Reckoning Time

Despite a rather peculiar summer and fall, by the time you read this I have it on fairly good authority that winter will be in full swing.

While the proverbial Canadian Cold Front reminds us all where it got its name from, the industry may very well be bracing itself against some of the greatest threats for some time. I am of course referring to the complete rethink taking place at the Automotive Industries Association of Canada.

The most critical change is the cancellation of the 2004 Canadian International Automotive Show originally slated for Montreal. This isn’t merely a matter of axing a major endeavour to keep pace with changes to the market. The loss of the show represents a nearly unfathomable change to the profile of the association and the industry. The biennial show may not have been getting rave reviews in the past couple of editions; it has long struggled with its existence as a “non-selling show” in the face of an expanding number of distributor shows. But it always served as a showcase for the industry, a networking event, and a place where members of government could see in one place the true scope of the aftermarket. All of these issues have been of great importance to the aftermarket over the years, but possibly its most important function was its role as the single greatest revenue generator for the association.

It is no exaggeration to say that the show kept the association solvent, and our national association is going to be hard-pressed to replace this revenue. It should be said that the event is not the first casualty in the trade show world, nor will it be the last. Captive shows have become the rage in many industries, and they have had their impact on many industry shows. I mention this only to get the point across that the Canadian automotive aftermarket should not see the cancellation as a failure, but as evidence of larger economic shifts across the board and around the globe.

Still, there’s the money issue here. I put this question to association president Ray Datt who said, succinctly, that cancelling the show was not without risks, but hanging their hopes on a show which was not getting the industry’s moral support “was much riskier than redeploying our resources.” I have to agree.

Accordingly, the association will be pushing hard to focus its attentions on its core strengths. The most important of these, and the one that cannot be easily replaced, is its government relations function. We all heard about the tool tax initiatives, but there is a long list of initiatives that arguably affect us all a great deal more: emissions programs lobbying; transportation of dangerous goods permits; lobbying on a/c service regulations; warranty work taxation rules; and involvement in virtually every automotive-related government initiative that I have seen in the past nearly 15 years. It also provided other business services such as preferred credit card rates and insurance to jobbers long before they were widely available from the distribution organizations.

These are all things in the past, of course, funded largely by revenues from past shows; and, as they say, that was then, this is now. The association can focus all it wants on its new strategic initiatives; what it needs is money.

It’s not about desperation; it’s about finding new ways to offer services to the industry and ending up with enough money at the end of the day to do those things, like government lobbying, that can only cost money.

The goal for us all is to do what we can to keep the association in the face of the market, particularly the jobber membership, and to help it provide valuable services to that segment of the membership. This is a critical time for our flagship industry group. While the threat of losing the association is not imminent, the potential is always there.

We can’t let that happen. An industry without an association really isn’t an industry at all.