Jason Best started his career as Canadian sales manager at Coulter Radiator in 1993. He joined the Spectra Premium team in 1997 as national sales manager, when Coulter Radiator joined the Spectra Group. Since 2004, Best has been in charge of all sales and marketing projects as vice-president sales and marketing — aftermarket.
In this week's exclusive Executive Interview, Best talks with aftermarketNews.com about Spectra Premium's focus on becoming a leader in the fuel pump assembly market, how the company responded to the recent economic downturn and about the company's philosophy on product quality and customer service.
What’s new at Spectra?
Product development is always top line focus and priority in terms of offering new products and services to our aftermarket partners. Spectra Premium continues to lead in first to market product availability within our cooling system line offering the deepest coverage of both domestic and foreign applications covering 95 percent of the total vehicle population in North America. Spectra Premium's Fuel Filler Neck program was recently expanded to 88 SKUs covering over 80 million vehicles in operation. This new product line, which has a tremendous impact on fuel system contamination and emissions control, will be expanded throughout the next two years, as the product line will grow to exceed 90 percent of vehicle coverage. Parallel to these efforts, we will continue to introduce new, innovative and solution-based product applications within our fields of service.
Last year, you told aftermarketNews.com that Spectra would make a foray into the fuel systems space. Can you update us on this development?
We remain focused and committed on becoming a leader in the fuel pump assembly market offering the highest quality aftermarket branded pump that leverages our OE design and engineering on fuel systems. This goal will be forged forward through our commitment to quality, understanding of key price points in the sector and flexibility of our customer support programs. Since our last conversation, Spectra Premium has introduced 148 new SKUs that cover an additional 40 million vehicles in operation, bringing our total coverage to 170 million VIO. Spectra Premium the brand has become more visible in both wholesale and retail locations across North America over the past year, and we will continue to drive development of the product line offering for our customers providing a solution that can help them grow and maximize profit in this highly visible category.
Could you explain the various operations taking place at your plants in Boucherville and Laval, Quebec, Canada?
Boucherville, Quebec, is the corporate headquarters of Spectra Premium and the main hub distribution center location. This 435,000-square-foot facility houses all the design, engineering and production of fuel system products including fuel tanks, fuel modulars, hanger assemblies and oil pans for both OE and aftermarket programs. All product development, validation and product management teams for our cooling system and A/C product categories are also based in Boucherville.
Laval, Quebec, is the main radiator manufacturing facility of Spectra Premium. This 160,000-square-foot facility produces both automotive and heavy duty OE and aftermarket radiators. Automotive radiators are all produced in aluminum and plastic configuration while all heavy duty applications are produced in the industry-leading fully brazed all-aluminum style. All testing including cycle testing, thermal shock testing and warranty validation are housed in the Laval facility.
How did the recent downturn in the economy affect Spectra and how did the company respond to it?
Most of the downturn positively affected our company due to the nature of increased demand for repair and emphasis on product solutions that we offer at competitive and market accepted prices. Internally, steps were taken such as our ongoing continuous improvement program and cost savings initiatives to ensure that proactively we were able to meet the challenges of a difficult economic time period. One key initiative during that time period was to drive correct product assortment at DC and store levels of our customer base across the country to ensure proper product at point of sale and maximize the increased demand in repair based solutions. This also realigned the inventory mix on lines such as radiators to focus more on late model crash driven applications and positioned inventory in areas where dealer vacancies or uncertainties were taking place. All in all, we understood the unique challenges that our customers were facing caused by the downturn, and we focused on ensuring we provided them the means to maximize the sales opportunities that came their way.
Describe Spectra's philosophy on product quality and customer service.
Quality has and always will remain the focus within our organization. This commitment to our customers does not only apply to the product side of our business model, it applies throughout the organization and in particular, to the customer service side. With relation to product quality, all of our plants are certified TS or ISO to match along with our OE business model requirements and commitment to overall aftermarket quality standards. Product validation, third-party testing such as independent lab tests on fuel pumps, true vehicle fit and road tests on all new developed products or ongoing incoming inspections are measures implemented throughout the organization and benchmarked to provide fit, form and function every time a Spectra Premium Product is installed.
Best in Class customer service is the only way we will be satisfied internally in our offering to our market partners on a daily basis. Whether that be via product support, electronic ordering systems, e-catalog solutions, compliant industry data standards; support before, during and after the sale is our commitment to that BIC goal. This focus drives a clear market advantage in terms of leveraging and supporting our deepest in the industry product coverage.
