From The Office Of The Chairman
An Open Letter to Jack Gillis of the Certified Automotive Parts Association in response to his July 28th letter of attack on ABPA and its Board of Directors
CLAREMONT, CA--August 2, 2010
Mr. Jack Gillis
Executive Director, CAPA
1000 Vermont Ave., NW, Suite 1010
Washington, DC 20005
In reading your widely-circulated letter, I am particularly disappointed by your claims and accusations about the intentions and motivations of ABPA to study the feasibility of a new certifying agency for alternative replacement crash parts.
Your lengthy letter is full of inaccuracies and false conclusions based almost entirely on comments made by an individual who has never been a board member or in any way involved with ABPA policies.
We are well aware of the vested stake you have in CAPA’s success and we recognize that few have worked harder than you and your staff to bring about a greater level of quality and acceptance of aftermarket cash parts. I can also understand the sense of abandonment you must have felt when you heard about our intent to explore additional options in this arena.
I am not going to take the time to list the shortcomings of the CAPA program as we see them. We have discussed them with you on many occasions. Nor do I choose to even address your criticisms point by point. To us, it is obvious that after the expenditure of millions of dollars, CAPA is not working as well as it should when considering the small percentage of parts in the marketplace carrying the CAPA seal. We, therefore, set up a special committee to study the problem. The Board ultimately agreed that other avenues should be explored to determine if there were a better way to reach our objective of increasing the number of OE equivalent certifed parts available to our members.
Having already established ties to NSF International through our efforts to develop a “distributor certification program,” we were presented with an opportunity to explore avenues relating to “product certification.” At no time were we told nor did the Board profess to desire a dummied-down program which would cheapen the parts or compromise quality and industry standards for safety, appearance and performance. We want parts that are comparable to the OE products they are designed to replace and we were led to believe that this is doable under a well-constructed, well-managed and more efficiently operated program than we believe CAPA to be.
You may feel good in castigating our efforts to this end and disparaging our desire to increase market share at what you term a “sacrifice in quality,” and you may feel good in firing off this widely circulated broadside, but your observations are skewed and your conclusions erroneous. If and when NSF International feels it has arrived at product standards comparable to OE parts, and if and when this Association is presented with a program which encompasses our objectives, only then will we feel justified in making a decision as to which way to proceed. If this means backing an additional certification program, despite your protestations, then that will be our decision. From day one of deliberations, our goal has been to achieve a greater availability of certified parts based on the establishment of like, kind and quality standards comparable to OE parts.
Ironically, Jack, none of this precludes our members or this Association from continuing its long standing backing of CAPA in its efforts. We even, as has been our custom, invited you to speak to our members at our annual convention in Indianapolis at the end of April. That is because we have never seen this as an “either or” proposition. And despite your propensity for shooting from the lip with this widely-circulated and very damaging letter of allegations, we are not as upset with you as you appear to be with us. We do, however, wish you had not derided NSF as “sanitation people.” It was a name they left in 1990, more than two decades ago. So, we judge this was just a cheap shot and I can only guess that you are not aware that today NSF International is one of the leading certifying organizations in the world with thousands of automotive clients.
One of the primary messages of our industry has always been that “competition is a good thing,” and we feel that this applies to the certification of auto crash parts. Rather than venting your frustration at ABPA and what actions we may or may not take, we recommend that you spend your energies to enhance the efficiencies of your own program so that it can compete with other certifiers which may enter this field in the future.
Sincerely yours,
CHARLIE HOGARTY
Chairman, ABPA
Claremont, CA 91711
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