Aftermarket Industry Showing Renewed Strength

Jerry Garrett This year's SEMA show in Las Vegas set an attendance record

LAS VEGAS - The aftermarket automobile accessories industry is showing more strength than it has since the most recent recession, judging from the Specialty Equipment Market Association trade show that concluded earlier this month at the convention center here.

The sprawling show, which has a footprint of more than 2.5 million square feet, was the biggest in its 45-year history - attracting a record 135,000 overall attendees, including 60,000 buyers and 3,000 media members, according to Della Domingo, a SEMA spokeswoman.

“Our industry generated $29.8 billion dollars of retail sales in 201 1,” said Peter MacGillivray, a SEMA vice president. “We're optimistic about 2012, we're projecting as much as 4 percent growth this year. And that is just in the United States. We are also experiencing explosive new growth in China, the Middle East and other developing countries.”

The industry's heyday was 2007, when United States sales topped $34 billion, Mr. MacGillivray said. Sales dropped drastically in 2008 and 2009, then started a long, slow climb.

“We are not quite back up to pre-2008 levels,” Mr. MacGillvray said, “We are still in recovery mode, but where we are as an industry right now is an indication of how far we've come since everything bottomed out.”

Organizers had high hopes for this year's SEMA show, but worries crept in that attendance might suffer from flight cancellations and weather delays caused by Hurricane Sandy.

“We're relieved that it didn't have much of an impact,” Mr. Ma cGillivray said. “This show is so important to the small businesses, they'll do just about anything to get here.”

He added that less than 10 percent of the exhibitors and attendees were from the northeastern part of the United States, where the storm hit the hardest. And many of those attending from that part of the country had departed before the storm hit.

“Despite the storm, it was an amazing year for the SEMA show,” Ms. Domingo said in an email. “The highest number of exhibitors and attendees in all show history.”

The SEMA show, which specializes in aftermarket parts and custom accessories for the transportation industry, is divided into 12 sections: business services; collision repair and refinish; a global tire expo; Hot Rod Alley; mobile electronics and technology; powersports and utility vehicles; racing and performance; the restoration marketplace; restyling and car care accessories; tools and equipment; trucks, SUVs and off-road; and w heels and accessories. This year, many automobile manufacturers - Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota, Hyundai and Honda among them - had especially large displays of customized vehicles.

Although the show itself is closed to the general public, this year it expanded from inside the convention center into adjacent parking lots for publicly viewable ride-and-drive demonstrations and a Global Rally Cross racing competition. After the show, the public was invited to the SEMA Cruise, a recent addition, in which all the show's thousands of cars are invited to parade out of the convention center and through Las Vegas streets.

The first SEMA show, which was little more than an informal swap meet and flea market, was held at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in 1967. The following year it was moved to the convention center in Anaheim, Calif., where it stayed for nine years, until Leo Kagen, one of the founding members of the association, relocated it to Las Vegas in 1977.

“Everybody said I was crazy to move it, because it was really doing well in California,” Mr. Kagen, 96, said in an interview last month, after it was announced that a SEMA scholarship to encourage women to train as automotive re-stylists had been established in his name. “I guess I have the last laugh now!”

SEMA recently signed a contract extension to continue holding the show at the Las Vegas Convention Center through 2017.