After double digit growth for the last two years, car audio sales for the first two months of this year edged down slightly, said Mobile Electronics Association President Chris Cook, a keynote speaker at the GoFast Mobile Expo distributor show in Massachusetts Wednesday.
Rick Kojan, Sony Head of Sales, Aftermarket Car Audio, also addressed the GoFast show, and we will bring you that interview shortly.
The reason for the sales decline is low product availability, but demand for 12 volt products remains strong, said Cook.
January aftermarket sales dipped about 1 percent and February sales fell about 2 percent.
MEA is forecasting flat car audio sales this year.
First half 2022 sales will be slightly down, but second half sales should rise a bit, as product flow loosens up, Cook said.
Even a small improvement in product flow can make a big difference in aftermarket sales, he said, noting until this year, the industry had been achieving sales surges without much product.
“We’ve been doing these numbers with severe product shortages so think what we can do with just a little bit of improvement,” Cook said.
MEA’s data reflects sales at specialists only and excludes mass merchants such as Best Buy. MEA uses point of sale data taken from about 10 percent of the estimated 4,600 car audio specialists. From there MEA algorithms peg total sales for the aftermarket specialist market.
Full year 2021 specialist sales were estimated at $2.3 billion, up 12 percent from $2 billion in 2020.
In 2020, sales were up 15 percent over 2019.
Prior to the pandemic, 2019 sales were down 2 percent and 2018 sales were down 4 percent from 2017.
Photo: Chris Cook (right) and Rick Kojan of Sony
