News from the tyre wholesale sector
Federal has announced the first shipment of its new XUV all-season touring tyre to a dealer in Australia. National Tyre Whosaler (NTW), based in Canberra will be receiving the first delivery of new shipment to its warehouse at Sydney, Australia.
Kwik Fit has announced that its new parent company (Itochu) is considering moving its retail head office to Letchworth, raising questions about what this means in practice. Could it even mean putting the two businesses into the building that is currently the home of the wholesale wing – Stapleton’s Tyre Services? When questioned on the subject, the relevant spokespeople told T&A it was too early to say.
Westlake Tyres has appointed Axle Group Holdings Ltd – which owns both the retailer National Tyres and Autocare and wholesale Viking International – as sole distributor of its passenger tyre range in the UK. Eskay Tyres, part of the Al Dobowi Group, which brings the Westlake brand to Europe from its Chinese manufacturer Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, said the Axle Group’s success and current growth, was “one of the reasons” it became interested in working with them. Viking has significantly increased stocks and same day delivery capability, while the retail division, National Tyres and Autocare, has recently added 20 new branches to the network this year, now totalling 240 sites.
Euro Car Parts, the UK’s largest car and van parts distributor, reports experiencing “phenomenal growth” across its car, commercial vehicle, motorcycle and leisure battery ranges. Bill Stimson, marketing director for the Bosch, Exide and Lion brand supplier, comments “we pride ourselves on offering an unbeatable choice of batteries and have recently made significant additions to all our ranges. Being prime battery supplier to the RAC has only enhanced our reputation as the fastest emerging force in the UK battery market.”
With a trend of consistent sales growth over the past five and half years, and with the company on-track to exceed £350 million in total turnover this year, Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS) is shaping up to be the largest business of its kind in the UK despite a challenging market environment. To put this in perspective, the best turnover of a company in this sector reported last year was somewhere north of £330 million. Tyres & Accessories recently met with wholesale director Alan Baldwin and the company’s new wholesale marketing manager, Peter Hayden, to find out more.
Online tyre business is the future, according to Delticom CEO Rainer Binder. With more people buying tyres online than ever, it might not take a futurist or e-business whizz to make such a predction, but in this recent interview with T&A Binder share more about Delticom's approach and new European, fleet and global business strategies.
Tyre manufacturer Maxxis has agreed a new distribution agreement with Stapleton’s Tyre Services. The UK’s largest tyre distributor will begin supplying Maxxis products from October 1 and an exclusive distribution arrangement will commence in January 2012. Stapleton’s representatives confirmed that the latest brand to enter its portfolio is an addition to the range and existing brands will remain as they are.
The news follows Maxxis’ recent decision to end its exclusive distribution deal with Grouptyre. Maxxis reports that it is pursuing “ambitious growth and brand development plans and to achieve these it is committed to improving range accessibility in the UK.”
While UK wholesaler Grouptyre no longer has the exclusivity distribution rights for Maxxis, it does distribute a range of “margin brands”, including the exclusive brands Evergreen, Federal and Goodride. The joint statement released by Grouptyre and Maxxis to announce the mutual dissolution of their exclusive distribution agreement spoke clearly of the differing directions of the companies’ strategies, and the wholesaler’s managing director Karl Naylor has subsequently reaffirmed the “evolution” of its strategy: “Our strategy has evolved as we have seen a number of external factors influencing the tyre market in recent times.” Instead of one main brand in Maxxis, Grouptyre’s future strategy seems to place greater emphasis on a range of products.
Three members of the board of KRT have completed a management buy-out of the group – UK & Ireland (financed by GE Capital). The new company – Kings Road Tyres Group Ltd will be led by Adrian Bader (managing director), Mark Cooper (commercial director) and Simon Lister (financial director). Bader told Tyres & Accessories that the transition of company ownership is proceeding “seamlessly”, since “most of the people that were running the company before will be running the new company”.
Nexen Tyre Europe GmbH is aiming to offer faster tyre supply to its German customers after opening a 2,000 square metre warehouse in Fulda, which became operational last month.
The warehouse is designed to hold up to 50,000 tyres. Approximately 10,000 tyres can be packaged and dispatched every day by qualified warehouse operators. Delivery is made according to the quantity ordered by parcel service, either as a group freight delivery or as a lorry load.
Maxxis has announced that it is bringing back its “hugely popular” Maxxis Rewards programme for the remainder of 2011 and into next year. The initiative was suspended temporarily during the summer while the brand’s exclusive distribution agreement with Grouptyre was dissolved. Maxxis Rewards was previously run in conjunction with the wholesaler, and while Maxxis says it will continue to supply Grouptyre in the foreseeable future, the incentive programme will now be run through the company’s own website. Retailers are encouraged to register through the Rewards microsite, or to contact Denise Prout at Maxxis Internation UK.
After an eight-year long mutually beneficial relationship Maxxis International UK Ltd has decided to part company with its long-term distribution partner Grouptyre. The news came in the form of an announcement that the two companies have ended their exclusivity agreement, which implies that the firm will continue supplying Maxxis tyres for the time being. However, Tyres & Accessories understands that there is more to the story than that.
Tyre manufacturer Maxxis’s eight-year exclusivity agreement with independent tyre wholesaler Grouptyre has been ended. A joint statement issued by the companies revealed that, following a review of their distribution arrangements, and “in light of their future plans”, they “have agreed by mutual consent that Grouptyre will no longer act as the sole distributor for Maxxis in the UK.” The statement also made clear that Grouptyre’s distribution of Maxxis products will continue in spite of the expiration of the exclusivity agreement on 30 September 2011.
It is certainly not the only development to take place within Bond International during 2011, but the wholesaler's recent launch of Tyregiant.com is likely to be the most headline-grabbing. Over the years various sources representing all the UK's largest tyre wholesalers have spoken of their capability of offering an online retailing capability, but up till now few – if any – have ventured onto the information superhighway. The solitary pioneering effort in this area was Grouptyre's GoodTyreGuide, which ambitiously seeks to fuse retailing, reviewing and wholesaling through its membership of whole operations. A year on from that, with the jury still out on whether this concept has delivered the kind of results expected at launch, Tyregiant is pitching itself as a straightforward retail site for consumers. The clever part for Bond (a company that has always shied away from retailing itself so as not to alienate its business to business customers) is that, like GoodTyreGuide before it, it is seeking to offer additional business to its customer base rather than itself becoming a competitor.
Based just North of York in Pocklington, the relatively small size of this North Yorkshire town belies the current scale and influence of the tyre wholesale operation it is home to. Bond International was founded in 1966 by Reg Bond when the qualified automotive engineer suffered an industrial injury that blinded him in one eye. In spite of the incident, Bond demonstrated great vision by investing his ensuing compensation into expanding his business to incorporate tyre wholesale. Now the company is firmly in the top flight of UK tyre wholesale operations and has purportedly risen as high as number three in recent years (see next month's Wholesale Feature for an update on the current state of UK tyre wholesaling). With an overseas office already located in Singapore, now Bond is considering its European options, while pointing out that there are still opportunities in the UK. On top of this the company recently launched its first foray into the online marketplace, which executive hope will – over time – develop a whole new source of business for it and its retail customers alike.
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