How the increasingly online tyre business reacted before, during and after lockdown

On 3 September Amazon said it will create an extra 7,000 UK jobs this year to meet growing demand. Prior to this, the online retail giant had already added 3,000 roles in 2020. So, by the end of the year, it will have created a total of 10,000 new jobs. At the same time, the company has increased its involvement with the tyre market. While online tyre retail is about far more than Amazon, the news reflects increased demand both for online ordering in general and for online tyre sales in particular. But it is not just Amazon that has noticed this trend. Speaking during a webinar in June, GfK analysts highlighted how online tyre buying is increasing as a function of lockdown and the increased take-up of online shopping in general. Their thesis? More tyres will be sold online and the budget tyre sector will be the beneficiary.

This article appears in full in the October edition of Tyres & Accessories magazine. Not yet a subscriber? You can change that here.

In October’s magazine, Tyres & Accessories takes a closer look at the latest developments in the multifaceted online tyre business. This article specifically looks at online tyre buying and pricing in conjunction with tyre pricing and selling-way data specialists Encircle Marketing. However, this is just one dimension in the online tyre business. In addition to online tyre retail, there is also the question of online marketing, an area in which social networks are playing an increasing important role (see separate article for further details). And on top of this, there is the electronic infrastructure necessary for the tyre business to participate – beginning with increasingly smart web sites and going onto integrated pricing and marketing tools.

For now, however, our focus is on the UK online tyre retail business and specifically what has happened before lockdown, while the population was largely confined to their homes and as lockdown eased in July. “At a very top-line level, the market appears to have been largely in a state of paralysis since Lockdown”, Encircle’s analysts wrote in a report published in the summer. Prior to this, the 23-inch sector saw good growth from late January. Conversely, the 21- and 22-inch sectors were slightly down (see chart 1). But there is clearly more to the story.

This article, including a chart support the analysis, appears in full in the October edition of Tyres & Accessories magazine. Not yet a subscriber? You can change that here.