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On June 2, 2026, aftermarket leaders gathered in Chicago for PARTS FORUM 2026, the only event in North America built exclusively for the people shaping the future of aftermarket, from pricing to digital strategy to industry transformation. The third edition broke every record we’ve set: more attendees, more candid conversations, and more actionable ideas than any PARTS FORUM before it.
The theme, “Close the Gap: Where Aftermarket Meets Excellence,” captured exactly what was in the air. The gap in question is the one between how fast aftermarket markets move today and how static most pricing and strategy still are. All day long, leaders from across industrial manufacturing compared notes, challenged assumptions, and left with ways to start closing that gap the next morning. No vendor pitches. No fluff. Just real talk from real practitioners.
Stephen Fauth, Co-CEO of MARKT-PILOT™, set the tone in his opening remarks: “Today we’re here as a community with a common goal: to learn from one another and to set the standard for how aftermarket pricing excellence is achieved.” That spirit held for the rest of the day.
By the end of the day, after seven sessions and a lot of hallway conversation, five ideas had come up so often, and from so many different speakers, that they were hard to ignore:
Each speaker came to the theme from a different angle. Here is what they covered.
Stephen Fauth, Co-CEO, MARKT-PILOT | The Gap Is Getting Wider: Why Parts Pricing Excellence Is the Defining Battleground for 2026
Stephen opened with a simple request: for one day, forget who a vendor, a customer, or a competitor is. He asked attendees to think about what closing the gap actually requires, not only in price points but in mindset and execution. The old playbook, he argued, has gone stale, and the companies that define the next few years will be the ones willing to question their own habits.
Danilo Zatta, Senior Partner, Implement Consulting Group | Boosting Aftersales Profits with Innovative Spare Parts Pricing
Danilo Zatta, named by the Financial Times as “one of the world’s leading pricing minds,” opened with arithmetic: a 1% price increase, with no volume loss, generates roughly 7% more profit. He has spent 25 years doing this work, and it showed. His examples ranged from luxury automotive to industrial dishwashers, and the pattern across them was consistent: moving away from cost-plus pricing typically adds 2 to 8 percentage points of margin.
His framework covers four stages: price strategy, price setting, price realization, and price steering. He also spent time on portfolio segmentation and price outliers, and on why the pricing model itself, not only the price level, is becoming a differentiator. The example that got the biggest reaction was a Spanish comedy theater that started charging per laugh and grew revenue 35%.
“Spare parts pricing is getting increasingly important, especially in times like these, where many industries are facing challenges in selling main products”, said Danilo. “Focusing on parts pricing and aftermarket is the solution to boost profitability.”
Every attendee went home with a copy of his book Smart Parts Pricing: How to Price in After-Sales to Maximize Profitability.
John Somers, VP Construction & Utility Sector, AEM | The Industrial Evolution: Shifting Fundamentals in a Transforming World
John Somers of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) gave attendees the wide-angle picture, drawing on AEM’s research with Oliver Wyman. He walked through six shifts reshaping the $224 billion equipment industry:
His point was that none of this is optional context. Tactics built without these shifts in view tend not to survive contact with the market. As the AEM summary put it: “All along the value chain, long-relied-on fundamentals are in a state of flux.”
Kris Harrington, CEO & Co-Founder, Gen Alpha | Closing the Digital Experience Gap
Kris Harrington reframed the theme entirely. For her, the gap is a customer experience problem before it is a pricing problem. Aftermarket organizations, she argued, are built around their own ERPs, warranty workflows, and department lines rather than around how a technician with a machine down actually behaves. That technician is not looking for a part number. He wants a fix, on his phone, in under a minute.
She built her session around “Alex,” a composite technician standing in for the workforce that is coming: mobile-first, video-first, and quick to abandon anything that makes him work for an answer. A few of her numbers stayed with the room:
“Alex isn’t the exception,” she told the room. “He is the direction.”
Moderated by Wade Holeman, Head of North America, MARKT-PILOT | Panelists: Simone Silva (VP Customer Experience & Quality, Newmar), Josh Wing (Director of Parts & Supplies, Henny Penny), Rob Danner (Director of Aftermarket Services, Douglas Machine)
The afternoon panel brought three leaders together to compare notes on the same challenge: turning aftermarket from an afterthought into a growth engine. It was one of the most candid conversations of the day.
Simone Silva of Newmar described the shift her team made from warranty-driven, cost-plus pricing to a proactive approach, prompted in part by pricing complaints spreading through owner forums: “We can be proactive. It doesn’t have to be as painful. Once you understand that you can see your market position, strategize around it, it makes things much easier.”
Josh Wing of Henny Penny talked about culture: “Parts is what helps fund everything we want to do, new buildings, expansion, growth, headcount. If you don’t pay attention to it, you’re not going to grow the way you want to grow.”
Rob Danner of Douglas Machine focused on the leadership conversation: “Helping leadership teams understand the importance of aftermarket and investing resources into growing that area, showing a return on investment when you add dedicated resources and leverage data, is key to closing that gap.”
Meridith Zaltsberg, Head of Sales Operations North America, Siemens Energy | Pricing Credibility: How Strategic Price Decreases Build Trust
Meridith Zaltsberg made the day’s most counterintuitive argument: sometimes the right move is a price decrease. In her case study from Siemens Energy’s North American gas power services business, a targeted, data-backed reduction on a small set of overpriced SKUs did more for customer trust than any campaign could have.
Her advice was practical: start with the data you have, find the parts causing friction, move decisively, and say what you are doing out loud. “The data, it’s never going to be perfect. But you take what you have and you build upon it. The more information we can get, the more accurate our models become, and the more possibilities open up.”
An attendee put it simply: “This is my third PARTS FORUM, and it’s probably been my favorite. Not a plug, just genuinely getting to meet our customers, see them over time, watch how they’ve grown, and see new faces come in. Being able to see the growth of this company, but also the growth of our customers, and how we’re tackling problems together. That’s been special.”
Get a feel for the room, the people, and the conversations. The PARTS FORUM 2026 highlight video is now on YouTube.
PARTS SUMMIT 2026 takes the conversation to Frankfurt this fall. PARTS FORUM returns to Chicago in 2027. Save both dates.