Vredestein to benefit from Apollo Tyres’ European ‘rebalance’

Apollo Tyres aims to be the “easiest tyre company to do business with” and is implementing organisational changes in Europe that will help realise this goal. Parallel to a tweaking of the Vredestein brand’s positioning and pricing, Apollo is adapting its sales and marketing organisation and appointing new regional customer care managers. These changes come into play on 1 April 2022, and to find out more we spoke with Yves Pouliquen, Apollo Tyres’ head of sales and marketing for Europe.

Pouliquen explains that Apollo Tyres will coordinate its European business through six updated clusters (see textbox). Five of these represent national markets that share language, trade or logistical synergies – for example, the UK finds itself in the North-West cluster together with the Nordic markets of Sweden, Norway and Finland as well as Belgium and the Netherlands. The sixth cluster will continue to be Export, an operation based at Apollo Tyres’ European headquarters in the Netherlands. The Export cluster covers countries where the company lacks a sales force on the ground, as well a handful of markets outside Europe.

Several markets formerly belonging to Export are now transferring to regional clusters. “The reason for this is that we want a stronger presence in these markets. Countries like Romania, for example, where we have strong potential but can do better. We want to rebalance our presence and reorganising the clusters will help us do this.”

Yves Pouliquen, head of sales and marketing for Europe (Photo: Apollo Tyres)

Managers supporting individual teams

We’ll return to this rebalancing later, but first – more about the clusters themselves. Pouliquen states that a “crucial change” occurring is the evolution of how the clusters support the business. Apollo Tyres already operates sales and customer care departments in most European markets, but only the largest of these can sustain a sizeable, dedicated customer care team. “The smaller customer care teams in other markets often face significant pressure,” shares the group head of sales and marketing. “Therefore, with the new cluster organisation we’re building in a synergy in customer care between individual markets and the regional cluster.”

Each cluster will thus receive its own customer care manager who will support the national teams. This manager will look after each customer care team within the cluster, with local customer care managers reporting to this manager instead of a country manager, freeing the latter to focus more on sales management and driving business growth. As a back-up to the national customer care teams, each cluster-level manager will ensure the speedy resolution of any outstanding issues. Customer care managers will also lead process improvements and provide training on best practice.

Apollo Tyres is promoting people from within its organisation to these cluster-level customer care management roles, leveraging their experience within their respective regions to deliver appropriate support for each market. Pouliquen says Apollo Tyres will share further details about the newly appointed managers in due course.

Updated B2B portal

Underpinning the upcoming structural changes to sales and marketing functions, and in response to growing demand for online ordering facilities, Apollo Tyres is also refreshing its European B2B portal. “We no longer considered that the existing site provided our customers sufficient information,” comments Pouliquen. “We want to deliver a higher level of service and enhancing our B2B portal is an important part of this.” The upgraded B2B site offers more comprehensive product information and gives more details about product availability.

Summer repositioning

We mentioned at the start that Apollo Tyres is working to reposition the Vredestein brand in European markets. Efforts to this end will be the responsibility of each individual cluster, but Yves Pouliquen points us to several key themes we may see across the region. “We are already well-positioned when it comes to all-season and winter products, and although we will continue to fine tune and improve our positioning in these segments, the summer range is where we are making significant changes. Our summer range has historically been positioned below all-season and winter.”

The UK isn’t the only major market where summer tyres dominate sales volumes, as France and Spain are also strong in this segment. With three of the five largest European consumer tyre markets strongly summer-oriented, the positioning of the Vredestein summer portfolio was understandably a cause for concern. “We’ve now brought new products to market that are positioned at a higher level and with these we’re bringing our summer range up to the level of all-season and winter.” The head of sales and marketing adds that Apollo Tyres intends all three seasonal segments to be “very close together, even homogenous” when compared with premium benchmarks.

A trio of new Vredestein summer lines have joined the upper echelons of the range in the past year. The Vredestein Ultrac Vorti + and Ultrac Vorti R + cater to performance car drivers and sit within the brand’s flagship ‘Pro’ product category. Apollo Tyres has also updated its ‘Standard’ category summer range through the introduction of the Vredestein Ultrac.

European rebalance

A stronger focus on how summer products are positioned can be interpreted as good news for the UK as well as for markets in the south of Europe. As mentioned earlier, Apollo Tyres wants to rebalance its geographical presence in Europe, which has historically been strong in Benelux, Germany, Austria and the Nordics, but less so elsewhere. An emphasis on the summer segment will help address this.

“One of our key focus areas is developing our presence in countries such as Spain and Italy, and in parts of Eastern Europe,” comments Pouliquen. “We’re going to invest the right resources in the countries where we want to grow the most.” Some markets will benefit from a greater emphasis on retail operations while others may require a focus on wholesale business. “It’s up to the clusters to determine this, that is their role.”

Changes can already be seen in the UK, a market where just a handful of wholesalers previously distributed Vredestein tyres. “Brand positioning wasn’t what we wanted, so we altered our approach significantly within a short period of time,” shares Pouliquen. Distribution through some channels has thus ceased and Apollo Tyres is concentrating upon rebuilding its collaboration with certain major groups, such as Halfords. “We are now strengthening our UK business and there is more to come,” states the head of sales and marketing. “The aim is to build up partnerships with a strong retail element that will ensure our brand’s presence in a large number of points of sale.”

Efforts to boost retail activities also encompass the development of distribution channels parallel to Apollo Tyres’ traditionally strong relationships with wholesalers. “We want to expand in the B2C online business, this is an area of strong growth in markets such as France, Poland and the UK. We will work with partners to grow our presence there and collaborate with them on marketing activities.”

Pouliquen names car dealers as a further outlet of interest to Apollo Tyres. “We’ve heavily invested in the original equipment business and so want to leverage on that to increase our brand presence in car dealerships. We’re working hard on that now and intend for our clusters to gain us a presence in as many sites as possible.”

Vredestein the way we want it

“The changes we’re making allow us to position the Vredestein brand the way we want it,” Yves Pouliquen concludes. “We have grown stronger in the UK these past six months and are regaining market share thanks to the scale of the partnerships we’re putting in place. What we’re doing in the UK is a good example of what we are aiming for in Europe.”

Apollo Tyres revises geographical clusters

• South-West: France, Italy, Spain, Portugal
• North-West: Nordics (Sweden, Norway, Finland), Belgium, United Kingdom, Netherlands
• Central: Denmark, Germany, Switzerland
• North-East: Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Baltic’s
• South-East: Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania
• Export: Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Bulgaria, Albania, Reunion, Taiwan, Malaysia