Quality vs. cash

When I insisted that I didn't need more cash, she told me her "forward thinking" customers were taking advantage of the market conditions and "making the smart play." I left her office feeling totally emasculated with the mere pittance required to satisfy my requirements.

I've flashed back on this several times in recent weeks, not only because of the mortgage meltdown, but because of the disturbing parallel I see in the aftermarket. Specifically, I'm talking about offshore direct sourcing.

Everyone knows that buying direct from low-cost countries (LCCs) is the hot ticket these days, and "forward thinking" business people are taking advantage of current global conditions and "making the smart play" by direct sourcing. Now I am not maligning the practice or the strategic decision to buy or build products in LCCs, whether to gain a price advantage or as a defensive measure. Nothing wrong with that maneuver, as long as you're still producing a quality product. But problems emerge when "strategic advantage" gives way to good old-fashioned greed.

There are suppliers who appear to be manipulating products in an attempt to manipulate their profits. For example, a surprising number of LCC brake suppliers have reduced the amount of steel in their rotors by as much as 25 percent, accomplished by making the inner and outer discs thinner and using a less aggressive vane design. This reduction in weight is a material cost saving and lessens shipping charges an estimated 10 percent or more.

But this also compromises safety. A friend who works for a brake company recently called an OEM brake engineer and suggested he was thinking about cutting the steel content in his rotors and was greeted with the comment, "What are you, an idiot? We would have reduced the weight in rotors a long time ago if it was safe to do so. What do you want to do, kill somebody?"

Another tactic is making brake pads with scant measures of ceramic material, not enough to impact performance, but enough to claim its content on the product label. These "ceramic" pads can then be marketed and sold as premium products when they are no better than the standard non-organic stuff.

These practices are behaviors that will come back to haunt us. We need to say a prayer that when the haunting begins, it is only disgruntled technicians who take their business to the OE supplier and not file lawsuits for wrongful death.

Bob Moore is president of Bob Moore & Partners, a consulting firm that specializes in the automotive aftermarket. Moore, a SEMA board member, can be reached at [email protected].