The First Brands Car Parts Catastrophe Is Worse Than You Think: COTD

First Brands Group was the umbrella for so many companies that supplied DIYers, mechanics, and automakers. The company has filed for bankruptcy, and now some storied brands are dying, with hundreds of people getting laid off. Somehow, it gets worse.

I wrote about how America is losing the Centric, StopTech, and Raybestos brands, among others. Matt Sexton gives further context to the First Brands nightmare:

There’s a LOT going on with this First Brands mess.

First Brands was a big vendor for NAPA, as our primary rotor line was from Brake Parts Inc. But as you can see with Raybestos and Centric, everyone is impacted. NAPA has been moving away from First Brands for months now, because this was expected. We got a memo two weeks ago that FB would no longer be shipping out rotors due to court order. So what we have in the warehouses in that product line is all we have access to for now. The switch to a new vendor was planned at the end of the year, this brings that process to a rush basis, and we’ve already gotten our first batch of the new supplier’s rotors.

There are thousands of rotors in BPI warehouses that we cannot access. NAPA is transferring this business to the new vendor in three phases, based on popularity. The third phase will be the least popular applications and I hope that when the dust settles that inventory will come back online. But the new vendor has said they will be obsoleting 700 of the slowest moving part numbers. Which means for instance I can see that they have rotors for my Yugo, but I can’t order them, they won’t ship. I thought I could sneak them out, just to have, but no dice. If you have an older/obscure car you want to stockpile some NAPA rotors for, now would be the time to act, if the DCs or stores have any. They may not be available later.

Trico is a First Brands property, and Trico owns both the Trico and Anco brands. Indications from my perspective on availability is Anco is going to die as a brand (we stocked Anco outside of NAPA). There’s hope for Trico, as it’s an OEM supplier, but as of now I don’t know much. Supposedly the product line they sold NAPA will be relaunched in H2 but I don’t know if someone will restructure/split off Trico or if there will be a replacement vendor. I feel like Trico may have some brand equity and value to the OEMs that it could survive.

Autolite, as far as I can tell will die as a brand also. I believe Carter is also a FB brand, I’ve not heard anything on that yet. Our brake hoses, caliper hardware and master cylinders were all FB/BPI product, and are going to be moving to Dorman. Hoses will be first of the three, converting March 9.

NAPA had been distancing itself from Cardone for quite some time, the only lines we still had with them were ECMs and wiper motors. There is no announced replacement thus far for either.

Luckily GPC (owner of the NAPA brand) has global scale and has options to resource. But this happened very quickly and while they operated for a while under restructuring, apparently the criminal charges stopped everything. All the big chains bought from FB, it’s hurting everyone. There are other brands that FB branded for the other chains to go to market with, but the ones I discussed are the biggies for us.

This all really sucks for everyone, lots of people have lost their jobs. Like you Mercedes I’m not far from the McHenry BPI plant and I feel for everyone there.

Now here’s a chaser from Hotdoughnutsnow:

They’re just doing what they do best; stopping.

Antti wrote about how Volkswagen’s sausage is big in China. Emil Minty:

Caused more toxic emissions than Dieselgate.

Have a great evening, everyone!

Top graphic image: StopTech