Automotive Aftermarket Distribution
Are you positioned to capture your share of the automotive aftermarket sector’s growth?
The automotive aftermarket is undergoing structural change. Vehicle electrification, aging fleets, evolving repair models, and increased insurer involvement are reshaping demand across parts categories, service types, and customer segments. At the same time, distributors must manage thousands of SKUs, multiple routes to market, and heightened price transparency.
These dynamics increase commercial complexity and place sustained pressure on margins. Cost-plus pricing structures, fragmented discounting, and limited visibility into customer and product profitability often prevent distributors from capturing the full value they deliver. Small pricing inconsistencies can quickly compound across large portfolios, quietly eroding EBITDA.
INSIGHT2PROFIT helps automotive aftermarket distributors bring discipline and structure to pricing and commercial decisions. By aligning pricing strategy, execution, and analytics to customer value and market realities, we help organizations capture near-term margin improvement while building scalable capabilities for long-term growth.
Common Challenges
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Cost-Plus Pricing Limits Differentiation
Cost-based pricing fails to reflect differences in part criticality, availability, service levels, and customer willingness to pay.
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Limited Visibility Into Profitability
Customer and product performance is often assessed only at a gross margin level, limiting insight into true EBITDA drivers.
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Managing Pricing at SKU Scale
Large and diverse product portfolios require integrated tools and processes to manage list prices consistently.
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Channel and Customer Complexity
Differences across DIY, professional, wholesale, retail, and regional markets introduce significant pricing complexity.
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Discount Governance Breakdowns
Thousands of customer-specific discounts require regular review to prevent margin erosion.
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Cross-Functional Misalignment
Pricing decisions are often disconnected from procurement, inventory, and warehouse operations, increasing leakage.
What Opportunities Exist in Your Business?
Most automotive aftermarket distribution businesses have immediate opportunities to capture improvement quickly while building a capability for ongoing profit management
Cost-Plus Pricing
Evaluate whether cost-plus pricing is delivering intended outcomes or masking opportunities to better align price with value.
- Assess performance of cost-plus versus value-based pricing approaches
- Segment customers and products using key value drivers such as competitive pricing, brand perception, margin expectations, and geography
- Establish differentiated margin targets to reduce unnecessary variation
List Price Management
Create discipline and consistency in how list prices are set, maintained, and adjusted.
- Set list prices based on channel and other relevant value factors
- Establish clear price floors to protect margin
- Identify and correct pricing outliers using peer segmentation
- Apply differentiated increases where appropriate and measure price realization at the customer, product, and salesperson level
Channel Management & Discounting
Ensure discounting supports profitable growth rather than volume-driven erosion.
- Develop discount tiers aligned to peer segmentation and channel dynamics
- Ensure pricing and discount programs account for channel differences
- Implement regular review processes and centralized commercial guardrails
- Integrate discount guidance directly into quoting workflows
Market Intelligence
Incorporate customer and competitive insights to inform pricing decisions.
- Use customer surveys to understand price sensitivity and buying behavior
- Monitor competitive positioning and anticipate competitor pricing actions
- Embed insights directly into pricing programs and decisions
Centralized Authority & Analytics
Enable scalable pricing execution through tools, governance, and visibility.
- Support pricing decisions with tools for quoting and price management
- Enable timely price changes at scale through integrated pricing models
- Use granular reporting and measurement to assess performance and refine strategy
Cross-Selling
Improve share of wallet by identifying and addressing gaps in customer purchasing behavior.
- Identify customers under-buying relative to peer product groups
- Surface under-penetrated categories by customer segment
- Deploy targeted campaigns and promotions where appropriate
Inventory Management
Align pricing and inventory decisions to improve availability, margin, and working capital.
- Use inventory optimization models to guide “to-buy” decisions
- Identify excess or slow-moving SKUs
- Recommend stock and sales transfers based on demand forecasts, fill-rate targets, warehouse capacity, and lead times
Turning Pricing Insights into Scalable Margin Improvement
This framework shows how customer and product segmentation, dynamic pricing execution, disciplined discount management, and inventory optimization work together to influence margin outcomes. When these elements are connected, distributors gain the ability to make faster, more consistent decisions that protect profitability across large and complex portfolios.
Our Pricing & Commercial Experts
INSIGHT2PROFIT brings deep experience in automotive aftermarket pricing, complex product portfolios, and multi-channel distribution. Our 250+ pricing strategists and analysts help automotive aftermarket distributors improve margin performance, streamline price and discount execution, and align pricing with the value delivered across parts, service levels, and availability.
Charles Lukkes
Charles is a Principal at INSIGHT2PROFIT, leveraging over 25 years of pricing experience in both industry and consulting services. He has driven price realization and building pricing capabilities across a multitude of clients. Charles has experience in developing and leading price realization strategies across multiple organizations with revenues exceeding $1B during his tenure as a consultant and industry practitioner.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Charles worked for Booz & Co. as a general management consultant developing and implementing pricing strategies and capabilities globally. He also created and led strategic pricing teams for several large consumer packaged goods companies, building capabilities and price strategies from the ground up.
Examples of Charles’ experience include:
- Established pricing teams, processes, analytics and governance for a large food/snack manufacturer in the U.S. and Australia/New Zealand; developed pricing strategies across the portfolio, achieving +3% price realization while mitigating channel conflict
- Provided a price quoting tool for an industrial client in the U.S. and Europe that incorporated key value drivers of new products, enabling the client to capture more value from new offerings driving substantial revenue improvement
- Developed a new pricing strategy for a software provider that resulted in a +30% increase in revenue by capturing true value provided to their client’s versus selling, transitioning from a software license to subscription model
Charles earned his MBA and B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.
Gerry Thomas
Gerry is a Principal at INSIGHT2PROFIT. Gerry has 9 years of experience in pricing and commercial strategy across various roles, including consultant, manager, senior manager, and director. He specializes in B2B pricing, particularly for industrial equipment, heavy machinery, chemicals, and industrial manufacturers and distributors. He has also collaborated with several B2C clients in industries such as leather goods, white goods, face care, and consumer product goods.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Gerry spent 8 years as part of the Accenture Strategy team in the Pricing and Commercial Strategy group. During his tenure at Accenture, Gerry worked in sales enablement, zero-based budgeting, and in pricing and commercial strategy.
Examples of Gerry’s experience include:
- Led a project contributing $80M in EBITDA improvement over 16 months by implementing a value-based pricing methodology across the portfolio for a heavy trucking OEM
- Achieved a 2.5% net price improvement during inflationary headwinds for a B2B valve and industrial equipment portfolio company encompassing over 30 distinct brands, implemented a configurable custom quoting tool and PowerBI KPI dashboard utilized across 15+ brands, providing ongoing support for continuous improvement over multiple years
- Delivered over $50M in EBITDA improvement as the pricing project lead for an industrial equipment manufacturer through value-based pricing strategy and implementation
Gerry earned his MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, M.Ed. in Secondary Education and Teaching from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis, and a BBA in International Business from the University of Georgia.
Lucian Morar
Luci is a Principal at INSIGHT2PROFIT, bringing over 20 years of specialized B2C and B2B pricing experience, with 17 years dedicated to leading pricing teams. Serving as a trusted advisor to C-suite executives and Private Equity Managing Directors, Luci focuses on pricing excellence within the manufacturing, distribution, and service provider sectors.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Luci spent 11 years in Accenture’s Pricing and Commercial Strategy practice, managing engagements in pricing strategy, analytics, execution, governance, and software configuration. His B2B pricing experience covers industries such as appliances, automotive, construction equipment, medical devices, chemicals, and professional services. He also spent 3 years in B2C at Jewel Osco managing pricing from general merchandise, health & beauty to grocery, deli, produce &bakery.
Examples of Luci’s experience include:
- Led the development and implementation of a dynamic model optimizing 320,000 weekly prices for an aftermarket auto parts distributor, achieving 400 basis points year-over-year gross margin improvement in the first year, implemented a robust reporting suite to sustain performance
- Generated over $100M in additional revenue for a multinational industrial company by developing a pricing engine that drove regular price increases for contracted and non-contracted customers, and to support a quoting tool integration with clients Salesforce, led the establishment of a Pricing Center of Excellence (CoE) and enhanced client team skills in negotiation best practices during their contract renewals
- Identified 12% in additional revenue for a professional services client through differentiated rate card modelling, price realization measurement, and leveraging cross sell/upsell opportunities; achieved through a swift assessment of existing price variability across personas and peer groups, informed by their purchasing behaviors
Luci earned his MBA in Marketing & Operations Management from Loyola University Chicago, Quinlan School of Business, a B.S. in Economics and a BA in European Studies from Babes-Bolyai University in Romania.
Mike Brenner
Mike is a Vice President of Private Equity at INSIGHT2PROFIT, where he has over 15 years of pricing experience across multiple industries and within the consulting field. He specializes in B2B pricing strategy & implementation for distribution, manufacturing, and service providers. Mike has led more than 3 dozen engagements at INSIGHT, excelling in identifying profitability improvement opportunities and offering pragmatic solutions to change management to ensure tangible financial benefits are achieved.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Mike managed a pricing team at GOJO Industries, focusing on establishing market-based pricing for its PURELL line and heavy-duty cleaning products. During this period, Mike lead the launch of the pricing function within Salesforce.com, along with additional data & systems integrations within the pricing domain.
Examples of Mike’s pricing experiences include:
- Drove over $100M in price improvement for a national sanitation services provider through the launch of an optimized pricing engine, differentiated price increases, and enhanced leakage management
- Led a $20M margin improvement initiative for a primary supplier of packaging solutions by identifying and correcting profitability outliers, implementing a process for strategically addressing cost increase events, and launching price management tools to support optimization of freight recovery and surcharge capture
- Delivered over $20M in margin improvement for a leader in lubricant sales & distribution services through the establishment of a value-based pricing strategy, development of integrated pricing tools, and robust change management program
Mike earned his MBA in Finance and a B.A. in International Business from the University of Akron, College of Business. He has also studied at the Rennes International School of Business in France.
Terry Oblander
Terry is the Chief Commercial Officer at INSIGHT2PROFIT. With over 20 years of entrepreneurial leadership experience, he collaborates with senior executives to implement commercial strategies that drive significant profit improvements.
At INSIGHT, Terry spearheads the development and execution of growth strategies while overseeing crucial functions, including business development, sales, and marketing. Since joining the company in 2011, he has held several key leadership roles, including Chief Growth Officer and Managing Director of Advisory Services. Terry has been instrumental in leading pricing and profit improvement engagements for numerous companies and played a pivotal role in shaping INSIGHT’s approach to continuous value creation for its clients.
Terry is deeply passionate about enhancing business operations, fostering team and individual development, and contributing to work that makes a meaningful difference.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Terry held senior leadership positions at AkzoNobel, a Fortune 500 building materials company, where he demonstrated a consistent track record of leading cross-functional teams in driving profitability improvements.
Terry earned his MBA from Cleveland State University and his B.S. in Business Administration from The Ohio State University, Fisher College of Business.
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