AAPEX 2026: What to See, Learn, and Experience [RR 1112]

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is The Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Carm Capriotto (0:06)

Hey everybody, welcome Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio. Good to have you here. Don't forget, we have this really cool app out there, ARPNAPP.

It's been now released in version two. Wait till you see the curated panels that we do for you. And many of the reasons that you are here is to hear from the vice president of Meetings and Events at the Auto Care Association, Mark Bogdansky. We are talking everything APEX. We're going to get into food, the redesign floor, what's going on with Level 1, the educational sessions, all the famous cars that are going to be there, Coach K doing the keynote, Mark Wahlberg, Jimmie Johnson, Grant Hill, Randy, all these great people in his stateroom. O-M-G. We're going to hear it all from Mark right after we hear from our great sponsors, Napa Auto Care and Napa Tracs.

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Hello, Mark. How are you, my friend? I'm good. How are you, Carm? I'm great. This is going to be the best AAPEX I probably will have ever attended because it's almost like you had this box. You threw everything in, you shook it up, and then you went inside and you start picking things on. It says, yep, we're going to do this. We're going to change that. We're going to fix this. Not like AAPEX ever needed any of that, Mark. But my God.

We're no longer in the basement in Joe's Garage. We're going to be on that first floor.

Mark Bogdansky (2:07)

Yeah. Joe's Garage is moving. Everything is moving this year. Joe's Garage is moving. We've added to it. We've expanded different things we're doing around the show. Like you said, I feel like we're trying to stuff 50 pounds into a 10-pound bag. And so it's going to be a lot of fun and exciting. And people are going to run out of time as soon as they get there.

Carm Capriotto (2:25)

One of the things that I think our industry, and I've said this, Mark, way back, a long time ago, I first started doing podcasting. If you earn your living in the professional automotive service business, then APEX is for you.

aapexshow.com. Yeah, you can go to Vegas and do a lot of other things. But this is the show where the education directly affects you. This is the show. And again, I've always said this. If you have a problem with any particular product or you want to thank an executive of one of these major brands that you use, then you go there, you go on the show floor, you shake some hands and you get some business cards. And you start talking to the people that have helped make you successful over the years.

Mark Bogdansky (3:05)

Absolutely. And you get an opportunity to learn how to be more successful.

Carm Capriotto (3:08)

Wow.

If there's any reason, if you're going to take your peoples with you, make sure you assign the kind of classes that they're going to and make sure when they come back, they teach other people. I think going to conferences as a professional team, yeah, I think there's a lot of eye candy in Vegas. But if you're going to spend that kind of money, get serious about the education that you're going to get. So this whole redesign, were you playing chess on a chessboard this past year?

Mark Bogdansky (3:35)

We had segmented the floor last year and kind of redesigned everything last year. And then when it came to this year, we realized that in order to make everything fit again, we had to kind of put everything in a mixer and a blender and start all over again. But I think it worked out really, really well. We're really excited about how the floor lays out. We're really excited about all the different activations we have all over the floor. Everything that we have for attendees to do, to interact with our exhibitors, to get some breaks on their own, get a mental break while they're still on the show floor, get some food while they're on the show floor. We're really happy with how it all wound up laying out. And some other decisions that we made as well. You know, you said about the training, and one of the things we learned, Carm, is that we would pack in as much training as we could every day. You know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we'd have training from 9 to 5