Herberger said GM's accessory sales grew by 60 percent from 2001 to 2002, and 40 percent from 2002 to 2003, and should go up 50 percent in 2004, which would bring them to US$350 million. By 2006, he's expecting GM's revenues from accessory sales to be US$1 billion.
Herberger and Poole know this will only be possible if the consumers like the accessory products GM is offering, which is why the latter is looking into the possibility of specialty packages and the former is looking to create more products.
"Now our problem is that we can't keep up with the workload," Herberger said, and "so we're adding people." In the 1990s, he said, GM Accessories had "a person or two, and now it has about 150."
Talking about adding staff actually makes Herberger something of a rarity in the auto business today, since every car company is anxious to do more with fewer people and GM and others seem to have a no-hire policy in effect.
But Herberger said that GM's senior management understands that the ability to create parts that make more money requires more people. "It's a more optimal deployment of resources," he explained.
Selling more original accessories also required that they be created earlier in a vehicle's development process, Herberger noted, and that's happening now.
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| "The best effort to date has been Hummer, but the upcoming Chevrolet Cobalt and Colorado, the (Pontiac) Pursuit and GMC Canyon, and some others are coming along." (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press) |
"Three years ago we were fighting an uphill battle internally," Herberger said. "Now that everyone inside GM gets it, we're getting vehicle line executives and marketing managers (the people directly responsible for creating new vehicles inside GM) coming to us to talk about accessories for their products."
Not every vehicle sold in a GM dealership comes with the same number of accessory parts, of course. Truck buyers and sporty car buyers are traditionally the biggest fans of such things.
"The best effort to date has been Hummer," Herberger said, "but the upcoming Chevrolet Cobalt and Colorado, the (Pontiac) Pursuit and GMC Canyon, and some others are coming along."