My Wish List for SEMA

By Mr. Retail

All of us have had “wish lists” of products we hoped vendors would make, stop making, or change. Since SEMA is coming up, I was asked to write about things I wish I could see at the show. So here’s my answer: more vehicle specific audio solutions.

Most of us by now have tried some of the complete all-in-one audio solutions on the market today. They usually offer one or more of an amplifier, speaker pair/woofer, wiring, brackets and maybe a DSP. Some are very good, some are average, and some are poorly thought out. So let’s drill down:

1. Make your vehicle specific audio kits fit properly. We did a kit recently that truly sounded fantastic for the money. Quite honestly, it played above the retail cost, so the end user got a great system. Unfortunately, the mount for the dash twiddler was wrong so we had to make our own. Second, the supplied amp rack fits behind the back seat, but is actually crooked. Who engineered that? So a kit that sounded like it should have cost $1,000 more at retail should have had some better fit and finish to it.
2. Give us complete solutions that have upgrade options. Here are some examples: Give us 2-3 speaker options for the front stage and then supply DSP curves for each of those speakers if a DSP is supplied with the kit. It allows us retailers to vary a complete package price by say $200-$800, all by choosing a different speaker. An option would be to supply the kit minus the front speakers and let the dealers use product out of their inventory.
3. If you are going to do truck solutions, maybe offer 2 different bass options that might include a better woofer and then a larger sub amp. Again, giving us more flexibility and the opportunity for an upsell.
4. Don’t oversell the install time needed. We were told on our last kit that “it shouldn’t take more than 3-4 hours” and in actuality, it took 5 hours for a qualified tech. A  shop will instantly have a bad taste in their mouth because they undersold the labor dollars and then ran over in the bay.
5. If a vehicle makes a change and you make a kit for it, tell your dealers if they should allow more time. ’24 Wranglers are a perfect example. Doing a complete “kit” in these compared to a ’23 is probably an extra 2 hours. Since you folks designed the kit, you already know extra time is needed, so be honest with us.
6. Give us more volume knobs on replacement radios. And if you are a brand already doing that, thank you.
7. Give us hard buttons for volume up/down, track up/down and maybe 1-2 other features on radios. Again, if you are already doing this, we applaud you. Honda caught tons of flack for using virtual buttons and no knobs and finally learned its lesson. So if a vehicle manufacturer that spends millions on focus groups can make a change, so can we.
8. Integration companies: Offer up virtual focus groups with your trusted dealers for ideas on new products and for issues they run into in the bay. Hold a 1-hour Zoom call with 10-20 different dealers once a month so you can find out sooner what is going on, allowing you to make changes quicker. And please know that we appreciate you, even if we don’t communicate it often enough.
9. If you find out about an issue, send an email to your dealers. We would rather know about it on the front end instead of finding out about it the hard way, when a vehicle is in the bay. And yes, we know not every issue can be found. We are just asking you to be proactive when possible.
10. Start promoting car alarms at the industry level again. There is an untapped market as more and more vehicles are getting hacked.
11. Dash camera vendors, give us higher end options. Many brands are packing so many features at lower and lower prices, that the race to zero seems to have already started with this category, and it isn’t even mature yet. Start mandating and promoting that the proper way to get the best performance with a dash camera is to have it professionally installed. And if you are a dashcam vendor already doing this, we thank you.

And finally, if you have what you think is a good idea, put it in the comments. Let’s NOT turn this into a thread of what is wrong with our industry, but rather, things that can make it better.

Mark Miller

(Mr Retail)

Mark  is the CEO of Westminster Speed & Sound, an award-winning retailer in Westminster, Maryland. The company was founded in 1969, and Mark took it over in 1990 at the age of 23. He first started in the industry in 1986, so he has been at it for a while. He has served on the board of MERA, taught seminars in over a dozen different cities, and served on the SEMA New Product Awards judging team. He has been married to his wife Dawn for 35 years now and has four grown children and five grandchildren. His hobbies include being a sound engineer, doing life coaching, and being active in the local and national Porsche community.