More transparency and success in the car aftermarket

The European car aftermarket will be facing major upheavals.
The market is characterized by an increasing competitive pressure and a strong concentration process along with decreasing margins and growing costs. With its „Car Aftermarket Europe Report 2012“, wolk after sales experts GmbH, a consultancy specialized in the car aftermarket, introduces the latest available data on market structures, volumes and trends for 35 European countries.
The incentive of this study is to provide substantive guidance and decision-making support in order to achieve more success for its readers.

„The European aftersales market is faced with massive changes“,

says Helmut Wolk, CEO of wolk after sales experts, with respect to his company’s second „Car Aftermarket Report“. „The present study is based on our comprehensive and vast data base. It shows that the increasing competition will lead to a further decrease in parts margins and to rising costs for parts manufacturers and parts wholesalers combined with a progressive consolidation of after-sales markets.“ With this elaborate and significantly further developed report, the company offers its partners – from industry to garage- market data and trends at affordable prices. These data help to develop future-oriented strategies, concepts and measures.
The „Car Aftermarket Europe Report 2012“ supersedes wolk after sales experts’ 2009 report and for the second time gives insight into the market structures and volumes of the European aftermarket while providing extensive transparency in this market segment.
Country specific characteristics are displayed and the different dimensions of OES and IAM after-sales markets are pointed out in this study. The international federation of independent automotive aftermarket wholesalers and retailers (FIGIEFA), to which the German Association of the Automotive Parts Trade (GVA e.V.) belongs, too, is a cooperation-partner for this project.

Market analysis: high learning effects on companies

With this detailed data preparation, wolk after sales experts has acquired a unique selling point on the car aftermarket, because the 2012 report furthermore compares the recent data with the developments of previous years and forecasts the most influential trends until 2015.
Helmut Wolk: „Our latest Car Aftermarkets Europe Report offers an insight into the aftermarket which otherwise only a few international corporations could afford. In addition to that, the recent study allows clients to seize the market from a „helicopter view“ while most other actors mainly conceive the respective markets from the viewpoint of their individual products. This kind of „expert view“ will become more and more important against the background of stagnating and declining tendencies in aftermarket-activities (both OES and IAM) regarding volume markets throughout Europe.
Wolk is sure. „Nonetheless, the analysis of individual aftermarkets has its advantages. It enables the market actors to learn and to draw their very own conclusions from the provided material“, he explains. „ In the course of the on-going process of concentration and the internationalization resulting from this, an intrinsic knowledge of not only one’s national market, but of neighboring markets as well, will become increasingly important for aftermarket actors, especially for parts wholesalers – no matter, whether they themselves want to expand, or because they want to block harmful competition from neighboring countries.