Serious player: Inter-Sprint focusing on stock solutions

Within Europe’s tyre wholesaling business, Inter-Sprint is a name that needs no introduction. A key player within Global Automotive Investment Holding, Inter-Sprint offers Europe’s largest tyre stocks and employs some 425 people. And as testified by the new warehouses flanking existing buildings at the wholesaler’s main site in Moerdijk, the Netherlands, the company is still growing. This increase in warehouse floorspace is accompanied by growth within the Inter-Sprint brand portfolio.

In Moerdijk we met up with Patrick Laros, International Brand Manager, as well as C Kraak, Commercial Director and someone who has witnessed much of Inter-Sprint’s development first-hand. Kraak’s association with the company began 40 years ago with the then student washing and loading trucks. Founder and owner Job van Vliet officially brought him into the sales department in 1984, a year before the firm adopted its current name in recognition of an increasingly international business.

A serious player

Kraak isn’t interested in superlatives or comparing Inter-Sprint with its local and international rivals, instead he stresses that the wholesaler is “a serious player in Europe.” Offering some 16,000 individual SKUs – a far cry from the 50 or so available in the early days – and housing around 2.8 million tyres in 200,000 square metres of warehousing, the company is well-positioned to fulfil its aim of being “the solution for all our customers’ stock requirements.”

The aforementioned 16,000 SKUs cover all segments, from premium to budget, including private and exclusive labels. A complete portfolio is vital to the Inter-Sprint concept of taking care of customer stocks, but as Kraak emphasises, the concept involves much more than this. “We deliver several times a week, which means our partners can direct their efforts into their customers instead of spending all their time looking for the cheapest tyre prices. Our IT system is excellent and we can create an interface or a gateway connection. We can also offer payment terms. In many cases we take care of our customers’ entire stocks, orders come automatically into our system and we handle deliveries.”

It can thus be frustrating to see some businesses expending their energies for very little gain, the Commercial Director adds. “We work with a small number of players who only look at price and forget the additional value of our concept. They look for tyres that are one or two euros or even 50 cents cheaper, but end up paying much more for them as they’re interrupted many times a day by deliveries from different suppliers.” Kraak stresses that receiving one invoice and all needed tyres in a single delivery saves time and ultimately money.

Inter-Sprint house some 2.8 million tyres in its 200,000m2 of warehouse space (Photo: Tyrepress / Stephen Goodchild)

UK deliveries & private brands

Brexit has increased the paperwork that UK firms face when doing business with companies based in the EU, but Kraak and Laros tell us that Inter-Sprint simplifies this process. “We acted defensively when the changes first took effect but were in a position to implement a solution after only a month,” comments Kraak. “We assume responsibility for customers’ worries, they can buy more easily from us without any problems. We take care of things.”

Products available to UK customers include private brands. Tyfoon is Inter-Sprint’s flagship private label, and Patrick Laros is confident the wholesaler “could do a lot more” with Tyfoon. There are several reasons for this. Not only is Inter-Sprint owner and exclusive distributor of the brand, it is also an open secret that Continental engineers many tyres in the Tyfoon range.

The current Tyfoon range includes 11 profiles and more than 200 SKUs in summer, winter and all-season patterns. Several new products have joined the line-up, including the Successor 7 summer passenger car and SUV tyre. A unique, Continental-designed profile, Successor 7 is available in 13- to 19-inch sizes and promotes as an “alternative to the established A-brands at an attractive price.”

The Tyfoon portfolio also includes new all-season patterns, including the Continental-engineered Tyfoon 4-Season, which is available in 14- to 17-inch sizes. The second new all-season tyre is aimed at van drivers, and Laros comments that all-season van tyres are one of the fastest growing product segments at Inter-Sprint. The Tyfoon Van 4-Season comes in 15- and 16-inch dimensions and features a reinforced construction favoured by professional drivers. Scheduled for arrival next year is the All Season 6; this successor to the All Season 5 is a cheaper but nonetheless high-quality alternative to the 4-Season.

The Tyfoon winter range includes the new Eurosnow 3, whose compound “offers maximum grip combined with favourable fuel consumption in all conditions.” The range is available in 14- to 18-inch sizes. Van drivers get a look in too, with the Winter Transport 3 positioned as the “ideal commercial vehicle tyre for a comfortable and safe ride in wintry conditions.” The range is available in 15- and 16-inch sizes.

Milestone is positioned slightly below Tyfoon but nonetheless a budget brand that “offers high quality.” The flagship model is the Milestone Greensport GS05, a summer performance tyre with an asymmetrical pattern. Greensport GS05 is available in a broad range that covers 14- to 20-inch rim diameters.

New in the range is the Green Weight A/S. Milestone’s first all-season tyre for light commercial vehicles features a “reinforced tyre structure, robust tread blocks and a well thought out tread design.” The current range includes seven dimensions for 15- and 16-inch rim diameters.

Exclusive brands

Alongside Tyfoon and Milestone, Inter-Sprint offers a number of exclusive labels in specific markets. The most successful of these is Landsail, a brand it distributes across mainland Europe but not in the UK or Ireland. Laros shares that the wholesaler is looking forward to the arrival of the Landsail Qirin EV in December. Developed for electric cars, Qirin EV adopts new compound formulas and materials, including eco-friendly bio-based oils and polyesters. Inter-Sprint will offer the range in 16 sizes for 16- to 20-inch rim diameters, beginning with 18- to 20-inch sizes that fit the Tesla Model 3, the best-selling electric car in Europe.

New for 2022 is the Groundspeed exclusive brand, however Inter-Sprint isn’t distributing this in the UK either. Groundspeed is a TBR range manufactured by Sentury Tire in its 4.0 smart factory in Thailand. The launch range includes steer, drive and trailer dimensions, 13 SKUs in total. Patrick Laros tells us that the Groundspeed range’s quality and performance approaches that of the premium brands but Groundspeed tyres “cost a lot less.” An OTR range should join the Inter-Sprint portfolio over the course of next year.

Inter-Tyre for wheels

Inter-Sprint is part of Global Automotive Investment Holding, which in total is responsible for 17 companies in the tyre and wheel business, including Inter-Tyre. From a premises adjacent to the tyre wholesaler, Inter-Tyre stocks approximately 150,000 rims. Kraak comments that “Inter-Tyre does with wheels what we do in the tyre business,” drawing upon the Inter-Sprint portfolio to offer customers a staggering 3 million tyre and wheel combinations.

Inter-Tyre General Manager Jalmer Beekes shows us around a 10,000 square metre facility that’s equipped with automatic and manual mounting lines for customer orders ranging from a single set to over 1,000 pieces. The wheels in stock are predominantly light alloy rims, with the Monaco and InterAction private brands the most popular choices. Inter-Tyre now has a third private label too, having created the IT Wheels brand together with Tyremotive, a German firm that entered the Global Automotive Investment Holding fold earlier this year.

Beekes elaborates on Kraak’s reference to parallels between Inter-Sprint and Inter-Tyre: “We want to be a one-stop shop and offer the customer everything in the wheel and tyre business.” The general manager shares that Inter-Tyre offers 18 brands of wheel, including well-known names like BBS, Borbet, Anzio, Alutec and Rial. This core business is complemented by automotive accessories such as snow chains, spare wheel kits, balancing weights and TPMS equipment.

“TPMS will become an important product area,” states Beekes. “All new cars in Europe have come equipped with either an indirect or a direct system since 2014. What we’re seeing in North America, where TPMS regulations arrived earlier, is a growth in the aftermarket TPMS business. Batteries in direct units expire after a certain mileage, and we anticipate that this business will evolve quickly. We have an extensive range of private and original equipment brands of TPMS.”

Jalmer Beekes, General Manager of Inter-Tyre (Photo: Tyrepress / Stephen Goodchild)

More European wheel production

The company’s private brand wheels are mainly made in the Far East at present, but Inter-Tyre is relocating some production closer to home in response to rising shipping costs and Covid-related issues at production facilities. Beekes tells us that plants in Bosnia, Poland and Germany are now manufacturing private brand wheels. “We’re looking for a stable balance between imports from Asia and Europe.”

Inter-Tyre’s main business a decade ago was upgrade wheels, but as most cars are delivered from the factory equipped with a decent set of alloys these days, upgrades now account for a much smaller proportion of sales. Winter business has taken its place, with sales in Scandinavia predictably strong, but Beekes observes that the upswing in all-season tyre sales across Europe may affect business too. “But we are not worried. We are still a healthy company and part of a big group. And as we can sell complete sets, we have a unique selling point that will keep the business going.”

The solution for tyre stock needs

It’s now more than 20 years since industry veteran Wim Zoet, Inter-Sprint’s Marketing Director for many years, set out his vision of long-term changes within the automotive industry. The topics he covered seemed a long way off in the year 2000 but have a familiar ring today, and amongst other things Zoet predicted was the explosion in tyre SKUs that we’ve seen over the past two decades.

“Tyres are bulky and the car parts trade lacks space to stock the variety of sizes they now have to deal with,” comments Kraak, bringing us back to Inter-Sprint’s core message. “That is where we come in. We can be the solution for tyre stock needs. But we also offer much more than this – we can supply customers with IT facilities, help them build up a brand image and support them with private labels. And even though we’re a very big organisation, we are keen to build personal relationships. We never forget that business is people.”