LAS VEGAS — After closing the doors on AAPEX 2022, where attendance returned to near-normal numbers post-pandemic, organizers are eying ways to expand the annual automotive aftermarket show.
AAPEX (the Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo), which ran concurrently with the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, Nov. 1-3, drew about 49,000, around 94% of the attendance at the 2019 show, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2020 in-person event was canceled, and AAPEX 2021 drew about half the normal attendance.
AAPEX is co-owned by the Auto Care Association (ACA) and the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association (AASA), the light vehicle aftermarket division of the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA).
Organizers now are exploring bringing other, smaller industry shows under the AAPEX roof.
"We're going to continually look at other opportunities for us to bring other types of either shows or exhibits that are automotive aftermarket-related into AAPEX to, No. 1, help AAPEX and No. 2, to help defray some of the travel that some of these exhibitors have to go through if they are in three or four different shows," ACA President and CEO Bill Hanvey told Tire Business.
"We want to make AAPEX the true industry homecoming. So we are very much interested in expanding that in any way we can and where it makes sense."