BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY
By Douglas McColloch
Each year, SEMA members introduce thousands of cutting-edge tools and accessories designed to add enjoyment to vehicle ownership. While some have universal fitments, many have model-specific applications that require significantly more research and development (R&D).
The SEMA Garage provides SEMA-member companies with access to the latest technology, tools and services, as well as a team of engineers to help product developers bring their innovations to market quickly and efficiently.
The 15,000-sq.-ft. facility offers a variety of services, including a two-bay garage equipped with vehicle lifts and tools for product test fitment, R&D and installation; an emissions lab dedicated to all aspects of emissions compliance, including preparation of California Air Resources Board (CARB) Executive Order (EO) applications, lab testing and interactions with CARB/U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of SEMA members; a staff of engineers dedicated to the management and distribution of OEM CAD data directly to aftermarket parts manufacturers; two Stratasys 3-D printers capable of outputting more than 10 different types of plastic-based rapid prototypes in various applications; two 3-D scanners—a FARO ScanArm and a handheld ARTEC Leo—that are capable of digitizing physical products for CAD design; and a training center with the capacity for hosting 100 people for new product reveals and other functions.
While SEMA already offers a variety of R&D and technical-support initiatives through SEMA Garage, the organization is always looking for ways to improve its services to stay abreast of the rapid changes in automotive technologies and to better respond to the evolving needs of its member companies. We recently spoke with Luis Morales, SEMA Garage mechanical engineer, to review some of the upgrades and to explain how member companies can best utilize them to their advantage. What follows has been edited for clarity and length.
SN: Tell us about some of the new developments that have taken place this year in the SEMA Garage and about some of the technological upgrades.
LM: I’d like to focus on the 3-D scanning technologies that we’ve brought onboard. First, we’ve improved our 3-D scanning service by bringing in new technology. Before, we used to operate only a FARO edge scan arm. It’s a stationary system, so it’s on a tripod—meaning that it can only reach as far as the arm’s length, which was 9 ft. at the time. Then you would have to move the arm around the vehicle to capture the entire vehicle, for example.
Now we have upgraded that arm to what is known as the FARO Quantum M FaroArm v2, and this model has an 11.5-ft. measurement range, so we have increased the range that we can extend the arm itself, and it still holds an accuracy of three thousandths of an inch. This is what we use to help our members either reverse-engineer a product that they have developed in the past and they have no digital reference to, or we can use this arm to reverse-engineer mounting areas on an existing vehicle for somebody to develop a product. We can also use it to digitize the entire exterior of a vehicle, and we do that for many members who are making body kits, roof racks, interiors and such. So for starters, we have upgraded our FARO-branded equipment.
In addition to that, we have expanded our capabilities by introducing a new system known as the ARTEC Leo from ARTEC 3D Systems. It’s a handheld unit, and it’s basically a scanner with a camera in front of it. With that unit, you can walk around an entire vehicle and not have to worry about mounting it anywhere.
SN: Why not just use the ARTEC instead of the FARO arm? It sounds simpler and more convenient.
LM: As with anything else, there’s a give and take. In this case, the FARO has an accuracy of three thousandths of an inch, which is great. The ARTEC Leo, being capable of capturing larger objects at a much faster rate, has an accuracy of eight thousandths of an inch. However, with the ARTEC Leo, you can capture a scanning frame of 21/2 x 11/2 ft. in a single pass. That’s huge compared to what the FARO can do, but again, you sacrifice size versus accuracy. Nonetheless, we always work with our members to find out what their needs are, and if higher accuracy is something that they’re looking for, we’ll use the FARO arm. If size is a priority over accuracy, we’ll use the ARTEC.
Also, with the ARTEC Leo we can travel to different member facilities across the country when possible and help them out. It fits into a small briefcase that you can carry on an airplane, so it’s very portable. The FARO, by contrast, is a more stationary system that we keep in-house.
We’ve been working very well with both of the systems in the past couple of months. We’ve actually used them in conjunction with each other in cases where we capture some data with the FARO arm to be accurate and then also capture the overall image of the vehicle or the product itself with the ARTEC. We can actually combine them, so they complement each other.
SN: Besides offering a greater diversity in scanning services, what other benefits do these new models confer for member companies?
LM: The extra length of the new FARO arm means that we can complete a job at a much faster rate. We capture data more quickly than we could in the past because of the arm’s reach. That saves us time and saves the members time and money.
When looking at the handheld unit, we now have the capability to help our members by capturing data that was limited or wasn’t possible to capture with the FARO arm itself. As an example, think about a member who is designing something that goes inside of a truck bed or on the roof of a vehicle. Those two places were very difficult to capture with the FARO arm—even impossible in some cases. Now that we’ve overcome that issue with the ARTEC Leo system, because it is handheld, we can take the unit with us to the top of a ladder and freely scan the roof or the inside of a bed. That’s going to help us with data for truck beds, roofs, interiors, seats—you name it. Anything that was physically limited by the FARO arm is now overcome because we have the ARTEC to complement it.
SN: For those members who might still hesitate about visiting the Garage during the COVID-19 disruption, could you elaborate on some of the safety and sanitation protocols SEMA Garage
has adopted?
LM: The majority of our services that we operate in the product-development side of the SEMA Garage are contactless, including
the Tech Transfer program, 3-D printing and such. A member can simply reach out to us via email and we’ll exchange data that way, or we’ll exchange files that way.
In a case where we have to physically scan a product in the Garage, we cannot allow members to stay in the facility due to the safety and authentication protocols we have adopted. We invite them to schedule an appointment to drop off a vehicle, and we bring it into the facility. We wipe it down and clean it, and we clean the keys. We sanitize the vehicle anywhere we come into contact with it. We do our job of scanning the requested areas, we sanitize the vehicle again, and we have the member pick it up.
We have safety guidelines in place within our facility where everybody has to wear a mask at all times. We social distance while at our workspaces, and we have PPE at the entrance and hand sanitizer in every room of the facility. But at this time, we unfortunately cannot have members in the facility itself.
SN: Looking forward to 2021, are there any other initiatives or upgrades in the works that you care to share with
the members?
LM: We’re always growing the Tech Transfer 3-D scan library, but with the upgraded scanning systems, we now see an opportunity to grow it significantly—much faster, much more data and more vehicles to scan.
Right now in the Garage, we have the ’20 Polaris RZR Pro and ’20 Can-Am Maverick X3 for the side-by-side market. We have classic vehicles too. We now have a ’69 Ford Mustang and ’68 Ford Bronco. We’re capturing data on those vehicles using both scanners, which means more data, more value to members and more value to the program.
We’re going to be adding another focus into our scanning services toward the import side of things. In the past, we’ve had partnerships with Ford, General Motors, Cummins and Fiat Chrysler Automotive through the Tech Transfer program. They’ve helped us out by providing us with OE CAD data. Then we started capturing our own data using scanners for vehicles that were outside of that group, which included off-road vehicles, Toyotas and Nissans. Now we see this opportunity to go deeper into the tuner side by capturing data for imported Japanese vehicles.
We are currently working on scanning a ’92 JDM Suzuki Cappucino. Now, that’s not something that you would commonly see around here, but if you are interested in developing a product for that vehicle, you can utilize our data as a reference for your development and put your product out into the market. We plan to start with that vehicle but also to use our connections to get our hands on more Japanese imported vehicles and therefore expand the interest of tuner enthusiasts and import enthusiasts into our market.
We currently have 562 scan files that are composed of 26 vehicle makes and 99 models. Within the next year, we plan to grow those numbers significantly.
For more information about accessing the SEMA Garage’s full range of services, visit www.semagarage.com.
The SEMA Garage provides member companies with a variety of services and equipment to improve efficiencies in product development, accelerate product time-to-market, and streamline R&D procedures and protocols. Among the services offered are:
Tech Transfer: SEMA members can access CAD OEM data to develop high-quality parts quickly and cost-effectively. Participating OEMs include Ford, Lincoln, General Motors/Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Jeep, Fiat and Scion. As mentioned in this article, SEMA is also creating a scan library of other vehicles and products using Faro/CMM and ARTEC Leo.
Measuring Sessions: The SEMA Garage offers on- and off-site domestic and international vehicle measuring sessions. The Garage has specialty tools available, including spring-measuring equipment, corner-weight scales and a CMM operated by SEMA staff. Private domestic vehicle measuring sessions are available on an exclusive basis. Upon request, non-U.S. vehicles can be delivered to a member’s place of business for private measuring sessions and R&D purposes.
3-D Printing: The SEMA Garage offers this service using a state-of-the-art Stratasys 450MC and F370 3-D printers. This service allows members to print physical models of their products that they can see, touch and test, eliminating costly redesigns before starting production. Staff engineers can work with 3-D digital part files to control the look, strength and precision of the part as well as the time, expense and overall efficiency of the print process.
Emissions Compliance: The SEMA Garage includes an automotive emissions laboratory where SEMA manufacturer members are able to test their products at an affordable cost, and the Garage’s Compliance Center includes experts and resources available to help members navigate the process, including evaluation of member products and recommendations for compliance procedures; assistance with the CARB EO process; interaction with CARB staff on behalf of member companies; and review and evaluation of test data.
Training Center: The SEMA Garage includes a fully equipped training facility that companies can use for a variety of functions, ranging from new-product reveals to company educational seminars. Catering can be provided upon request, and use of the facility is free to SEMA members.
SEMA DATA CO-OP
The products featured below are from SEMA Data Co-op (SDC) member companies that have attained Gold- or Platinum-level data, which means that their product data is robust and complete—likely to drive customer purchase decisions. SDC members meeting data scorecard requirements are invited to submit product releases for consideration to enews@semadatacoop.org.
B&W Trailer Hitches
Tow & Stow Receiver Hitch
A pintle hitch with the same great features as the Tow & Stow Receiver Hitch. The trailer’s loop goes over the ball, then the thick plate drops down to secure it. Easy to line up and connect, this pintle hitch can carry even heavier loads than the regular Tow & Stow. Easily stow it under the vehicle when you are done towing.
Product details include:
Information: www.bwtrailerhitches.com
HyperTech
Max Energy Spectrum Power Programmer
The MAX Energy Spectrum Power Programmer optimizes engine tuning for maximum power and performance for any kind of driving.
Information: www.hypertech.com
Leed Brakes
LEED Brakes drum-to-disc brake conversion kit
Add the safety, reliability and performance of power disc brakes to your ’66–’75 Ford Bronco with a LEED Brakes drum-to-disc brake conversion.
In this kit you receive everything you need to mount dual-piston disc brakes to the factory drum brake knuckles of your vehicle. No cutting, drilling or grinding necessary; this is a true bolt-on kit. All components used in these kits are new, high-quality, precision-machined products and are designed to work with your stock or aftermarket locking hubs and bearings.
Components include:
Information: www.leedbrakes.com
The SDC is “data central” for the specialty-equipment segment, containing millions of products and vehicle fitments from performance and accessories brands. Created by SEMA, the SDC is the definitive, industry-owned and -operated centralized data warehouse, complete with comprehensive online tools, and a team of dedicated data and technology experts to assist manufacturers and resellers with product data needs. Learn more at www.semadatacoop.org or scan the QR code with your smartphone camera.
SEMA DATA CO-OP
The products featured below are from SEMA Data Co-op (SDC) member companies that have attained Gold- or Platinum-level data, which means that their product data is robust and complete—likely to drive customer purchase decisions. SDC members meeting data scorecard requirements are invited to submit product releases for consideration to enews@semadatacoop.org.
B&W Trailer Hitches
Tow & Stow Receiver Hitch
A pintle hitch with the same great features as the Tow & Stow Receiver Hitch. The trailer’s loop goes over the ball, then the thick plate drops down to secure it. Easy to line up and connect, this pintle hitch can carry even heavier loads than the regular Tow & Stow. Easily stow it under the vehicle when you are done towing.
Product details include:
Information: www.bwtrailerhitches.com
HyperTech
Max Energy Spectrum Power Programmer
The MAX Energy Spectrum Power Programmer optimizes engine tuning for maximum power and performance for any kind of driving.
Information: www.hypertech.com
Leed Brakes
LEED Brakes drum-to-disc brake conversion kit
Add the safety, reliability and performance of power disc brakes to your ’66–’75 Ford Bronco with a LEED Brakes drum-to-disc brake conversion.
In this kit you receive everything you need to mount dual-piston disc brakes to the factory drum brake knuckles of your vehicle. No cutting, drilling or grinding necessary; this is a true bolt-on kit. All components used in these kits are new, high-quality, precision-machined products and are designed to work with your stock or aftermarket locking hubs and bearings.
Components include:
Information: www.leedbrakes.com
The SDC is “data central” for the specialty-equipment segment, containing millions of products and vehicle fitments from performance and accessories brands. Created by SEMA, the SDC is the definitive, industry-owned and -operated centralized data warehouse, complete with comprehensive online tools, and a team of dedicated data and technology experts to assist manufacturers and resellers with product data needs. Learn more at www.semadatacoop.org or scan the QR code with your smartphone camera.
RETAIL BEST PRACTICES
By Chad Simon
 Despite the pandemic, 4 Wheel Parts customers are still buying parts, working on project vehicles and hitting the trails. |
COVID-19 has forced brick-and-mortar retailers to rethink the way they conduct business. Many have responded by implementing one-way aisles, social-distancing measures and installing physical barriers between the employees and customers. Despite these changes, some retailers have succeeded in adapting and finding ways to retain a loyal customer base. A case in point is 4 Wheel Parts, which operates a chain of retail stores servicing off-road enthusiasts.
SEMA News spoke with Kathryn Reinhardt, 4 Wheel Parts senior marketing manager and a member of the SEMA Board of Directors, to find out how the company has managed to adapt to unforeseen circumstances and thrive despite the pandemic.
SEMA News: How has COVID-19 changed the way you do business?
Kathryn Reinhardt: The pandemic provided our teams with some unforeseeable challenges. It wasn’t something we could predict or simply go to plan B. Our consumers stayed steadfast and wanted to start working on project vehicles during their time at home. We saw some big increases in terms of units being sold online. We even saw an increase in installations at the retail stores. We are grateful to have consumers who are adventurous, can find the paths unpaved and look to 4 Wheel Parts as their parts supplier even during
a pandemic.
SN: What challenges have you faced over the past year, and how are you overcoming them?
KR: We have had challenges with vendors not being able to supply enough product to meet the demands of our consumers. Due to the pandemic, a lot of our vendors’ operations closed and manufacturing stopped. We were able to reforecast and work directly with vendors to meet the supply.
SN: How have you adapted business practices during the pandemic, and how do you manage the salesroom floor?
KR: The sales floor has dramatically changed. We have implemented one-way aisle arrows, added counter table barriers, required masks, and installed clear partitions (thanks to Fab Fours). Our customers have appreciated the extra layers of safety and security to ensure that they are protected.
 The sales floor at 4WP has dramatically changed. The company has implemented one-way aisle arrows, added counter table barriers, required masks and installed clear partitions. |
SN: How have you been able to continue bringing people into the store and reassure customers that not only are you open for business, but it’s also safe?
KR: During the pandemic, 4 Wheel Parts offered free inspections to first responders and essential workers. We wanted to give frontline workers peace of mind that they could get to their jobs safely and securely, and if that meant 4 Wheel Parts providing an open bay, then we wanted to do that, because it was the right thing to do. Our customers know we do everything we can to ensure their safety and the safety of our team members. That’s why masks, buffer tables, one-way aisles and counter partitions were required.
SN: How have you been able to succeed despite COVID-19, and what do you attribute to your success?
KR: The 4 Wheel Parts business is thriving. We are connecting with more consumers online and in store than we ever have. Our customers have taken social distancing to the max by purchasing overland products and accessories and putting them to use in the outdoors.
SN: Are all employees working remotely and how does that impact operations?
KR: All 95 of the 4 Wheel Parts stores are open and serving customers. Some of our employees are working remotely, but our communication is better than ever, and our production is at top speed.
SN: Are you selling mostly online, in store or both?
KR: Both. We have seen an increase in buying online and pick up in store.
SN: What types of e-commerce do you find most effective in marketing your company?
| Source | |
| 4 Wheel Parts 400 W. Artesia Blvd. Compton, CA 90220 310-900-7725 www.4wheelparts.com |
KR: We have had success in a multitude of platforms. Social-media posts, stories and our website have been placed for consumers to find first-to-market products, learn off-roading tips and share their rig builds. Right now, people want to feel connected. The pandemic limited our in-person discussions, so people moved online to research parts and keep in the loop.
SN: What advice would you offer other retailers struggling to operate during COVID-19?
KR: Be open to how consumers want to shop, and do everything you can to make them feel special and safe.
EVENTS
SEMA360 was a first in many ways. For SEMA, it was a first-time excursion into creating an online trade event. For many manufacturers, attendees and media, it was a first exposure to navigating one. But for all involved, it presented a firsthand learning experience surrounding best practices for the digital marketplaces that are now playing a growing role in business-to-business commerce.
With that in mind, SEMA News reached out to various SEMA360 participants about the event strategies they deployed before, during and after the event. It’s probably no surprise that the most successful companies we spoke with embraced a mix of traditional trade-show practices—notably pre-event publicity, product demonstrations, and post-event follow-up—and innovative thinking to leverage key features of a digital platform. The following are two case studies that especially illustrate the best practices that many companies adopted.
Cedar Electronics
Headquartered in Chicago, Cedar Electronics is the parent company to two iconic mobile-electronics brands: Escort and Cobra. In fact, according to Mark Karnes, the company’s vice president of product marketing and business development, Cedar can trace its roots to the original citizens-band (CB) radio of the ’70s.
“We like to joke that it was the first electronic social-media system ever invented, because truckers picked it up, developed their own language, and are still using it today to communicate across highways in North America,” he said.
Cedar has come a long way since then. Now the maker of a wide range of trucking, marine and general-consumer communications and radar-detection products, the manufacturer planned to utilize SEMA360 to debut several of its latest offerings. As with a live SEMA Show, that meant crafting a compelling booth pitch emphasizing the company’s story and key brand advantages. Cedar chose to create its pitch around its accomplishments in connected technologies.
“We’re going to be talking a lot about our connected-car technology products, all of which are operating on one of the largest, most active aftermarket cloud communities,” Karnes explained prior to the event. “Each of our Escort and Cobra detection products—including also now our cameras and our CB radios—all connect to the cloud and share their sensor data with each other. As one detector detects a law-enforcement signal or a red-light camera or one of the users gives an alert to a road hazard, that particular incident is geo-coded. It’s transferred up to the cloud, and that information is shared with you as you come by a half hour later so that you have almost a clairvoyance of what’s ahead of you.”
During the event, in addition to “fully staffing” its Manufacturer Showcase to ensure that there were plenty of people to respond to attendee inquiries, Karnes noted that Cedar had invested heavily in digital assets and was leveraging them on the SEMA360 platform.
“First and foremost, we’re making this as experiential as you can in the virtual medium,” he said. “We’re treating it like it’s a standard SEMA Show, but we’re going to try to do it on a much more virtual and digitally interactive level.”
The company followed the standard Show playbook in other ways as well. For one, it brought lists of its most important customers and reached out to them through the SEMA360 platform with new business opportunities. Just as importantly, Cedar took full advantage of the New Products Showcase to earn industry attention, entering several new GPS-enabled and connected products along with a new line of compact power inverters. That game plan especially paid off. The Cedar Electronics-Escort/Cobra Escort Redline 360c driver-alert system captured first place in the Mobile Electronics category at the SEMA360 New Products Awards, greatly amplifying the company’s SEMA360 marketing efforts.
“We are very much honored to be able to receive an award from our driver-enthusiast peers and our industry peers—and especially from SEMA, because it’s just such an affirmation from our total market audience in our industry,” said Karnes, who added that the company also appreciated the interactive platform SEMA built to allow companies to do business together in the current climate.
CVF Racing
At a live SEMA Show, exhibitors can’t just leave their booths or fan out across the Show floor to canvas business prospects. However, an online trade event is a different animal, and companies such as CVF Racing found success leveraging SEMA360’s networking functionalities.
A manufacturer-retailer of serpentine and accessory drives for classic cars and hot rods, the company, based in New Prague, Minnesota, introduced 18 new products at SEMA360. Trevor Hobson, CVF Racing sales and technical support manager, said that although an online event might never match what a live SEMA Show could offer, “like anything in life, what you put into it is what you get out of it.”
The company originally hoped that its Manufacturer Showcase and new-product content would pull in traffic, but it was obvious that the strategy wasn’t going as planned by the event’s second day. Hobson suspected that the learning curve associated with navigating a new digital trade platform was slowing attendee engagement. Many seemed to be taking more time than anticipated getting a feel for the site’s features and their workings.
His team quickly changed tactics, spending more time in roundtables, visiting the networking lounge, checking out other vendors and Manufacturer Showcases, and especially engaging in educational seminars and their related chat rooms.
“You could go in and look to see who was in there or had visited there, and you could see their profile and actually connect and chat with those people—basically cold-hit them and say, ‘Here’s what we do. Can we fit into your business?’” Hobson said, explaining that he and the team basically worked the event as if they were attendees as opposed to exhibitors.
CVF Racing ended up sending out roughly 200 cold hits throughout the week. That strategy resulted in a good number of solid offline email conversations and online requests for further information.
“We took a very proactive approach to trying to go out and generate leads versus waiting for someone to come click on our booth,” noted Hobson, who added that his company also took away some other valuable lessons from its SEMA360 experience. Among those was the need to build up a cache of ready digital assets along with some new approaches to project management.
“Having everything online forced us to put a deadline on things as far as creating content that we could put onto the website,” he explained. “So it kind of spurred productivity as far as getting new items across the finish line for projects.”
Hindsight being 20/20, Hobson said that CVF Racing will likely make broader use of promotional videos than URL links to product images and data in future events.
“I think [a video] was more engaging,” he said. “We saw people who spent more time on a video than on an individual link.”
Nevertheless, Hobson believes that his team’s active canvassing of potential leads increased the company’s success 10 to 20 fold. In the end, CVF Racing’s experience at SEMA360 served as an example in agility, weighing the pluses and minuses of every show environment and adjusting tactics on the fly as necessary.
EVENTS
SEMA360 was a first in many ways. For SEMA, it was a first-time excursion into creating an online trade event. For many manufacturers, attendees and media, it was a first exposure to navigating one. But for all involved, it presented a firsthand learning experience surrounding best practices for the digital marketplaces that are now playing a growing role in business-to-business commerce.
With that in mind, SEMA News reached out to various SEMA360 participants about the event strategies they deployed before, during and after the event. It’s probably no surprise that the most successful companies we spoke with embraced a mix of traditional trade-show practices—notably pre-event publicity, product demonstrations, and post-event follow-up—and innovative thinking to leverage key features of a digital platform. The following are two case studies that especially illustrate the best practices that many companies adopted.
Cedar Electronics
Headquartered in Chicago, Cedar Electronics is the parent company to two iconic mobile-electronics brands: Escort and Cobra. In fact, according to Mark Karnes, the company’s vice president of product marketing and business development, Cedar can trace its roots to the original citizens-band (CB) radio of the ’70s.
“We like to joke that it was the first electronic social-media system ever invented, because truckers picked it up, developed their own language, and are still using it today to communicate across highways in North America,” he said.
Cedar has come a long way since then. Now the maker of a wide range of trucking, marine and general-consumer communications and radar-detection products, the manufacturer planned to utilize SEMA360 to debut several of its latest offerings. As with a live SEMA Show, that meant crafting a compelling booth pitch emphasizing the company’s story and key brand advantages. Cedar chose to create its pitch around its accomplishments in connected technologies.
“We’re going to be talking a lot about our connected-car technology products, all of which are operating on one of the largest, most active aftermarket cloud communities,” Karnes explained prior to the event. “Each of our Escort and Cobra detection products—including also now our cameras and our CB radios—all connect to the cloud and share their sensor data with each other. As one detector detects a law-enforcement signal or a red-light camera or one of the users gives an alert to a road hazard, that particular incident is geo-coded. It’s transferred up to the cloud, and that information is shared with you as you come by a half hour later so that you have almost a clairvoyance of what’s ahead of you.”
During the event, in addition to “fully staffing” its Manufacturer Showcase to ensure that there were plenty of people to respond to attendee inquiries, Karnes noted that Cedar had invested heavily in digital assets and was leveraging them on the SEMA360 platform.
“First and foremost, we’re making this as experiential as you can in the virtual medium,” he said. “We’re treating it like it’s a standard SEMA Show, but we’re going to try to do it on a much more virtual and digitally interactive level.”
The company followed the standard Show playbook in other ways as well. For one, it brought lists of its most important customers and reached out to them through the SEMA360 platform with new business opportunities. Just as importantly, Cedar took full advantage of the New Products Showcase to earn industry attention, entering several new GPS-enabled and connected products along with a new line of compact power inverters. That game plan especially paid off. The Cedar Electronics-Escort/Cobra Escort Redline 360c driver-alert system captured first place in the Mobile Electronics category at the SEMA360 New Products Awards, greatly amplifying the company’s SEMA360 marketing efforts.
“We are very much honored to be able to receive an award from our driver-enthusiast peers and our industry peers—and especially from SEMA, because it’s just such an affirmation from our total market audience in our industry,” said Karnes, who added that the company also appreciated the interactive platform SEMA built to allow companies to do business together in the current climate.
CVF Racing
At a live SEMA Show, exhibitors can’t just leave their booths or fan out across the Show floor to canvas business prospects. However, an online trade event is a different animal, and companies such as CVF Racing found success leveraging SEMA360’s networking functionalities.
A manufacturer-retailer of serpentine and accessory drives for classic cars and hot rods, the company, based in New Prague, Minnesota, introduced 18 new products at SEMA360. Trevor Hobson, CVF Racing sales and technical support manager, said that although an online event might never match what a live SEMA Show could offer, “like anything in life, what you put into it is what you get out of it.”
The company originally hoped that its Manufacturer Showcase and new-product content would pull in traffic, but it was obvious that the strategy wasn’t going as planned by the event’s second day. Hobson suspected that the learning curve associated with navigating a new digital trade platform was slowing attendee engagement. Many seemed to be taking more time than anticipated getting a feel for the site’s features and their workings.
His team quickly changed tactics, spending more time in roundtables, visiting the networking lounge, checking out other vendors and Manufacturer Showcases, and especially engaging in educational seminars and their related chat rooms.
“You could go in and look to see who was in there or had visited there, and you could see their profile and actually connect and chat with those people—basically cold-hit them and say, ‘Here’s what we do. Can we fit into your business?’” Hobson said, explaining that he and the team basically worked the event as if they were attendees as opposed to exhibitors.
CVF Racing ended up sending out roughly 200 cold hits throughout the week. That strategy resulted in a good number of solid offline email conversations and online requests for further information.
“We took a very proactive approach to trying to go out and generate leads versus waiting for someone to come click on our booth,” noted Hobson, who added that his company also took away some other valuable lessons from its SEMA360 experience. Among those was the need to build up a cache of ready digital assets along with some new approaches to project management.
“Having everything online forced us to put a deadline on things as far as creating content that we could put onto the website,” he explained. “So it kind of spurred productivity as far as getting new items across the finish line for projects.”
Hindsight being 20/20, Hobson said that CVF Racing will likely make broader use of promotional videos than URL links to product images and data in future events.
“I think [a video] was more engaging,” he said. “We saw people who spent more time on a video than on an individual link.”
Nevertheless, Hobson believes that his team’s active canvassing of potential leads increased the company’s success 10 to 20 fold. In the end, CVF Racing’s experience at SEMA360 served as an example in agility, weighing the pluses and minuses of every show environment and adjusting tactics on the fly as necessary.
HERITAGE
By Drew Hardin
Photograghy Courtesy Eric Rickman, Petersen Publishing Company Archive
 |
Years before lights flashed from amber to green on a Christmas tree, drag races were started by flagmen. Typically members of a local car club, they were often chosen for their athletic aerial exploits, which added to the drama at the starting line. And drama there was at this meet.
In the mid-’50s, when organized drag racing was still in its infancy, the NHRA sent several of its officers across the country on a mission to spread its message of safe competition. Dubbed the Drag Safari (later the Safety Safari), these guys would pull their station wagon and trailer into a town; meet with representatives of car clubs, local government officials and law enforcement; and then set up a drag race nearby with the help of the area clubs.
Inside the trailer was everything needed to put on a race, from the timing equipment to a public-address system, with the trailer itself serving as race headquarters. Joining the Safari was Hot Rod photographer Eric Rickman, who would document the races and then mail his unexposed film back to Petersen Publishing Company headquarters in Los Angeles.
NHRA’s Drag Safari concept was a stroke of genius on the part of Wally Parks, who helmed both the sanctioning body and the magazine in those days. His Safari members would demonstrate the principles of safe racing to hundreds of hot rodders in person, while the magazine echoed the sentiment to thousands of enthusiasts eagerly reading its pages monthly.
Rickman caught this unidentified flagman in action in Orange, Massachusetts. It was the 11th stop of the ambitious 1955 Safari, which would culminate at the very first NHRA Nationals in Great Bend, Kansas. Leaving the line is John Sharrigan, driving a reshaped aircraft drop tank powered by a Mercury Flathead V8 nestled behind him. Sharrigan competed in the Dragster class and set the day’s top speed of 107.27 mph. As it turned out, another Flathead-powered Dragster entry, driven by Ralph Bannister, logged the exact same speed, setting up a match between the two for the class win and the day’s Top Eliminator trophy.
As the starter flag dropped, Bannister “charged out of the chute,” while Sharrigan “suffered a balky start,” the magazine reported. “This normally would give [Bannister] the race, unless the driver elected to turn back for a voluntary re-run—which he did.” Both cars “took off like rockets” on the restart, but Bannister “blew his rearend just 100 feet off the starting line,” giving Sharrigan the win. “Bannister, a cheerful loser, was awarded the coveted Sportsmanship trophy and won the Mobil ‘Fastest Gas’ trophy,” said the magazine. “In addition, Sharrigan relinquished his half-claim on the Top Speed trophy, so both teams went home more than victorious.”
By Chris Kersting
SEMA360 was launched as a means to give companies desiring an opportunity to connect and do business a chance to do just that. Leveraging technology in this way was something nobody in the SEMA realm had done before, but in the end, we found ways to network, celebrate our industry luminaries, spotlight 330 builders around the country, conduct 30 educational sessions, and expose thousands of new products to buyers all over the world.
Now that the SEMA360 experience is in the rearview mirror, we can say that the platform may not have been the perfect solution for every business, but a lot of value was delivered for those who worked the site. Perhaps the most important benefit was what was learned, both by the association and by the industry participants.
In a world that is demanding a higher degree of digital competence from all of us, SEMA360 was a great test drive for a variety of virtual concepts. SEMA360 forced the association and the industry to develop online tools that none of us would have had much time for in a normal year, and to understand the value that can be pulled from them.
The live SEMA Show is unique in many ways, because it allows people to engage in business and immerse themselves in the rich and varied specialty automotive lifestyle. That won’t go away. But a robust digital presence is becoming more important than ever as our industry and our association move forward. SEMA360 took us down a path that we really need to travel.
Regarding the platform, which was developed in just 70 days, certain features proved to deliver more value than anticipated. Much of the functionality of SEMA360 was designed around the need for buyers and sellers to interact, which led to the development of the Networking Lounge. During SEMA Week, it became a place for participants to systematically seek out and engage the people they wanted to do business with directly.
Our post-360 user surveys will tell us more about how participants took advantage of that feature and others, but our initial feedback is that the Networking Lounge provided a functionality that might even be superior in some ways to networking opportunities available at the live Show. It was also significant that out of 620 companies that participated, 100 were first-time exhibitors, giving companies new to our industry a way to get to a SEMA marketplace in the void of the cancelled SEMA Show.
Other high points included the success of the educational component, which saw much higher rates of participation and lower rates of attrition than what we have come to expect at the live SEMA Show. And we saw higher rates of international buyer participation, which suggests that the platform holds promise for marketing products to overseas buyers who may not be able to attend the SEMA Show.
Back in August, our polls told us that not everybody would be interested in a virtual substitute for the Show—but some definitely would be. And we saw that in introducing a first-time experience: Some folks just skimmed the opportunity, and others jumped in with both feet. Just as at the live SEMA Show, it’s likely that some Showcase exhibitors were more successful than others, depending on how they went about using the opportunity. From what we learned, we are in a position to adjust, evolve and build for the future.
A new tool such as SEMA360 takes time to develop, and it takes time for people to learn to use it and find value. A decade from now, we may think of 2020 as historic—the first time in more than 50 years without a SEMA Show—and, just maybe, the beginning of something new.
By SEMA Washington, D.C., Staff
The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) issued a preliminary decision that passenger and light truck tires imported from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam are being sold in the U.S. at less than fair value (“dumping”). The dumping margins were calculated at 14.24 to 38.07 percent for South Korea, 52.42 to 98.44 percent for Taiwan, 13.25 to 22.21 percent for Thailand, and 0 to 22.30 percent for Vietnam. The DOC has instructed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to collect cash deposits from importers of tires based on the preliminary rates.
The United Steelworkers Union petitioned the DOC to investigate alleged dumping and subsidies for the tires. The DOC has already issued a preliminary ruling that Vietnamese tire producers have received unfair subsidies associated with the country’s “undervalued currency.” The DOC calculated countervailing duty rates ranging from 6.23% to 10.08%.
The DOC is expected to issue final anti-dumping and countervailing duty decisions by May 13, 2021. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has already made an initial determination that U.S. industry is likely being harmed by the alleged dumping and subsidies. For duties to take effect, the ITC must confirm that there is harm or threatened harm to U.S. industry once the DOC has issued its final dumping and subsidy calculations. The ITC is scheduled to issue its final determination by June 28, 2021.
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Questions? Contact Stuart Gosswein at stuartg@sema.org.
By SEMA Editors
Dates and locations have been scheduled for several upcoming SEMA-sponsored shows, measuring sessions and activities.
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