Appropriate for the headlamp-shaped toys market.
I went through one edit pass too few. Or one too many. I meant to say "...
in volumes appropriate for..."
Remember, just because Value$aver Pork-flavored Bean Food Product is so cheap, doesn't mean that Greasy Prospector Pork and Beans can also be as cheap. Not without switching to a lower quality of hickory-smoked pig fat.
Making replacement headlamps in sufficient quantity to satisfy a reasonable need for replacement parts is expensive for the OEM. They're making (or having their tier-one's make for them) these headlamps and a host of other replacement parts all the while tooling up to produce the next model year and the next new model itself. The aftermarket headlamp manufacturers don't have the same constraints (and they're not building to the same quality standards, whether it is durability or photometrics).
I appreciate that OEM suppliers such as Visteon have different cost structures than no-names like TYC and that it genuinely costs more to make superior OEM-grade products. I have
exceptional trouble believing that it costs the capital-intensive/low-margin automotive business 2-4x to produce OEM headlamp assemblies that the
retail price differential vs off-brand would imply. Naturally, high-volume production for cars being assembled on the lines to the tune of tens to hundreds of thousands of units a year will naturally be cheaper than low-volume production of thousands for retail replacement consumption. Only it seems that the OEM suppliers cut off production once the supply chain makes their lifetime buys and cede the replacement market to our favorite low-end producers.
Every car dealer I've been to has a parts counter, and it seems to operate at a decidedly
pastoral pace. Walk-up business looks to peak at single-digit frequency per hour, and judging by the near ghost town employee population in the storerooms, there's not much more business from the internet, phone, nor mail. Given their pricing relative to just about anywhere else, this not not particularly surprising - unless part is truly exclusive to OEM or the aftermarket has failed to produce something adequate you go elsewhere. Thus my sense that OEM headlight assemblies
price themselves out of the replacement market - leaving them to the no-name brands you find at auto parts retailers - because of their distribution channels.
For tier 1 suppliers - whom seem to produce a strong majority of the OEM headlamp assemblies on the market - perhaps they prefer the certainty of supplying automakers vs the replacement market. It is surely easier to churn out product in regimented batches ordered in well in advance by a single huge customer than to produce smaller batches as needed. Perhaps it's in their contracts with the automakers not to keep the lines open and sell to outside channels. But it sure seems like the industry as a whole is leaving a lot of money on the table when they halt production and maintaining astronomical prices that drive the replacement market to inferior lower-price options.
