The Automotive Specialty Accessories and Parts (ASAP) has its new CEO, Tom West. The new 40 year old officer came from a computer industry which is DELL. In this previous company, he provided his service for the past nine years. Though West’s new company is in line with aftermarket auto parts and products, he already observes the resemblance involving consumers of car parts and computers.

Since he was engaged more on computers, he believes that the auto industry is perfect for the web. He said about looking on the way how people purchase aftermarket auto parts. According to him, “You need a unique fit for your specific vehicle. The average retailer carries 50,000 SKUs in store. The average vehicle has 20,000 unique parts by year, make, and model, and that gets complex.”

Just like other officials of automotive companies, West attended the recent Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA) Show held in Las Vegas. He commented regarding auto enthusiast’s market saying, “This is a great industry with passionate customers,” West says about the auto enthusiast’s market. “I saw a lot of people fired up about their cars. People are passionate about computers, but not like they are about their cars.”

ASAP is one of the largest auto parts and accessories retailer and the parent company of Aftermarket Performance Parts catalogers Whitney & Co. and Stylin’ Concepts. The new CEO believes ASAP for expansion reaching to a $1 billion company. “We can scale this thing pretty quickly. Both (Dell and ASAP) got their start with catalogs and have a deep set of experience managing catalog functions and, more recently, online functions. Those skill sets are absolutely critical. These are relationships you can track,” West said.

News via multichannelmerchant.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 am and is filed under Aftermarket parts news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.