News articles on the tyre retail business
Toyo has held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new Chinese passenger car tyre manufacturing facility in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province. The subsidiary – Toyo Tires Zhangjiagang Co, Ltd will be chaired by Toyo senior corporate officer Mitsuru Hitotsuyanagi. Production is scheduled to begin in December 2011 with an annual capacity of 2 million units and a workforce approximately 500 in number.
HiQ’s fast fit centre in Kettering is encouraging motorists in the area to visit the flagship store during three days of free festivities to celebrate its £75,000 makeover. The centre on Telford Way Industrial Estate reports that it “is enjoying a huge upturn in fortunes” since it was radically rebranded and is now officially commemorating its new decor with a series of safety-orientated charity events on Thursday, 9 September to Saturday, 11 September. Fast fit technicians will provide free vehicle and wheel alignment health checks for every visitor, while the company will run a free prize draw to win a plasma TV, a Sat Nav system, a mountain bike and a barbecue. HiQ’s official charity Breast Cancer Care will also be represented throughout the days with its “pink ladies” as HiQ attempts to educate more families and women about the good work that the charity carries out.
Goodyear Dunlop Tyres UK Limited has announced that Juergen Titz, currently director of the company’s HiQ retail network, has been appointed as director, Consumer and Motorcycle effective 1 October 2010. He will continue to report to George Rietbergen, managing director – UK and Ireland, and replaces Mark Davison, who is said to be moving to a new opportunity outside of the tyre industry. According to the company, further organisational announcements are due to be made at a later date, following this change. Tyres & Accessories understands that this means Goodyear Dunlop will shortly announce a new face for the HiQ top in response to Juergen Titz’ promotion. A spokesman told T&A that if no replacement is announced by the end of the month, the HiQ team will report directly George Rietbergen.
Infinity Tyres (Europe) and the authorised UK distributor of the brand’s PCR tyres Bond International have announced the launch of their new initiative to support UK customers. The Infinity Club began on 1 September and is aimed at rewarding top independent tyre dealers for their purchases of Infinity PCR tyres through Bond International. The Infinity Club – available by invitation only – will offer a monthly volume-based rebate scheme to participating dealers. The rebate will be based on net invoice values and will be paid directly to the dealer.
From 2012 European legislation dictates that all new cars will be fitted with tyre pressure monitoring systems (TPMS). With many modern vehicles already being fitted with them and the pressure watching technology due to become mandatory Tyres & Accessories has researched and compiled the latest information on the subject in order to answer the question: how will TPMS change the tyre retail business?
To start off with, there certainly appears to be a need for it. The 2008 Annual Tyre Pressure Review undertaken by Kwik-Fit found just over 46 per cent of cars tested had at least one tyre underinflated. Scaled up to represent the current level of UK registrations, this means that a staggering 12.46 million cars could be running on the roads like this, using £1.5 billion pounds of extra fuel and creating literally thousands of extra tons of carbon emissions. That 30 per cent extra tyre wear also means that an unnecessary 108,000 tyres each year have to be manufactured and disposed of too.
Strike action based on the demands for a minimum wage of 20 rand per hour for motor industry workers have begun today in South Africa, affecting plants belonging to Dunlop, Bridgestone and Continental, news sources have reported. Strikers are also demanding double-digit wage increases in the sector, with garage and component workers joining the action on Wednesday, 1 September.
As the parent company of the Dunlop brand in South South Africa (SA), Apollo Tyres SA has launched a new campaign to highlight its Dunlop Zones retail network’s commitment to striving for “precision tyre fitment,” in line with the Dunlop brand’s positioning of “Driven by Precision.”
Entrants to the final category in the 2010 NTDA Tyre and Fast Fit Awards – the Innovation Award – have been announced. As you would expect the eight entrants this year represent a complete cross section of the tyre industry with companies from the manufacturer/supplier (Continental, GITI and Michelin), garage equipment (Pro-Align), retail (HiQ) workshop consumables (Apaseal) and tyre recovery (Vellco Tyre Control) sectors represented.
One of the largest franchisees in the HiQ network, Broadway Tyres, has acquired its 11th centre. Broadway owns a number of fast fit outlets in and around London, and has added HiQ Grays to its portfolio after acquiring the centre from P & R Tyres.
The latest Which? report on garage service concludes that there are still shocking levels of incompetence in the sector despite the introduction of several new codes of conduct. The undercover investigation found that 90 per cent of the 62 garages mystery shopped by the consumer watchdog missed (or ignored) at least one potentially dangerous fault, while 39 per cent charged for a product that wasn’t supplied.
Which? introduced four simple faults – “deflated spare and nearside rear tyres, brake fluid at the minimum level and a blown bulb on the reversing light.” However, according to the report just eight of the garages tested returned the cars fault-free and five garages failed to fix any of the introduced faults.
Following the second Maxxis Rewards quarterly prize draw of 2010, 13 tyre retailers have each won either M&S or High Street vouchers to the value of £250. All Tyres Fitted, Craven Arms Tyre Services, Easy Car Care, Farmer Autocare, George Fegan Tyres, JR Motors Ltd, NL Autos, Northwich Tyre and Autocare, Quick Fix, Roper’s Farnborough Ltd, Sutton Service Centre Ltd, W W Wheels & Tyres and G Williamson (Garages) Ltd were all winners in the quarterly prize draw. Entries into the draw were based on their purchases of Maxxis car, van and 4×4 tyres and the winners were presented with their prizes by their local Grouptyre member.
Bridgestone and Just Tyres have announced the winner of their Formula One promotion. Paul Collis from Cardington, Bedfordshire won a pair of tickets for a three-day weekend at this year’s British Grand Prix after he used a 10 per cent off Bridgestone tyres voucher (and free prize-draw entry) printed in the Bedford Times and Citizen. He was joined by his son Simon, who worked with McLaren as an engineering student, and Ian Grant, managing director of Just Tyres at Silverstone before being given a tour of the Red Bull garage and the opportunity to see the F1 drivers in practice.
Kevin Ecclestone’s For Tyres shop in Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent has lost nearly £600 after Streamline – his credit card handler – reclaimed the money paid by people using cloned cards, reports The Sentinel. “They are all people who have seen us trading on the internet,” Ecclestone told the local paper. “They ring up and pay over the phone with a credit card before the tyres are picked up. When you say they can pay when they collect they make up an excuse, like they need to send someone else to get the tyres.”
Avon Tyres has named Ipswich resident Stacey Biltcliffe as the winner of its competition, with the first prize a TVR Tamora, a powerful British sportscar considered a modern day classic among enthusiasts. The British tyre brand, which originally supplied OE fitment tyres for the TVR Tamora, gave away the 330bhp, 3.6-litre car in its competition open to any customer purchasing a set of four Avon tyres. The brand supported the promotion in dealers with point of sale materials including posters and leaflets, and via a promotional website.
Buying tyres was originally an exclusively face-to-face experience. But it didn’t take long for the role of the telephone to become an integral part of consumer tyre buying research. The latest technological step forward saw the Internet become a sales channel in and of itself, not to mention a vital tool for wholesalers with the right business-to-business e-commerce systems. Now with some sources putting online tyre market share just shy of double figures, could the fast-growing mobile Internet market driven by the latest generations such as the Apple iPhone represent another new sales and marketing territory for tyre companies?
With mobile phone technology accelerating at a rate of knots, and following the recent high profile launch of Apple’s iPhone 4, Tyres & Accessories took the opportunity to survey the two leading online application markets for a glimpse into the future of online tyre selling. Apple’s App Store and its only real competitor, Google’s Android Marketplace boasts tens of thousands a quarter of a million applications between them. These small pieces of software offer users handy utilities, games and – crucially for this market – shortcuts to news, information and shopping services. Well-known online auction site, a system that has been used to market significant numbers of tyres and wheels for years now, has been offering both iPhone and Android versions of shopping platform for sometime now, allowing uses to bid on the move, however so far there have not been too many moves in this market from tyre companies. That said, some of the biggest players in the tyre industry have got in on the act with their own mobile phone applications and here is a brief look at some of the best available today.
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