MARKET DATA
For the fourth year in a row, Michelin can be found at the top of Tyres & Accessories’ 2020 UK social media ranking. Indeed, such is Michelin’s dominance in the annual table, only Goodyear (in 2012) and Dunlop (in 2016) have done enough to overtake the UK arm of the French tyre brand since our research began in 2011. In both cases, Michelin still managed to take second place.
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, including three charts support the analysis, appears in full in the October edition of Tyres & Accessories. Not yet a subscriber? You can change that here.
4×4 tyre sales may have fallen due to the effects of coronavirus and lockdown, but prices in certain key sizes are actually higher than they were before those challenges presented themselves at the start of the year. Tyres & Accessories spoke to tyre market and pricing data experts Encircle Marketing in order to learn the details.
When you break the data down by size, a number of interesting trends are immediately identifiable. Firstly, there was a clear pre-lockdown price fall in February. The average price of a 255/55 R19 V tyre, for example, fell almost £6 from £138.10 to £132.86 between January and February. However, the average price of this size recovered to a point higher than the January starting point in March (£138.90).
The latest data might show that 4×4 replacement tyre sales are down 6 per cent, however Tyres & Accessories asked market analysts GfK how past trends compare with current realities and found: 4×4 tyres have been hit by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, but far less than most other segments. At the same time, the all-season 4×4 tyre sub-segment witnessed some examples of positive growth.
4×4 retail tyre sales have long been a growth area and the UK market constitutes one of the leading lights in Europe. More recent growth has been driven by similarly strong SUV vehicle sales as well as consumer switches towards all-season products. At the same time, more practical and off-road-orientated vehicles have also been supporting 4×4 tyre sales.
The global light vehicle market continued its post-corona recovery in June, market analysts report. Global light vehicle sales fell by 19.1 per cent in June, year-on-year, to 6.2 million for a seasonally adjusted annualised running rate (SAAR) of 73.1 million in the month, according to GlobalData.
Calum MacRae, Automotive Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “While these results are some way behind industry norms, they do demonstrate that the global market has recovered from its April low when a SAAR of 48.2 million was registered.”
Together, the increased utilisation of independent contractors on the supply side and record online search figures on the demand side show that MOT testing is booming. Considering that MOTs were put on hold for roughly four-and-a-half months between March and August (let’s not even mention the Northern Ireland MOT crisis), this is good news. Word of a coming MOT spike will be warmly welcomed by the tyre and aftermarket associations that lobbied government for the end of the MOT extension on both road safety and economic grounds. But what exactly does the apparent boom look like? And why does it matter to the tyre trade?
The last time Tyres & Accessories took a close look at the aftermarket sector back in July 2019, we took the optimistic view that the UK aftermarket space would be able to weather the Brexit storm. Of course, back then Brexit and trans-Atlantic trade wars were the most significant pressures on aftermarket parts segment. Now, however, things are considerably more complex and unpredictable. So, in this analysis we examine the most recent pre-lockdown data as well the latest mid-lockdown information in order to answer the question: is the UK aftermarket still weathering the storm?
On the morning of 10 June 2020, well-respected market analysts GfK hosted an webinar for north of 170 European tyre executives. Overall, the “Global Car Tyre Market Overview” presentation concluded that, while there are many variables and unknowns, retail tyre demand in 2020 market is likely to be down 20-30 per cent compared with 2019.
Last month this column considered the range of 2020 market projections that existed. In short, as the column concluded, the consensus is that tyre demand will decline somewhere between 15 and 26 per cent during the course of this year. However, such a conclusion may also be on the conservative side. Certainly, when you talk with tyre wholesalers and distributors on the ground, some of those that didn’t opt to close their doors for a few weeks experienced even more marked declines in the short-term. Reports of tyre shops running on demand 70 to 75 per cent less than pre-lockdown levels are not uncommon. And yet, as lockdown eases across various UK and European markets – as well as beyond – the focus is quite rightly shifting to recovery.
Things are changing so quickly at the moment that most analyses end up little more than speculation two weeks later. That’s why Tyrepress contains both the latest news and seeks to set such developments into their medium- and long-term contexts. Take our Tyre Retail coverage for example (see “2020 UK tyre retail ranking” and “Which garages are open during lockdown“) where we list both the current proportions of open tyre retailers and analyse the overall UK tyre retail landscape in its seven-year context.
Research conducted by aftermarket analysts GiPA during the week commencing 30 March 2020 found that 53 per cent of workshops were closed.
At the moment it is easy to get side-tracked by all the talk of the coronavirus. But, while it is clearly an important subject, the tyre business has a century or more of pre-history, has a present and has a future. With this in mind, May’s edition of Tyres & Accessories continues in line with the last eight years of research by counting and ranking the nation’s largest tyre retail chains.
The methodology is simple, we contact companies, consult publicly available sources and use third-party data where necessary in order to triangulate our tyre retail landscape. Of course, the present circumstances may look significantly different due to the nations’ current lockdown status (see “Which Garages are Open During Lockdown“). However, the shape of the tyre retail business before the lockdown will surely help the retail trade strategize for its ongoing future after lockdown, making this data as actionable as ever.
JATO Dynamics, which provides global automotive data, has David Krajicek as its CEO, effective 13 April 2020. Dr Krajicek has over 25 years’ experience. He joins from GfK where he had been at the helm as CEO of GfK Research since 2017.
Evidence from a number of market research sources concurs – increasing numbers of motorists are choosing all-season tyres for their cars. The first indication came from GfK data, which compared the percentage growth of all-season tyre sales reported by its UK panelmarket (in terms of volume and value) in 2018 with seasonal tyre sales during 2019. Winter tyre sales volumes were down 1 per cent last year. During the same period, winter tyre values fell three times faster (down 3 per cent).
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