Kumho Aims for Champions League

Manchester United’s recent Kumho-sponsored thrashing of Aston Villa 4-0 was described by BBC Match of the Day pundits as some of the best football for a decade. So as Man U extended their Premiership lead to six points, Kumho’s management reflected on how this sporting success could be mirrored for Kumho in the tyre trade, hoping that their team has not only turned a corner in Europe, but made progress towards it goal of entering the tyre world’s own Champions League.

Kumho Europe decided to leverage its platinum sponsorship of UK premier league leaders Manchester United by holding the Kumho Big Match Day on 30 March 2008. Being platinum sponsor gave Kumho the opportunity to drape the main entrance into Old Trafford with two enormous banners, offer interactive experiences and event zones at promotional booths outside the stadium as well as hospitality programmes for dealers and distributors who were invited to the match.

“Through the association with this legendary football club, we hope to improve Kumho Tyres’ brand awareness across Europe,” said HS Lee, president of Kumho Tyre Europe GmbH. From his point of view, sponsorship such as the Manchester United arrangement is key to achieving the company’s business goals: “Europe is an essential market for us to achieve our goal of becoming a global top five tyre company by 2015. We will also continue to strengthen our global R&D network and build up our sales network both locally and globally to achieve this goal.”

Speaking exclusively to Tyres & Accessories, Mr Lee revealed that following the establishment of Kumho’s Georgia, US production site, he will be strongly suggesting that Kumho invests in a European production facility of its own. While there are no firm details of when, where and how much will be invested in such a site, a potential Kumho Europe factory is expected to operate a flexible production regime, focusing on popular European market sizes.

High hopes for European business

Kumho celebrates is 30th anniversary of business in Europe this year and is aiming to mark this milestone by achieving $500 million worth of sales across the continent. Speaking to the company’s European management reveals that bosses are expecting 20-25 per cent of this to come from UK product sales.

With the long-term goal of becoming a global top five tyre company by 2015, Kumho spends around 4 per cent of sales on research and development. The company opened its third global R&D centre, Kumho European Technical Centre (KETC), at the Birmingham Business Park in 1997.

Following recent high-profile OE wins, such as Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz A-Class and the Mercedes Viano X-Clusive, the company reports that it is continuing to develop tyres in partnership with “leading European vehicle manufacturers.”

Sponsoring the Local Team?

Manchester United is not only one of most successful football teams in the world, but is also one of the richest, regularly topping the football world’s financial league table. The fact that the Man U name is known all over the world presents a great opportunity for any company to increase brand awareness by association. The interesting thing about Man U is that the team is particularly popular in Asia, especially in South East Asian nations such as South Korea. The last time Man U played Korea, for example, the Seoul stadium’s 65,000 tickets sold out in less than seven hours.

Statistics like that are all very well, but what impact is the sponsorship having on sales closer to home? The people selling the tyres certainly seem to think so. Speaking to guests prior to the Big Match Day, Alan Baldwin, sales director of Micheldever Tyres (the Kumho brand’s exclusive UK distributor), described Manchester United sponsorship as “An inspired decision to sponsor the world’s number one football team, which is already bringing very rapid growth of brand awareness…resulting in strong sales.” This may be something of a subjective analysis, but the Kumho customers that T&A spoke to generally echoed this sentiment. chris.anthony@77.237.250.82