On September 28, 2020, Nexus Automotive International and Nexus Automotive Russia held the first online conference for N! Community in Russia - N! Virtual Connecting Day, aimed at bringing together members of the professional community to discuss current issues and find effective solutions and new ideas for joint work. Five N! Suppliers joined the Russian N! Virtual Connecting Day: Bosch, bilstein group, Mahle, NGK, and Schaeffler. The conference lasted 2 hours and was attended by about 50 participants.
Sergey Perekhozhykh, the Executive Director of Nexus Automotive Russia, opened the conference and greeted the guests of the event - suppliers and members of Nexus Russia.
The first speaker - NEXUS Heavy Duty business developer - Janusz Zielinski gave an overview of N! activities on a global level, explaining how the group's key values - entrepreneurship, community, and innovation - allow Nexus to take a leading role in the global aftermarket and act as a driver for successful business development of distributors and suppliers around the world. Janusz listed the group's major projects - a global workshops network for passenger cars and heavy duty NEXUSAUTO&NEXUSTRUCK, education and training through the N! Academy program, a digital platform to simplify communications between the group's partners around the world CON!NECT, emphasizing that Nexus is more than ITG.
Sergey Perekhozhykh spoke about the activities of the regional representative office of Nexus Automotive Russia - about the history of the group, its key performance indicators, membership, as well as gave an overview of the current situation on the automotive components market in Russia and the main local trends. In his speech, Sergey highlighted the Group's achievements and key advantages - transparency, openness between members, wide geographical coverage, and ability to focus and work together on priority areas of business development. Sergey widely covered the areas and potential for development of the Nexus Russia, among which he highlighted the main quantitative and qualitative indicators of growth. "The growth of the Group will continue, and we should expect new announcements in the very near future," Sergey said.
Among the main trends on the Russian market, Sergey separately noted the following: the trend of car owners' transition to foreign cars, both new and used, has accelerated in the regions. This leads to the development of demand for spare parts and service for such cars and predetermines the development of regional companies in this segment.
Then Olga Markova, marketing manager of Nexus Automotive Russia, spoke about marketing initiatives that are implemented and introduced in the Russian market. First of all, this is the N! Academy project, which provides education and training for specialists in car after-sales service: product seminars, round tables, technical trainings and master classes, webinars. Olga presented an overview of a joint project with the SMART Engineering Center called "Mobile laboratory for car service centers", which included on-site training for car mechanics on the most pressing topics.
The event was concluded with reports from strategic N! suppliers - Bosch, bilstein group, Mahle, NGK, and Schaeffler. The speakers talked about the transformation that took place during the pandemic: changes in the work structure, care for the safety and health of employees and customers, the introduction of anti-crisis measures, online training, marketing support.
Main theses on the results of the event:
- Strength is in unity, and it is important not only within the team, but also in external partner projects.
- Timely crisis response measures - increased stock levels and fast delivery - helped to avoid shortages of goods during the period of restrictive measures and to overcome the pandemic with the minimum losses.
- Almost all companies switched to remote work and reduced working hours during the pandemic.
- Despite the pandemic growth, some companies continued to invest in strategic projects and product development.
- One of the suppliers noted that since June they have noticed a V-shaped market recovery. However, for different product groups and brands, the dynamics of recovery varies.
- All speakers emphasized the importance of marketing support and online training for partners.
- Global brand representation has a good influence on the situation assessment, it is possible to adopt the experience of other regions.
- The Russian market for new car sales continues to decline which will cause increased demand for repair services in the coming years, but in the longer term will have a negative impact, increasing competition in the market.
- The market is recovering successfully, but the situation is still unstable - companies are ready to respond quickly to new challenges.
