Our industry plays a massive blame game. Playing that game is our lame excuse for not acting on a most important problem: we've built good looking stores with fine inventory and appealing in-store marketing, but our stores are not attracting enough young customers.

We advertise like we always have, but people don't stand in line waiting for our stores to open in the mornings. We try new media on-line advertising, pulled through by traditional media ("Come visit our Web site to make certain parts are in inventory, to check our prices."). On-line programs don't seem to be reaching new, younger customers.

We aren't exciting anymore.

Automotive parts and accessories retailing has fewer interested human beings. DIY is declining, particularly in the hard parts segment where more do-it-for-me’s (DIFMs) choose to pay rather than do. Yet there are multiple projects for do-it-yourselfers (DIYs) to improve their vehicles, and enjoy doing those jobs. So ... where are those DIYers?

Sure, our regular customers come to shop and buy, but they're an aging population, soon to be less agile and less able to work on their cars and trucks.

But some of those regular customers have migrated to home and garden projects, aided by the impressive, effective programs which the big box home-improvement stores use to build customer knowledge about projects and the skills to do those projects.

Retailing is not like Robert Redford and baseball in the movies. We can't build automotive parts stores, and find that they, the new customers, will come to them, or that old customers will keep returning to them.

Excuses: Nine Reasons Why Your Store Aisles Aren't Full of Younger Shoppers Better new cars last longer, don't need work Too many choices, too many stores in market Big retailers have too much power Chain stores advertise lower prices Leased car drivers don't care DIYers have better, more rewarding choices Product proliferation makes inventory unappealing Dad, or mom, doesn't work on cars anymore Younger people talk to each other about computers, not cars

What can we do about the lack of young, or new not-young, customers in our stores? We can build, or rebuild, our market so that we will prosper in the future. Somehow, we have, by design, concentrated on meeting competition by lowering prices. We've been reactive rather than farsighted. Our competitors in the home improvement business (a wise man once said that automotive parts retailers' competition is not the store down the road but the other places where men and women can spend their discretionary funds and project time) are parallel with us on lower prices, easier selection of merchandise, running dual-price level stores to serve contractors as well as DIYers, and advertising. But they've done one more very astute thing. They've looked beyond reactive sales strategies to recreate their market. The movement started in the mid '80s when people were psychologically ready to build families, reestablish traditional values after the disco ''70s, and spend more time at home. The hardware chains and the garden store operations invested resources to help people know how to work in the yard and inside the home rather than on the driveway and in the garage.

That strategy continues today. The big box home improvement businesses go deeper into the future. Have you been in a home improvement center on a Saturday afternoon when a children's skill class was in session? While the children are working on their projects which entrench that store as a store they will use as adults, their parents (or parent) roam(s) the store aisles, buying.

Result? That business has parents buying, and their children learning to think of it as their resource for life. The kids are having fun. It's impressive. That's a wonderful foundation for future customers.

We in this industry can do the same to benefit our industry and "to grow" our future customers. Our society doesn't produce aftermarket children vs. home improvement children. Our children, who could be our next generation of customers, have the same personality. They will choose the path, or the paths, they use to spend their free time or their chore time traveling.

We have children who want to be like their parents, who can learn enjoyment from doing the activities that their parents enjoy.

We don't need to teach one million boys and girls to pull an engine block, but we can:

* help them find satisfaction in doing an oil change, washing and polishing their truck, or performing routine maintenance, well

* teach them that it's fun to buy and install an automotive accessory which will enhance their driving environment just as a new gadget in the home or garden enhances their home or garden experience

* help them be comfortable about working on their second most expensive investment (or lease!). Our kids have an a priori interest in what vehicles their parents bring home (have you endured the dinnertime objections of a preteen or teen to an economical car model you are considering buying? If it's not phat, you'll get a lot of angst.). If they're interested in what's parked in the garage, and they, when old enough, will con their parents for its temporary use, then they can be vested in what parents and they DO to that vehicle after it leaves the dealership. My charge to you? It's time for an industry effort which joins retailers and manufacturers in a common effort to educate young people about the joys of working on their cars and trucks, or at least, buying things for their cars and trucks which make them better than birth-factory status.

In-Store Merchandising & Marketing Tip of the Month Advice for retailers who want to attract young people customers Without a common industry effort to attract younger customers, here's what you can do "to grow" your business with youngsters, and keep them as they grow older. 1) Notice how people learn today. Use edutainment to lure customers into stores. 2) Talk to young people to find out what they know about automotive DIY, what they'd like to know, and how to turn on their intellectual curiosity 3) Adopt a local school or schools. Work with them, developing programs (not too commercial) about safety and car maintenance. It may not only attract younger customers, but it may also identify potential good employees.

The Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association has a Weekend Mechanics Club in place. Its Web site gets a large number of hits, but AAIA is not yet collecting demographics about its "members."

The Weekend Mechanics Club is a start. Although not geared to the untapped young audience, it could be a beginning for developing our future market.

With proper, professional research which lets our industry know precisely what types of communication will reach our young targets, and tests the messages we prepare for our prospective customers, we can develop the tactics and the tools we need to build and rebuild our market.

A generic industry-wide program could be augmented by individual corporate efforts to differentiate one store, or chain, from another.

No one has raised this issue out loud, in public, recently. I am.

What are we going to do about it? Turn out the lights when the last pre-baby-boomer DIYer leaves the store?

Stephen J. Alexander, president of Automotive In-Store Marketing, is a member of Aftermarket Business’s Retail Advisory Board. He can be reached at his Sanibel Island, Fla. headquarters, phone (239) 395-9203, or e-mail salexander@autoinstore.com.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE:"Reprinted with permission from Aftermarket Business, July, 2000, page 50. Copyright by Advanstar Communications, Inc. Advanstar Communications, Inc. retains all rights to this material." To subscribe to Aftermarket Business, call 1-218-723-9477 or email fulfill@superfill.com.