00:00:00 – 00:01:17
if you were going to look back when you were what would you tell yourself just starting out in the industry the thing I would the thing I would say I was very blessed throughout my career to meet a lot of smart uh Innovative people and to and to learn from them and and then leverage that into my career and and tried more opportunity welcome to the ride and style podcast your turbocharged Pit Stop Automotive restyling buckle up with Jesse and Josh welcome to another episode of the ride and style podcast we’re on episode

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20 already this is Tim Martin of aftermarket advisers Tim thank you so much for being here today thanks guys good to be here Tim did you I mean you’re retired why are you even doing this podcast this is crazy I’m not sure it’s good question I I guess I would say Josh is somebody I work with quite a in SE of volunteering and he’s he’s one of those people um you enjoy having a conversation with so I thought it’d be fun and how did you guys meet Josh how’ you meet well I

00:01:15 – 00:02:14
mean I met Tim the I’ll I’ll let you tell his first impression me which is probably way scarier but I met Tim when he was uh chairel for the board I think was the first time where or you were on the board and I met you at a summit for for all the select committee members and um I think you were standing next to way and I and I asked you a question and gave me a good answer I was like that guy’s pretty smart I like that guy so that was my first impression so your it was your brains that really caught my

00:01:45 – 00:02:56
attention more than your looks appreciate that for me it was Josh I think was wearing red that was the thing oh Florida that’s what it was well yeah that’s probably what it was yeah we well see here’s the problem Jesse funny story um yeah so we’re at this little retreat in Florida SEMA leadership and we’re you know come up with ideas and you know I don’t know what they Leadership Retreat anyway they say well NE tomorrow be casual you know dress casual well you know someone from Ohio is a little bit

00:02:21 – 00:03:28
different casual than you know somebody like Tim who’s from California casual to him is his Callaway golf shirt with a nice pair of Dockers you say casual to me buddy I first of all he’s fortunate I didn’t just show up in my pajamas all right I changed into red sweat pants I thought they were pajamas no they were they’re not I dressed I changed from my pajamas into my folded nice red sweatpants that I brought with a sweatshirt you know I’m like so but everybody seemed to get a kick out of

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that and I’m was like uh this is casual guys oh scary stuff but yeah that that’s yeah you spent a lot of time with us back then um at that Retreat yeah we did we did it was fun it was a great experience really there’s one of the things CA does really well is they get a lot of people from the industry together for different reasons in that particular um I want to say we spent maybe two days talking about industry issues with with 100 really talented young energetic people and then some you know older guys like me uh that

00:03:34 – 00:04:46
I learned a lot from that group and uh it was a lot of fun I don’t remember I I guess Josh you were probably maybe you were you had been selected to become a future chair of that’s what it was yeah restylers I had just I had just one chair elect so it was going to be I was going to be going into that role in a month or two so yeah that’s why Dino and I were there together so and it was fun Tim that’s when Tim figured out who what Ayler was well I mean I kind of knew but I but I learned a lot about how those

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businesses work and really gained a lot of appreciation respect for their role in the in the aftermarket and how they help consumers really make take average run-of-the-mill cars off a dealership lot and turn them into to uh really cool unique vehicles and and how how the reseller is is acts as an agent to the dealer to really understand the trends in the market it was cool Tim how did you get in the automotive industry to begin with if you could go back to the beginning i’ would love to know a little bit more about

00:04:44 – 00:06:05
your history and what made you want to do all this stuff y so I’m an engineer I’ve been doing work for the Navy as an engineer for about 10 years and was doing consulting on the and through a basically a professional group um I had I met some people from K&N engineering which very really well known for filters and intakes and and I I kind of maybe had heard of the company but um I I was working with a good friend um at the time our Consulting we were doing consulting together and he was a you

00:05:24 – 00:06:37
know he was a huge Canan customer used their products for for 10 years or something so um we went out there for the first time we’re doing software Consulting and uh I think we met in the smallest least impressive conference room that I’ve ever been in my career and it was basically this tiny little conference room in the corner of one of at the time Kanan probably had like seven or probably eight buildings in Riverside California and this was one of the smallest this tiny little room but it

00:06:01 – 00:07:09
was like you were like 30 ft from the dyno and there’s manufacturing and things happening not impressive little room half the room was full of boxes and storage the company was growing there just wasn’t enough room so anyway we met that in that little office but then as as we got to go around and learn about the company um you know there’s a lot of impressive stuff this was back in I think 1997 so um here’s really gained a lot of respect working as a consultant doing a lot of things to help streamline manufacturing

00:06:35 – 00:08:01
and inventory management and uh so went from doing some part-time work as a consultant to really working full-time as a uh as a vendor partner for a couple years two and a half years I think and then um got the opportunity to I I kind of left for a while and was doing some of my other Consulting work and uh the company really wanted to get me to come back so they made a pretty good offer for me to come work as an employee in 2000 and um came on there and and um it was just an incredible career opportunity to work with a great company

00:07:17 – 00:08:29
um that was already great but tremendous opportunity to really uh Excel and transform the business and so I was given a lot of just uh incredible opportunities to make an impact in that business have all kinds of interesting stories about that which I’d be glad to share some of them but so you you became the CEO coo at that point no no at that at that time I was part of a very small team you know working on software originally and so then when I became an employee I was director of information

00:07:53 – 00:09:06
systems and so that was we had a team of people that what you think of as infrastructure it managing the network and the phone system security systems all those kinds of things and we had a lot of networked equipment in the manufacturing plant and throughout the company um but we had software custom software drove you know portions of how we operated um and we had already you know when I was Consulting I’ve been involved in a lot of interesting fun things really improve some of the capabilities of the business

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but once I started working full-time you know we we could move into impacting other areas of the business we having a deeper um approach to how the systems would would run and so cann’s you know a company that sells products to every kind of automotive aftermarket Channel you can think of and most people can’t think of them all they haven’t had experience with some of the the you know unusual segments but resellers is an interesting segment it’s very unique but we sold products through

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that channel but we sold products to Major retailers both Automotive retailers and mass retailers to to all kinds of Distributors Performance Distributors motorcycle products distributors uh sold all around the C all all around the United States Mexico really around the world I think we sold product to 90 countries at one point time so but we were we were you know basically coming up with product Concepts designing those products building the manufacturing tooling you know the machineries in some

00:09:48 – 00:10:59
cases actual Machinery that would do injection molding or other kinds of manufacturing and then doing the manufacturing the warehousing the distribution and the sales and marketing in one complex so a very very vertically integrated company uh with all kinds of capabilities that most companies would have and we have the opportunity to basically take real-time information in in one part of the business channel that into other parts of the business ways that this that most companies never could dream of and so I

00:10:24 – 00:11:37
started in the manufacturing in inventory control area and and also as as a side note we did some work um very early in things like uh product data the the company had you know pretty Advanced product data systems even in the late 90s um and that was really unusual most customers wouldn’t know what to do with that information but um we had a bunch of it because selling through not just the US market the automotive Market but the motorcycle Market the European market we had a a factory in and

00:11:00 – 00:12:12
distribution center in England at the time and there are just lots of unique requirements so we built a lot of FST but U the manufacturing really there was a lot of opportunity to break down how we went from for example an order to product on the Shelf shipped to the customer and most people in the industry there’s a there’s a lot of disconnects between somebody like Josh receiving product and manufacturer getting some kind of a supply chain signal to make that product especially most a lot of Manufacturers

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don’t make their product they outsourc that but even thought we might call them manufacturers they are to some extent but we were again like I everything from design all the way through distribution done in one one facility so we could take an order you know as things progressed we got to the point where we could take an order that was a custom product or something that we did in stock and build it sometimes in hours ship it within 24 hours or 48 Hours um because of the integration between the system you know the sales

00:12:14 – 00:13:27
management system or processing the the purchasing system manufacturing scheduling and the manufacturing execution system and then the distribute inventory and shipping systems one unified system with which is really really unusual and the speed that information flow was was a big deal so how many how many employees were there right there were I mean the company grew over the years one point there were a thousand employees um and then through efficiency you know that number got smaller doing actually a little bit more

00:12:50 – 00:14:13
business but yeah um but it it was I think yeah it was it was probably about 800 or in that 850 range I think I retired so in 2018 is when I retired from Kanan did you ever have to learn what does K and N stand for yeah I did actually you pretty much learned I know day one I don’t know Lear it right away was it let me guess was it Ken and Nancy filters that’s pretty close that’s pretty close Okay so there were there were some guys in the 60s that you know they were like motorcycle friends and and they

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um they raced motorcycles but at some point they they sold motorcycles so K was a guy named Ken Johnson a guy nor McDonald and those two guys formed K norm and they really just formed it to you know to so they could continue to be involved with motorcycle business and all of that and at first they were motorcycle dealers and they had uh somebody told me one time they had something like 15 motorcycle dealerships in California and they were I think the first yamama dealer in the United States one of the

00:14:09 – 00:15:16
biggest but in addition to doing that they started playing around with manufacturing motorcycle parts um and then they had race teams and so they had really successful a successful racing program business finance through selling motorcycles repairing motorcycles in service and and then manufacturing some stuff I had a question for you Tim um because you said that you guys were really well vertically integrated and you’re able to be it sounds like you could be pretty Nimble so and you mentioned something about like

00:14:43 – 00:15:35
Innovations or if somebody wanted to test something were you guys focused on that like research and development were you trying new things when you were there was it and so if somebody had an idea were you able to hey let’s just try it and then manufacture it and get it over there and uh I’m sure you you must have seen a lot of failures too I mean you have standards you have standards for how you manufacture and take product to market the company had very high standards so we wouldn’t we wouldn’t go

00:15:08 – 00:16:19
experiment using the market as as the place of experimentation but we can build product and and test test Labs that we on site or we could put it on a a test vehicle or put it on a race vehicle for for evaluation and they could do that pretty much any time so we we could build custom product we can also try new materials and and new techniques on a regular basis and did on a regular basis I mean it was there’s a lot of innovation in that company not just in the product but in the way that we that

00:15:44 – 00:17:00
we went to Market you my role I didn’t I didn’t manage product development uh in my time there that was managed by most almost the entire time by a guy named Steve Williams um who’s a is’s a great person to talk to in his own I mean he’s a very interesting guy he’s in the mpmc SEMA mpmc Hall of Fame uh for Motorsports Parts manufacturers and uh and he’s a very accomplished drag racer um but he ran manufacturing and and we cut it jointly with you know between he and I and a guy

00:16:21 – 00:17:36
named Steve Rogers or most of the period that I was there um we shared marketing responsibilities and kind of moved around the responsibilities from time to time but the company did tons of innovative things in marketing innovated in product uh innovated in how we worked with our our wholesale Partners um you know I was I was somebody that I had done things that you might think of as technical sales in my career but I certainly never managed a sales team or was involved in sales but because of the data that we had I

00:16:59 – 00:18:12
could do sales analytics that you know I could really create data and understand what where the opportunities were with the customer or you know find ways to grow that wouldn’t be obvious on the surface when we could share information with customers that they wouldn’t typically have and uh that kind of stuff led me to a role of leading sales for eight years as as one of the many different kinds of responsibilities I had over that career there and uh just amazing stuff I mean the marketing at the time what we were doing

00:17:36 – 00:18:58
in in the 2000 you know 2000 to 2015 time frame or something like that we we were way ahead of most people on digital marketing at a time when it was so new that you could do you could do a lot of kinds of online marketing in really sophisticated ways for for really you know low cost because there wasn’t a lot of demand yet most people most agencies weren’t really working in that area at the time so we did we we did a lot of traditional media we did a lot of TV and a lot of magazines we were in tons of of uh

00:18:17 – 00:19:34
automotive and motorcycle magazines and and other kinds of what I’d call traditional marketing lots of event marketing but we started doing digital marketing you know sometime around 2000 or 2001 2002 and um really pushed in that area and I think there were times I remember talking to people that they they everybody always thought I mean Kenan was a big company in the in the in the performance aftermarket but never it wasn’t a gigantic company like a household brand you know consumer Products Company

00:18:55 – 00:20:07
would be but but at the time we had the kind of Market penetration and reach and and awareness for consumers that was it was really uh amazing what we were able to accomplish in terms of brand awareness and how positive people were about the brand and just to be clear I mean people were positive about the brand because it’s great product and because we were we were doing really highend exceptional things in terms of the The Experience between us and our wholesale partners and the experience that consumers would

00:19:31 – 00:20:38
have with the product so that’s how you you don’t get good brand you know loyalty because you’re really slick on your marketing you it because the experience a product that people buy it it gives them a good experience they want more of it and they want to tell their friends about it and that’s always been you know I think of the automotive aftermarket customization world that’s the most important thing is how influencers or influencers is a word that means different things now but

00:20:05 – 00:21:18
but that’s been around for a long long time so like Josh is an influencer for sure with respect to how his company um you know people rely on him to understand where Trends are headed and what will sell and what’s economic you know what to make good decisions about modification especially Reyers they’re the they’re probably the most A Ware of cost effective side of of simple car customization modification by simple I don’t mean with the stuff you do simp I mean you’re not tearing down Motors and

00:20:41 – 00:21:41
trying to get whatever you racing environment but but you know they’re not doing stuff and then you go why why would you do that you know there’s lots of people that do that but that’s sort of the high end of the market like from my experience with K&N for example it was really about a product that you didn’t you weren’t going to regret spending the money ever because the experience was well worth the $50 you spent for a performance air filter that would last the life of the car and most

00:21:12 – 00:22:29
of the products were like that and I think of that’s the whole idea with what you’re doing with your you know with in the restyling market with putting products on the car that are awesome and and we were talking earlier about the first time we met was probably not all that different from the first time Dino and I ever had a real conversation and both of them at the time were were talking about this concept of of a you know like a restylers competition at the SEMA show and I remember especially Dino

00:21:50 – 00:22:55
talking about it I’m like I have no idea what he’s talking about like but he so excited too though yeah he was super excited so it was hard to go whatever he’s trying would trying to sell me as much as convince me that this would be something be great for the industry but it was like uh you know I I want to get on board just because of the enthusiasm but I remember going to the show the first year we did that competition and and it might have been Josh that was the guy that was on a

00:22:22 – 00:23:26
video with a dealer yeah is that right M yep and they were dealer had come to the show it might have been the first time he it was his first time ever and he came because he had a had a car in the competition and of course there for them it’s just dollars right yeah you know we’ll we’ll do a project because it’s GNA make us money but he came and he saw the energy and and what this industry means to you know people that are enthusiastic about car modification not just from a business but from a consumer

00:22:55 – 00:24:19
perspective and and you know they’re bringing a I’m sure I think it was a to truck or something but it was war it wasn’t all the time right now I this environment where he gets to see how people react to that to that and that was it was it seemed like my impression of his response was just it was an incredible connection made on what the the kind of excitement that that just bolt on iics or simple modification don’t they’re not big with respect to the total value of the vehicle but they can completely

00:23:36 – 00:24:47
change you know how people react and the one thing about this industry that will never you know that that’s a fact is that the OE automakers have been tremendously influenced over decades by Innovation happen in this market and the ones that are great that are really good they just adopted right they sometimes they offer aftermarket products that’s sort of the simple way to cheat you know mean yeah Fair that’s the easy entry but the really good ideas sometimes end on the the mainline you

00:24:13 – 00:25:26
know production models and and of course that’s not great for the guys that are selling the aftermarket products but but it is great for the consumer you know in terms of having really cool vehicles and there’s a lot of stuff now you went back at at sort of how put together the vehicles are now off the lot oh yeah whether they whe even even without restyling it’s like that but I mean it’s very very different than it used to be yeah yeah I was going to you’ve had quite an adventure um if you were going to look

00:24:49 – 00:26:19
back when you were what would you tell yourself just starting out in the industry go go meet Ken and nor and nor and say hey guys I got an idea so that’ be KTM KTN filters I think the company started a couple years before I was born so probably couldn’t have yeah would have been too late um no the the thing I would the thing I would say I uh I mean I was very blessed throughout my career to meet a lot of more uh Innovative people and to and to learn from the them and and then leverage that into my

00:25:33 – 00:26:38
career and and DED more opportunity but that’s what networking does in general and um it doesn’t I’m not talking just about industry networking it’s even within a company trying to understand why other people do their job the way they do or why we as a company are choosing one one approach versus another and you know my own career was really unique because I was given so many opportunities the nature of what I was doing is that I could stick my nose into different areas of the business that

00:26:07 – 00:27:25
normally something might just go you know get out of here so I I’d go I’d go learn about all different kinds of manufacturing processes and not just how the manufacturing takes place but how you go from you know the need to make something the signals the material flow to actually Drive the line to produce something without a lot of people thinking about what to do next and uh it you know I not to beat on the restyler thing we were talking earlier about the pro cup challenge at SEMA the thing that was that to me was

00:26:46 – 00:28:05
really really interesting was part of that concept was taking not just taking a car and modifying it because people been doing that for a long long time that se but saying this is the this is literally the recipe this is the ingredient list to take a stock boring vehicle on a dealer lot and put $55,000 custom product on it and add $10,000 of retail value to the dealer you know in other words make money for the dealer make money for the restyler make money for the manufacturers manufacturers but most

00:27:25 – 00:28:24
importantly give the consumer a much more interesting personalized vehicle and then you and then you look at that recipe and they they literally would have the recipe yeah on the window right window sticker and that’s one thing I honestly I appreciate about Tim is just his because when what would happen is Tim sees the big picture and that’s why you know he was such an advocate I would be remissed if I didn’t say that Tim you were such an advocate and you helped us out a lot because it was an infas AG we

00:27:55 – 00:28:50
ran into a little bit of problems and other people didn’t quite see it and even though you didn’t understand it fully from Dino or my conception once you saw it and you saw hey this is not only helping restylers but it’s bringing buyers to the show it’s also they’re putting on manufacturers that are just in all these boots they’re just bringing them all together into one so we’re helping all these guys out too so you’re one of the few people that saw that in the beginning whereas you walk out on

00:28:23 – 00:29:27
the lot and you see these you know $100,000 builds or $75,000 builds and that’s all custom one-offs and yeah it’s impressive but it’s not really making the everyone in the industry where it’s winwin win win win and it can be duplicated over and over and over and over again that’s scalable so it’s it’s understanding I mean we sold product we knew that there were people taking our product and putting it on vehicles in you know at the dealer pre-sale for a used car whatever it was

00:28:54 – 00:29:50
but what what it was was understanding why you’d wanted of a designer in the middle the expertise they would bring and the the supply relationships they could bring and the and the speed you know the agility that they bring so they could they could have a customer come in and they could go I really like this custom truck you have but I want I wonder if you could have done this or that or that is if you have a partner that can help you deliver that then you could do I I have things I want to ask

00:29:22 – 00:30:20
you about so um I want I want to ask him about Consulting for a minute and then I want to talk to him about uh your you’re seem a volunteer because you know being chair of the board that’s that’s an impressive status there so you got they gives you the big room on top of the hotel you know uh but anyway uh let’s talk I want to ask you about Consulting because I just did my first Consulting gig and um and I want to ask you what do what do you when you consult what are some dos and don’ts of Consulting if

00:29:51 – 00:31:13
people get into Consulting um I mean there’s a few things that I think are are more effective the don’t’s kind of hard to say all the time I mean people what you definitely don’t want to do is every conversation be about you know how you did it there why you know some other company people people don’t want a you know a fixed solution to every approach they want you to listen so success is starts with with being good at listening but but deep understanding is what you really need usually most

00:30:32 – 00:31:41
types of Consultants have some degree of expertise in something that they can apply to Common business problems but know it’s making sure that you haven’t jumped ahead of what are the what are the goals or the things that are important to the business and a lot of times people don’t know what those are and so they that trying to articulate what they want if they knew exactly what they one they might need a consultant they need somebody who can just do that thing but really about helping them shape

00:31:06 – 00:32:29
strategies and and the the combined product of your knowledge and their all their unique resources and capabilities and knowledge and finding you know a path or or a solution to or opportunity that otherwise might get missed so lots of fun stuff could happen I mean the downside Consulting is you’re not you don’t really have the authority or control to make you know to really do things the way you want um but if you find a customer that’s really that really values your talent your Insight

00:31:48 – 00:32:50
your judgment and gives you some of that freedom to at least to at least take the company in the direction it wouldn’t go otherwise that’s that’s usually the most valuable so do you prefer like shortterm Consulting like a you know maybe like a 90 or day or six Monon thing or do you prefer like the multi-year just every so often they get with you type Consulting I suppose it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish but for me personally uh it’s you know I I would say most of the

00:32:20 – 00:33:24
things I did throughout my career involve transformation of something in a business doesn’t have to be the whole business doesn’t have to be a big chunk of it it can be just a little tiny slice but transformation a lot of times takes time A lot of it but not always I had projects I did that were really fun um where we you know made a big difference in a very short period of time um and that was the end of it but I would say most of them um you it’s ongoing is what I enjoyed doing and what

00:32:51 – 00:34:07
I was you know had the biggest impact so that doesn’t have to be decades you know but it could be but it could be years it just depends on the company you know see he’s trying to drag that check out Jesse yeah yeah come on let’s Tim when did you now when did you get into uh Consulting and how long were you doing it Tim no I was when I was working for the Navy I had I had uh there’s a lot of different kinds of engineering was doing there that was that was product and test system design

00:33:28 – 00:34:39
and and other things and um and I had an interest to do maybe some other things specifically in the software engineering Arena that I wasn’t I was doing some of that for the Navy that was really eventually all I was doing was mostly focused on on Big Data Systems but uh but I just could see kind of the government um in general having worked for I work for County state federal government agencies in my early part of my career move things move very slow it’s very constrained by bureaucracy and changes

00:34:05 – 00:35:23
not come easily and so I kind of got to a point where I understand that I probably wanted to work in Private Industry so I started Consulting there um I sometime maybe mid 90s I’m not sure the exact here but but those were you know sort of mostly I I was fortunate at the time but four day work week with the Navy as a civilian I work 10 hour days and then I could go do whatever I wanted on Friday and I did most of my Bing on Fridays and it worked fine I mean or or nights and weekends um but doing that

00:34:45 – 00:35:46
was the start it was and that’s the way I think most people get started as they’re doing on the side of some other job yeah and then uh and then the opportunity with K in was big enough that I could leave and do that full-time um and then after you know when I left can and retired I I kind of said well I’m going to do some I’ll do some part-time Consulting after that I starting in 2018 did some for K&N for for a while sort of transitional work but then uh started picking up a lot of

00:35:15 – 00:36:27
different opportunities with with aftermarket companies and and some of those were small projects you know sometimes they’re it almost feels like you’re a firefighter you know those it’d be fun to be a firefighter but it’s that’s know crisis management that type of thing isn’t really for me the the what I enjoy doing I enjoy longer bigger and more creative types of things and so those those were the things that I probably looked for the most and then I ended up with an opportunity to join the board of

00:35:51 – 00:37:12
the company called topown and they own uh a bunch of different brands in the convertible soft top replacement after market and uh by far the biggest aftermarket manufacturer of convertible tops and then they make a bunch of high-end seating products and other interior products so if you have a a real high-end car like a European you know or Italian super car like Josh might go there for some yeah my for some seats for your 30-year-old Ferrari my S-class 580 that’s coming out you know I just I just want to change the brown

00:36:31 – 00:37:43
seats cuz Maybach you just did a bad job on it but so I mean so when that was fun it was a very different opportunity but it was step in and look at operation of a business and the marketing and not to Growing different than filters so and they have a lot better than just orange boxes but um what so when you so what what do you tell people about you know what your SEMA career um I mean listen you were you’ve done select committees councils networks you are on the board chair-elect of the board chair IPC you

00:37:08 – 00:38:07
worked with all you worked with president of SEMA you worked with vice presidents you worked with all staff what do you what do you when you think back and reflect on that you know what what would you tell people what advice would you mean my my own experiences I got involved because there were real business problems that be solved that industry groups might be able to help solve so the the first area that I got involved was we had great product data but it was proprietary and when we tried to share

00:37:37 – 00:38:54
that with customers it was it took a lot of labor on the customer side to actually be able to use your data if that could leave because there weren’t standards and so started working with SEMA with the business technology committee back in you know I don’t know that’s was 20 years ago or something and trying to help create standards and and and promote standards because at the time most manufacturers couldn’t Supply product pictures they couldn’t Supply product data and so at the very

00:38:15 – 00:39:18
beginning it was just the simplest kind of product data and just being able to get somebody parts list the basics seem difficult and then when you accomplish that we’d move on to well we want to be able to do images and then you’d accomplish that and then we’d move on to well sometimes you want multiple images or you want you know do you want a picture of the product on the car not just a picture of the product and those kinds of things standards either didn’t exist or as they would

00:38:46 – 00:40:04
come into existence through these industry groups and SEMA being one of them Autocare and some others that were that were uh super influential you you find that you have to move into advocacy in the in the industry on the you know the customers have to have to learn how to use those standards not the manufacturers would be ahead of the curve so I got involved with that and that led to a bunch of different mure things that I did early with SE and then eventually got nominated for the board of directors and served on the board

00:39:25 – 00:40:43
since I served from 2011 to about I guess 2023 on the board directories had one little short window where I was all the word but for most of that period of time and that was really interesting because then you’d get to you know help this what is a pretty big industry association with a lot of influence uh accomplish a lot of good things or the industry and we hundreds and hundreds of really talented smart people from every you know possible quarter of the aftermark it all all kind of rolled up

00:40:05 – 00:41:10
didn’t it how do you think the market is changing the industry the aftermarket industry is changing and and uh what should we be looking out for if you had a I heard there’s some kind of electric vehicles coming I heard I don’t buy it there the Market’s always changed and it’s continuing to change and certainly uh there were period periods where Performance Products were the most important thing there were periods where it seemed like people just wanted to focus on wheels and

00:40:36 – 00:41:54
tires um the interior products you know important sometimes and other times people don’t think about those but the sort of what the trends in the market are and what people are excited about is changed um in a totally unpredictable at least for me path over the time that I’ve been involved um and there are some products for sure that are durable and been around the entire time and they’ll be around you know 50 years from now and there are other products where they come and go and so the people that design products

00:41:16 – 00:42:27
have to adapt to the powertrains and the style of vehicle the uh the wants of the consumer so there’s a tons there’s a ton of products that are sold the trun market now that didn’t exist 20 years ago or it didn’t seem important and and so you have to follow that I mean there I I remember when rooftop tent campers came out and they seemed to me like a really stupid idea just as like why would you want that till end ended up in your driveway and we ended up owning one and then my daughter lived in it for a while with

00:41:53 – 00:43:13
her husband and I mean they they they put yeah they I I told somebody we had a an eye camper an early eye camper yeah I camper I camp 2.0 on a Ford Explorer they they probably slept in that thing two or three hundred nights and you’d think that’s I mean that’s to me when I thought they were I thought nobody would ever do that you know it it it does open up some really interesting lifestyle opportuni of recreational opportunities that you otherwise wouldn’t wouldn’t uh do and so

00:42:32 – 00:43:59
people people that know me well know that I don’t I really don’t use social media very much I’ve had Facebook account and stuff but I have I almost never post um I would guess the last time I posted was was like uh day one of covid lockdown and it’s a picture of our Explorer with you know with the with rooftop tent set up sitting out near Moab in in Utah and it’s just a beautiful setting and and I think the the caption that I wrote was social distancing that’s that is true social

00:43:16 – 00:44:29
distancing a little overlanding yes there’s there’s nothing there but you and this incredible outoor and and that’s the kind of thing that you know again that that concept it isn’t like people haven’t been camping in Van for 30 years you know but the evolution of it and the sophistication even that particular rig that we had is you know state of the art anymore right so so those things are always changing and moving that’s the beauty of the you know the beauty of the consumer

00:43:52 – 00:45:03
experience is that there’s so much diversity in the market that isn’t a handful of companies to get to decide what is available to you it’s that that’s true in the OE market and even Regulators control what you might be available to you in the uh you know on the dealer lot straight from the factory but the aftermarket gives you all these interesting deep opportunities and and of course we’ve seen and been involved in a lot discussion and research dollars with SEMA you know in order order for

00:44:27 – 00:45:37
the market to survive and prosper in the future we have to be much more sophisticated about how we deal with the evolution Automotive Safety and and technology in the car because things that you you could do anything you wanted to a 60s vehicle or 7 these but that’s not the case anymore and so you you’ve gotta you have to have systems and Engineering approaches that are compatible with with uh what with what the car allows you what Regulators you know allow you to do and so on I gotta I

00:45:03 – 00:46:04
gotta tell you a funny story about Tim Jesse so we are at a uh so the board was having a long range planning meeting in Hawaii um I happen to get invited to be um just to represent one of the a couple of the councils so I’m in the board meeting and you know they let us stay in the whole board meeting and be part of the process you know and ask questions or comment or whatever so you know Tim sends out homework to the entire board including me which I’m like listen I’m not on the board he sends out this

00:45:33 – 00:46:31
homework what do you think the homework is well it’s hey we’re just going to review some of the programs that SEMA is dealing with you know but you know we’re just trying to review hey you know are they still valid you know do they need a little bit of changing do we need to get rid of it do we need to put more money into it whatever we’re going to evaluate so I’m like oh okay you know that’s a good idea that wow that’s really smart so I get my packet okay there’s a 100

00:46:01 – 00:47:12
programs like there’s like three reviewing them all Josh we’re only yeah yeah oh yeah this time we were only reviewing like 60 of them or 30 of them I don’t even remember all I remember it was it was it was close to 300 pages of information that I’m trying to read and look through and mind numbingly going oh my gosh you know even on the flight out to to Hawaii I’m like looking at like oh I can’t even believe some of these program so you know and so I’m sitting there going there’s no way we’re really

00:46:36 – 00:47:46
GNA do all this all bu Tim is on point okay program number 31 did everybody get a chance to look at it and here’s this and I was just like wow and so it made me appreciate what the board actually does so I would like to ask you this question Tim what do you what do you what would you like to say to people who may not understand really what the board does now I know that might have been you know an an extreme uh but realistically tell people what is it that the board does that they can maybe appreciate because these are just

00:47:12 – 00:48:35
unpaid volunteers so most of what they do is they’re trying to help uh this Association which seems a pretty decent sized organization with like I said great reach and influence do good things important things on behalf of the industry and protect the industry and grow the industry and so you know at the core they’re trying to to preserve the things that are working well but they’re trying to evolve and anticipate with places that are going to create um you know you know roadblocks or or pressure

00:47:53 – 00:49:13
for people in the business of selling afterwork products and and so the board is trying to set priorities they’re trying to scope B different things that we should invest in and and ultimately making decisions about investing in a lot of different ways to benefit the industry and you know the people that have been involved learn and most people are aware the the SEMA show is a giant successful Enterprise in good years and uh they have a great staff a team of people a team of partners that put that

00:48:33 – 00:49:43
event on and it’s it’s an amazing event they’re it’s exceptional what they do to put that on um and it’s say it’s it’s successful from the the impact point of view and a successful Financial it is a financially successful show and then they turn around and they take you know the the Surplus comes out of running a very successful commercial show by the way a show has you know pretty good Fair economics with regard to it’s much cheaper to exhibit there than a lot of

00:49:08 – 00:50:26
other places that you might exhibit in terms of the reach impact to that event or or comparable shows fit they take that they figure out what to do with it so you know the part of that is government advocacy so you know we had a team in Washington DC have an office there and a team of something like eight or 10 people that are that are working every day to protect and promote the industry to regulators and legislators um and that’s done it it’s it would be it wouldn’t be impossible for individual companies to do that

00:49:48 – 00:51:01
because some individual companies do develop relationships their local Congress person or whatever it might be but but it’s but those those are more you know personal and local relationships it’s hard to have broad impact you have to have that group collaboration and and they’re doing stuff like that they’re doing stuff like the seam Garage in California and the semr in Detroit Michigan um where where they offer chonic development services and and Research Services that are that are very

00:50:24 – 00:51:44
relevant and and all these different kind of Industry networking and Industry you know smaller more conent Trad Focus GPS councils or or other GPS that are working on other problems that are good for the industry so that deciding where the priorities are and where the resources are going to go is the majority of what is important that the board does providing oversight to make sure that the that the team of employees and partners that work there understand what’s important to the industry businesses that they are

00:51:04 – 00:52:18
representing because they some of the people at sea for example have worked in the industry but many of them are professionals at what they do event management or or marketing or some other thing and they may or may not have U even if they did used to work in the industry you’ve got to know what uh people what’s really important you know and like me as a cons when I was working for companies uh you know your your value as a consultant is very closely aligned and related to kind of your knowledge and expertise on

00:51:40 – 00:52:46
what’s important now not what was a in the past and so you this is an industry that is evolving and changing all the time so it’s not really enough to just say well I I know a lot because of you know some past experience you know con and and that’s not just for a consultant it’s for every person that runs a business I’m I’m sure Josh’s business today is radically different than it was five years ago yeah maybe not radically but no happens all the time and that’s why the board does a good job of staying

00:52:14 – 00:53:03
on top of things and I mean I’m I personally won’t forgive you because I’m sitting there looking even though you did get me to Hawaii so I appreciate that but uh I’m looking out the window I’m seeing my wife lay out in the sun I’m seeing humpbacks in the ocean and then I hear you know you know Tim Martin go all right number 27 and it’s like 4:00 and you’re like oh so they do actually really do work hard it’s not thing that was amazing was I don’t think anybody really thought we

00:52:39 – 00:53:48
would be able to cover as much as we did there oh yeah we we did we cover cover covered it we got it made some cut part of that process was about cutting I think that day we cut almost a million dollars yeah programs program expense out because we didn’t feel like those programs delivered enough value to the industry yeah and and that’s unfortunately you know when you ask what the board does most of the things that SEMA does don’t you those programs don’t make money they lose money so every one

00:53:13 – 00:54:16
of those is considered investment basically a you know a a an it’s an expense and you have to decide if the expense is worth it and hang with Tim you’ll cut a million bucks that’s what I call it you know most of it is about trying to incly improve things just like you would in business making sure that you’re connected to the to the I mean in the case here it’s like you’ve got customers but they’re almost shareholders right it’s kind of a Cooperative totally is and you know

00:53:45 – 00:54:47
listen you you’ve uh you’ve done a great job I you know I don’t know a lot of people that really put the really time heavy time heavy lifting that you did there’s a lot of changes that took place and a lot of that um was just the uh heavy lifting that you did so we appreciate that and I know I appreciate it I look up to you as an example icon in the industry and what you’ve done so um appreciate you jumping on with us I’ll let Jesse ask and you too Josh I mean a lot of people like you have put

00:54:16 – 00:55:39
huge amounts of time into you know observing the industry I do it for the free drinks you know so you don’t you actually enjoy seeing progress and stuff like that so Tim I I know that you’re retired or semi-retired so do you do do we still want to plug aftermarket advisers or you want to avoid that no plug plug Callaway go start the guy Gund me know I know plenty of people if I ever am looking for work I would awesome so no here’s his plug don’t call him let the guy be retired Josh cuz he’s yeah no don’t call

00:54:57 – 00:56:01
me either because uh listen I got enough stuff to do call Tim if you want to play golf in California because that’s all he’s doing or I mean he might get a new eye camper on his vehicle and head to Moab but if you see him talk to him thank him for the work he’s done for our industry thank him for you know Ken and Norm should really be thanking him and their families and the shareholders I’m not in California anymore Jos you moved East you just keep California behind you on the wall live in Florida now oh okay

00:55:30 – 00:56:34
well there you go I didn’t know you were an East coaster good glad glad you got out of there so all right good deal well thanks again for being on brother I appreciate you thank you Tim and there you have it another high octane episode of the ride in style podcast reved up and ready to go your hosts Jesse Stoddard and Josh pson shifted your Automotive game into overdrive if you’re hungry for more insights Trends and game-changing interviews from the automotive restyling Universe don’t forget to hit subscribe

00:56:07 – 00:57:09
and leave a glowing review we’d also love for you to share this podcast with your Gearheads installers and autol lovers Network because remember knowledge is power but shared knowledge turbocharges the whole industry for more expert resources to supercharge your business cruise on over to autostyle marketing.com your One-Stop shop for Everything Automotive marketing until next time keep those Wheels spinning and your passion ignited thank you for riding in style with us see you on the next lap