Jobber News Executive Outlook: Zara Wishloff

We reached out to a number of leaders and executives from the supply chain to jobber stores and asked them to highlight how business will change in the year ahead, what the biggest challenge for the industry is moving forward and what they see as the top opportunity in 2022. We will present their answers in alphabetical order over the coming weeks…

You can view the full feature in our January 2022 issue.

Zara Wishloff, President, CEO | Automotive Parts Distributors

The next 12 months will be challenging to the aftermarket for several reasons. We’re at the tail end of a double whammy on supply. We are seeing high inflation combined with supply issues. Inflation is running higher than policymakers anticipated. They are pivoting from a temporary outlook and now conceding to higher inflation. The actions of printing money in response to the pandemic are causing raw materials to increase.

Supply is also constrained. We all felt the results in 2021. It will be several months, if not years, before the backlog has caught up. This has also contributed to the inflation concerns and has challenged us with a very inconsistent supply chain.

The opportunity is there when aligning with suppliers facing fewer issues. Some manufacture in countries less affected by shipping concerns. Some are locally manufactured. Others have a greater ability to use air rather than water to get their products to our markets. While there is a struggle to supply common items, some jobbers have the opportunity to gain market share by simply having the ability to fill orders.

The inflationary environment also helps our aftermarket with economies of scale. For a used car worth $4,000, it might not have been prudent to spend $2,500 on a repair. However, with that same car now commanding $7,500 on the open market, the repair is much more justifiable — and consumers are more likely to proceed with the job.

The risk associated with this strategy would be the end of inflation. If we hit a deflationary environment and the cost of these materials corrects to pre-pandemic levels, we could get caught with this inventory gamble and have