From the Magazine: The price is wrong, and everyone knows it

Customers increasingly accept the need for price increases, but are frustrated at how they are executed

One of the highlights of the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) Vision conference, held every spring south of the border, is the Talk from the Top session. The segment highlights candid feedback from executives at key distributors and retailers about their suppliers. It’s a great sanity check for the aftermarket community and offers great lessons on customer strategy for everyone.

Because of my day job, any discussion on pricing grabs my attention. This year, there was some astute commentary on pricing strategies, and the frustrations of distributors and retailers on how they are rolled out.

Nobody enjoys a price increase, but most customers understand the need for them. It’s how they are executed that erodes trust. There is a meaningful difference between one that is understood and one that arrives without warning, without context, and without any apparent consideration for the people expected to absorb it.

Across the automotive aftermarket right now, distributors and retailers are contending with both kinds. The latter is quietly eroding supplier relationships that took years to build.

The economic backdrop is genuinely difficult. The tariff economy, persistent constraints on semiconductor and steel supply chains, and ongoing geopolitical turmoil have pushed input costs higher across virtually every parts category.

In Canada, a weakening Canadian dollar has added complexity. Global uncertainty is here to stay and will only keep volatility alive.

These pressures are real and widely acknowledged. What is neither acknowledged nor accepted is the cost of poor process. A blanket price hike landing in an inbox on a Friday afternoon, effective the following Monday, is not a pricing strategy. It is the absence of one, and customers notice when things are missing. 

The solution does not require a significant investment or re-organization. It requires discipline, better use of data and a willingness to treat downstream partners as stakeholders rather than order-takers.

The following five strategies represent a practical starting point.

Showing a customer that adjustments reflect actual cost pressure by category, rather than a portfolio average, signals that the analysis has genuinely been done.

Lead with data

The first instinct of most pricing teams is to announce a number. The better instinct is to build a case for it. Distributors and retailers want to understand what is actually driving costs — tariff exposure by product line, freight index movements, currency headwinds — and they want to see that analysis before the new price goes live.

Suppliers with access to competitive price intelligence tools are well positioned here. Demonstrating that a new price remains within a defensible range relative to market benchmarks is far more persuasive than a letter citing “global conditions.”

Platforms that track multi-level pricing across North American SKUs can anchor these conversations in evidence, which tends to be more effective than assertion.

Give ‘meaningful’ notice

Ninety days is the threshold most distributors cite as the minimum needed to update internal systems, reprice catalogues, brief their sales teams and communicate changes through to garages, fleets, and DIY customers.

Sixty days is workable. Thirty days is disruptive. Anything less is, frankly, a breach of trust.

Many suppliers have moved toward formalized price-change calendars, typically with two scheduled windows per year and extraordinary changes tied to documented cost triggers. This approach is not complicated to implement, and its effect on partner confidence tends to be disproportionately positive relative to the effort involved.

Segment, not blanket, increases

Blanket percentage increases are the easiest to execute internally and the hardest to defend externally. A more rigorous approach applies category-level cost modelling to produce differentiated adjustments: Tariff-exposed fasteners and steel-intensive components may justify a 10 to 12 percent increase, while electronically complex parts with diversified sourcing may warrant far less, if anything at all.

Pricing software with SKU-level margin analysis and competitive benchmarking makes this kind of precision achievable. It also makes for a more credible conversation. Showing a customer that adjustments reflect actual cost pressure by category, rather than a portfolio average, signals that the analysis has genuinely been done.

Establish a joint planning cadence

The suppliers navigating this environment most effectively are not only communicating better; they are engaging earlier. Bringing key distribution partners into a semi-annual business review that includes a forward-looking discussion on pricing and cost pressures creates shared ownership of outcomes.

This does not require sharing proprietary cost structures. It requires establishing a channel through which distributors can flag where specific increases will create competitive displacement in their markets.

In price-sensitive categories such as filters, belts or economy-tier batteries, an increase that pushes a distributor’s shelf price above a private-label alternative is a revenue problem for the supplier, not just the distributor. Collaborative planning surfaces these dynamics before they manifest as lost volume.

The principles of transparent pricing, adequate notice, and collaborative planning have been discussed in this industry for years. What has changed is the stakes.

Invest in digital pricing infrastructure

The Canadian aftermarket has been slower than its U.S. counterpart (not by much though) to adopt real-time price communication tools, including electronic price files, API-connected catalogue updates, and distributor-facing pricing portals.

This gap is becoming increasingly costly. When a price changes and a distributor’s system does not reflect it for two weeks, the result is chargebacks, billing disputes and eroded margin on both sides. The infrastructure required to enable clean, timely, digitally transmitted pricing is modest relative to the operational friction it eliminates. Several aftermarket-focused platforms now offer supplier-to-distributor integrations with automated change notifications and full audit trails.

None of this is especially novel. The principles of transparent pricing, adequate notice, and collaborative planning have been discussed in this industry for years. What has changed is the stakes. In a period of sustained cost pressure and supply chain uncertainty, distributors and retailers have limited tolerance for suppliers who treat pricing as an administrative function rather than a relationship-critical one.

The companies that emerge from this cycle with stronger partnerships will be those that recognized that distinction early enough to act on it.

The price is only part of the message. How you deliver it is the rest.

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Kumar Saha is vice president, Americas, of global automotive data firm Eucon, an Infropro Digital company. He has been advising the North American industry for two decades and is a frequent conference speaker and media commentator. Kumar is based in Toronto.

This article originally appeared in the May 2026 issue of Jobber News.