The Aftermarket Auto Parts Alliance, Inc. is excited to congratulate Auto Value and Bumper to Bumper shareholder owner NPW Companies and valued channel partner Standard Motor Products on winning the 2021 AASA Channel Excellence Award. The award, presented by Epicor, honors suppliers and channel partners who collaborate together to promote growth in the automotive aftermarket. “We feel honored by this recognition,” said Chris Pacey, executive vice president and COO of NPW. “Thank you to AASA and Epicor for this award. Thank you to SMP for their great collaboration, and a huge thank you to the team at NPW Companies for all their efforts. Finally, thank you to the Alliance for their assistance in bringing this together. We are hopeful that this pandemic will end soon. We are doing everything we can to keep everyone healthy and safe, and we look forward to a bright future.” The two companies were selected by a six-person committee of industry professionals as one of two sets of finalists. Together, they prepared a video submission detailing the collaborative efforts that led to their victory. The winning nomination, titled the COVID Online Innovative Response Strategy, described their successful deploy of an inventory optimization initiative while simultaneously responding to the challenges posed by COVID-19 swiftly and effectively.
“I want to thank Chris Pacey and NPW for allowing us to work on this inventory project with them,” said Paul Farwick, vice president of sales at Standard Motor Products. “We feel that this is the essential service we can give to our distribution partners. Helping to reduce inventory, increase shelf space, increase sales and ROI.” In order to be considered for the award, two channel partners must work together to meet several criteria. The project must be innovative and utilize technology, data analytics, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, AR/VR, blockchain, and or digital business processes. The companies must also be able to provide demonstrative results. NPW and SMP’s successes included a 22.2 percent increase in sales out at targeted NPW stores while only reporting an inventory dollar investment increase of 2.9 percent; 2,225 new SKUs added to inventory, and 33.4 percent of inventory overstock repurposed.
“NPW Companies and Standard Motor Products achieved some impressive results in this highly collaborative and innovative project,” said Dale Hopkins, vice president and CIO at the Alliance. “Congratulations to both companies on their teamwork and success.” NPW Companies is the third Alliance shareholder owner to win the award, which is in its third year. In 2020, Hahn Automotive and BBB Industries were awarded the honor for using subject matter experts and multiple electronic tools together in a holistic approach to significantly enhance inventory models, increase deployment speed, increase sales, and provide more value to the customer. In 2019, Parts Warehouse, Inc. and Tenneco were recognized for a collaborative inventory analysis and repositioning to grow PWI’s share of the strut assembly category, reduce lost sales, and improve margin performance.
