Keeping Pace with Market Disruptions

John O'Dowd, Vice President of Marketing, NAPA AUTO PARTS

The automotive industry is shifting gears. Driven by sustainability, the industry has welcomed novel developments like electric vehicles, connected cars, and mobility-as-a-service (mobility fleet sharing). Advanced technology solutions underpin all these upcoming trends in this niche. Now, the entire industry, from OEMs to automakers, including the aftermarket, faces the challenge of keeping existing operations profitable while building capacity to support these innovations. Particularly, the change in consumer mindset in buying electric and hybrid vehicles has ushered in a new challenge—maintenance services for these vehicles.

The current aftermarket needs to be resilient and keep pace with the non-traditional automakers' innovations. For example, some of the forerunners in the EV market lack the dealership and maintenance network to back up the volume of their customers’ automotive service requirements in the near future.

The scenarios include inadequate support for vehicles' second life pertaining to ownership changes and out-of-warranty instances. Automotive aftermarket veterans can take advantage of this upcoming market need. Their extensive domain knowledge can give them a competitive edge if the right capabilities are established early on.

NAPA Auto Parts, in this regard, has poised itself to address the growing needs. As the Vice President of Marketing at NAPA, I overlook the marketing programs and the training programs to equip service personnel with the necessary skills for resolving technical issues in EVs and hybrid vehicles. We have developed a best-in-class training and certification program, NexDrive.

"We need to match the speed of the industry's advancements because the future of mobility is already here."

The NexDrive program is open to the NAPA AutoPro network and the single-branded NAPA AutoCare network. Through the program, we are dedicated to solving the challenges prominent in the automotive aftermarket- attracting new talent and training them. The program relies on four pillars: parts and products, the NAPA network, the participant's automotive repair shop and marketing. The training is customized to each one of the equipment manufacturers that we will be working with going forward.

In addition to providing minimum equipment and technical support, NexDrive package to help automotive repair shops increase their involvement with EV social groups & communities.

To stay ahead of the curve, the NexDrive training program is a business imperative. We are also setting up warehousing systems to accommodate new parts to service other makes and models that are currently not within our walls. As a company with decades of experience, we understand the significance of having an adaptive business model is crucial to stay a cut above in the face of continuous disruption. NAPA, to that end, is focusing on developing a unique procedure for incoming non-traditional automakers to set up maintenance services within our network.

At the end of the day, the thought I leave for my peers and aspiring individuals in this niche is to embrace the changes when it comes to innovations. We need to match the speed of the industry’s advancements because the future of mobility is already here. Proper training is crucial to handle the novel technologies else the aftermarket will trail behind, lacking the capability to support the long strides of our counterpart, the automakers.