What’s Treading with Tire Review Babcox Media

Launching a brand in a new market is never easy... even if that brand has nearly 60 years of established history behind it. This is the case with MatraX Tyres, which has roots stemming back to 1965 in Portugal. Now, the company is expanding into the U.S. with passenger car tires, with plans to add more tire lines soon.

"The U.S. market is big – it's the biggest market in the world. It's challenging because, apart from the size of the market, we are talking about different weather conditions and different road conditions between many states. We are talking about [which regions need] winter tires, all-season tires, summer tires. It's a very diverse market," Says Andre Bandeira, managing director for MatraX Tyres. "So, we need to adapt our products to these different markets. That's not so in many other markets, where we have a product that will already fit 80% of the market. In the U.S., it doesn't work this way."

In this episode of What's Treading with Tire Review, Bandeira discusses how MatraX Tyres was introduced to the North American market, how the company is adapting its products to diverse U.S. conditions, the challenges and solutions associated with distribution logistics, and the importance of dealer support and relationships.

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 They say that 10,000 hours of practice will make you an expert at whatever task you've set your mind to. If that's the case, what does 120 years of practice make you? (That's 1,051,000 hours, for the record).

In 2023, Continental marked its 120th year of retreading truck and bus tires. Today, the tire manufacturer retreads more than one million truck and bus tires worldwide every year – conserving resources and reducing costs all along the way. In fact, according to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology (UMSICHT), retreaded tires reduce CO2 emissions by up to 50% compared to new tires. The amount of recycled and renewable materials in retreaded tires can be up to 85%.

While the benefits of retread tires haven't waned, modern retreading facilities are very different from those designed a century ago. For example, today these factories use barcode tracking to monitor tires throughout the retreading process, which has significantly improved efficiency and data collection, allowing for better analysis and decision-making. Plus, today's factories have inspection equipment to ensure the tires leaving the factory are of the highest quality possible. 

"[Continental's] inspection process allows us to know what's happened in a casing and make some good predictive models of whether that casing will be retreadable. From a continental point of view, we also have a high-pressure test at the end of our process so that we can ensure that anything that gets through the process is going to be a safe and reliable retread when it gets mounted on and aired up and goes onto the tire," says John Cox, head of retread truck tires Americas. "The overall inspection is going to keep the retread better as well."

In this episode of What's Treading with Tire Review, Cox discusses the advancements and changes in the tire retreading industry, retread market trends in 2024, and the importance of tire dealers advising their fleet customers on the benefits of retreading.

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Succeeding as an independent tire dealer isn't ever a "copy and paste" operation. What works for the dealer down the street isn't necessarily going to work for you, and what works for you may not work for a dealer selling the same tires halfway across the world. Yet, it's the same thread that lead to success for each one.

"They all want to make money," says G.S. Sareen, president and CEO of Omni United, the manufacturer of Radar Tires. "They're all looking for a product on which they can maximize their profit margins – and what are the things that will help them maximize their profits? Is it quality? Is your quality at par with the premiums? Are you punching above your weight in terms of performance? Are your designs better than the rest? Are you a one-stop shop for them? Can you give them the whole spectrum of products?

"It's quality design, range and availability. Surely price competitiveness plays a role, but not as much as people think it does. I think the other aspects play a much wider role because if you don't have those, you can give any price, it's not going to work."

In this episode of What's Treading with Tire Review, Sareen discusses what it takes to meet the varied needs of tire dealers around the globe, noting that despite each market requiring individualized strategies, quality, design, range and availability must be consistent no matter where they do business. He also emphasizes Omni United's commitment to sustainability and carbon neutrality, and what it means to "do the right thing" as a tire manufacturer.

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Commercial tire dealers had their hands full in 2023, dealing with supply chain disruptions, fluctuating raw material costs and oversupply leading to less-than-stellar sales numbers around the country. The good news is that things are already looking up this year, but it's not simply by accident. Instead, commercial tire dealers are finding opportunities to improve their fleet relationships and are discovering new ways to adapt to the needs of the market.

"Some of the very successful dealers are being more aggressive. They're going out to their fleets and the industry and are providing more services, like fleet checks, air pressures, consulting on new tires," says Brian Sheehey, senior vice president of Ralson Tire North America. "The tire industry is a dynamic industry just as the vehicle industry is. Fleets' eyes have to be open and the dealers have to be partners in that, and the manufacturers have to supply that information to the dealers."

In this episode of What's Treading with Tire Review, Sheehey discusses strategies for dealers to better manage their inventory, and how manufacturers like Ralson Tires are working closely with their customers and fleets to adapt to new demands, such as the needs of electric vehicles, sustainability efforts and other innovations.

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What does "leveling up" your tire business in 2024 mean? It's an easy question to write off while your bays are filling up, or when your phones are ringing off the hook, or when a shipping delay stops an important order from arriving on time, or when a customer is complaining, or when your shop equipment fails...

The list of trials and tribulations taking place daily in the life of your friendly neighborhood tire dealer goes on and on, and it's hard sometimes to take a step back to examine what incremental changes can be made to take a business to the next level. During this year's annual K&M Tire Conference and Trade Show, Cheryl Gossard, president of K&M Tire, had high hopes that the company's dealer base would walk away inspired to do just that.

"We feel like if everybody just focuses on getting 1% better every day – whether that's in their business, whether that's with working with their employees or in a department or whether that's in their personal lives – we just always want to continue to get better and we want to help," she said.

In this episode of What's Treading, we dig into K&M Tire's 2024 goals, expansion expectations and the details of the company's latest partnerships that have been engineered to help dealers take their businesses to the next level.

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A successful tire launch seems to fall somewhere in the middle of innovation, customer satisfaction and dealer support. By that account, Hankook Tire seems to have followed the tire launch playbook to the letter with the recent debut of its all-season touring tire, the Dynapro HPX, designed for SUVs.

According to Rob Williams, president of Hankook Tire America Corp., the R&D that went into the Dynapro HPX focuses on following the latest SUV trends while leaning into attributes that will meet the needs of a variety of drivers.

"I think we all know that the SUV segment has grown immensely in the last 10 years. When SUVs first came out, it was really looked upon as more of an off-road type vehicle. Today, SUVs have become the family vehicle," Williams says. "Maybe you take it off-road when you go camping, but we found out that consumers have a wide range of needs and that's where we had to look to ensure that we had products to meet all the different needs of those SUV owners. I'm going to say that today the HPX and the AT2 Xtreme are definitely our bestsellers for most of the consumers to drive SUVs."

In this episode of What's Treading, we get the nitty-gritty details surrounding Hankook's Dynapro HPX tire, with Williams highlighting key features and new technology. Williams also discusses the value of the company's tire test track in Korea, dealer support initiatives and the state of the supply chain in regard to dealers in the North American market.

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