Executive Interview with David Hirschhorn, Director of Brand Management at CRP Automotive

David Hirschhorn has been director of brand management at CRP Automotive for the past two years. He is charged with ensuring that CRP's core brands are being maximized from both a marketing and sales perspective. He has been with CRP for more than eight years, and has served the company in many product development capacities, including roles as an assistant product manager, product manager and senior product manager.

He is directly responsible for and has played a major role in the development of the Rein Automotive program, CRP’s proprietary brand for OE quality import replacement parts, which is the focus of this interview. In this exclusive AMN Executive Interview, Hirschhorn shares details on the development of the Rein Automotive program and its role in CRP’s future growth.


CRP created the Rein Automotive program, CRP’s proprietary brand for OE quality import replacement parts, just in the past few years, so it may be an unfamiliar name to some. Can you tell us more about the brand?


CRP launched the Rein Automotive Brand in 2008. It’s CRP’s umbrella brand for a wide range of genuine, OE-quality automotive replacement parts for European vehicles, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Mini, Porsche, Saab, VW and Volvo. The line includes anti-vibration and suspension parts, air conditioning parts, axle boot kits and wheel bearings and bearing kits, as well as a new coolant hose program. We source these parts from a select group of OE-quality companies that are either OE suppliers or are able to meet our stringent criteria and very rigorous approval process. As a result, our Rein Automotive line has been very consistent in delivering the level of OE quality, vehicle fit and ease of use that today’s distributors and shops are demanding. The name "Rein” means “pure” in German. We chose it because we wanted to convey consistent and reliable quality, which is the hallmark of our brand.

Why is the import part market, and the Rein Automotive brand, important for CRP today?


CRP has more than 50 years of heritage and experience as an imports parts supplier. We focus heavily on European applications but are quickly growing our coverage for various Asian makes and models. While the market knows us well for the ContiTech and Pentosin product lines we provide, the Rein Automotive brand gives us the opportunity to expand beyond that and provide our customers with important products that are not available from these two global brands.


Many of the products that make up the Rein brand come from companies that are not as large or don’t have the market awareness of ContiTech and Pentosin. We are able to partner with these companies, grouping their products together to create an offering that is very attractive and beneficial to our customers. To CRP, this represents an excellent growth opportunity, and to our customers, it means proven OE quality solutions for many of their problems from a very reliable source they have learned to trust and respect.
We all know the import car parc is growing rapidly and changing at the same time. Because of this, there is a lot more interest in the products we offer for import vehicles. Some of our supplier partners manufacture very high-tech components, which for years had low demand but now have become very popular due to the changes in the market. An excellent example of this is our hydraulic mount and radiator hose programs. We’re very excited about these parts because their design and performance has changed quite a bit over the past 10 years and we anticipate a big increase in demand.


In a very short time, we will launch our line of import coolant hoses under the Rein Automotive brand name. The coolant hoses used on many late model vehicles are more than just “hoses.” They are systems composed of complex vehicle-specified assemblies featuring molded configurations with integrated thermocouples, O-ring seals and multiple connections to various engine components. Because of this, the typical “cut to fit” solution for molded hose that’s been around the market for years won’t work anymore. These applications require the exact form, fit and function of the OE part.


From a geographic standpoint, what are CRP/Rein’s most important markets today, and why?


The focus for the Rein brand is mostly on European vehicles, so the geographic regions we’ve been targeting are the East and West Coasts as well as areas like Chicago and portions of Texas. But as the number of import vehicles grow, so does demand in other geographic markets. Today, we have customers throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico for the Rein Automotive brand. Fortunately for us, our ContiTech belt program is an all makes, all models program with growing distribution in most regions, so we’re able to use our established customers to find out when the demand for European vehicle components grows enough in other markets to start targeting them.