performance-to-weight ratio in the starters. Consequently, we are selling more of these higher priced units, which is helping our sales growth.
As the cost of repairing the vehicle increases, the technician is more inclined to only do the job once. We see the market moving toward quality and away from making the buying decision solely based on price. AIM is well positioned in this marketplace because of our quality.
Brand new alternators and starters are becoming more main stream. However, we do not believe it will ever replace the reman position in this category. Still we believe new rotating electrical products can eventually grow to at least 30 percent of the total sales. AIM has a strong offering in brand new units, more than 1300 SKUs, all that are competitively priced.
With the current popularity of being a "green" business, how does AIM address the benefits of recycling and remanufacturing?
In my spare time, I love to camp, hike and fish and believe we should all do what we can to support the environment. Years before any restrictions came from the EPA and CARB, we made the decision that our plant in Rancho Cordova, CA, would eliminate all solvents from our processes. The fact that we are in a business that helps reduce energy costs and recycles raw materials is great. Recent reports show that the amount of raw materials saved annually worldwide by remanufacturing is 14 million tons. Remanufacturing is environmentally friendly, however, at this time we do not believe these “green” benefits are being fully translated to the end customer. When that day comes, we can see where that could help boost the sales of remanufactured units.
AIM recently announced its solution for the Ford’s 2G alternators. How did you come up with this solution?
This solution was born of necessity. Jobbers and technicians are familiar with the Ford 2G IAR alternators for the vehicle fires they have caused and their high warranty rate. We originally addressed these problems, with some success, by making improvements to the castings for better air flow and to the rectifier for better cooling, as well as replacing the BBS plug with a hard wired rectifier. But we found that was not enough.
AIM engineers also decided to eliminate the problematic BBS (Battery, Battery and Stator) plug. The original design was prone to developing excess heat caused by increased electrical resistance from a weak pressure plug contact. By providing the battery cable for a direct connect to the battery or the SW3 switch, the AIM-engineered 2G HDN series alternator provides a much more reliable transmission of output current, virtually eliminating any potential for fire or overheating. Consequently, our engineers developed a much more reliable alternator that will bolt-on like the OE unit and provide twice the amperage at both high and low RPM.
This is just one example of the solutions that our engineering team has provided. In fact we call these solutions “AIM Engineered.” We have come out with some great products that have helped set AIM apart from other suppliers.
Can you share with us any specific plans you have for growing AIM’s business?
As a company, we would like to say we have top secrets plans that can’t be discussed with you. But our plans are relatively simple. We know we have a great company in AIM that produces the highest quality remanufactured and new alternators and starters in the U.S. Our problem has been that no one knows about us. We have always been the factory behind the large distributor and a well-kept secret.
Our main initiative is to make AIM well known to the industry. We have recently come out with a new logo, AIM Power in Motion, along with the tagline, “The Experts in Rotating Electrical.” The look of the new logo and the tagline helps frame who we are. We have been running an ad campaign most of this year in several trade publications, featuring our Talon remanufactured line and our line of new units under the Xtreme brand. We just launched our first comprehensive website which is getting a lot of traffic and has been entered into the 2007 AIA awards. It has been an exciting year for us in this respect and we are already seeing some very positive signs.
As people find out what a great product line AIM has, the great service support we offer and the great people behind our products, we are seeing an increase in our business. To reiterate, although we are priced to be competitive we are not the cheapest line our there. But what we have learned over the past 40 years is that the customers that understand the real value of quality and service are the type of customers that fit well with AIM.
Where do you see the North American aftermarket headed in the next five years?
We will continue to see the age of the vehicle population go up, which should bode well for companies like AIM that provide a full line of aftermarket replacement parts. The increased sourcing of products from overseas will continue to be a trend to watch, especially if quality issues continue to surface and if the dollar remains relatively weak to foreign currencies. How the overseas sourcing issue turns out remains to be seen. But we firmly believe that quality products that technicians have confidence in will always have a strong place in the aftermarket.
