Back in 1970, Ken Langhals never dreamed that one day he would be hosting a dinner for 600 people. The early years, he’ll recall, were about hand-to-mouth survival. Now he puts food on the table for some 400 employees.
K&M Tire’s focus today is on “continuous improvement of planning, product, service and marketing” to provide “customers with quality products at competitive prices with fast, friendly service.”
That service is executed, in part, by 16 distribution centers spread across 11 states from Texas in the south to Minnesota in the extreme north, and from Montana in the west to eastern Ohio. K&M Tire’s fleet of 151 delivery trucks log more than 10 million miles per year.
Ten years ago, K&M Tire was a quiet little regional distributor. There were 115 employees and a few warehouses. They focused on the customer; they had to because K&M Tire was surrounded by other aggressive wholesalers looking to expand coverage areas and steal business.
Last year, as the company continued to expand via acquisitions and organic growth, K&M Tire reconsidered its direction, core customer expectations and how it was going to market. The result was an all-new mission statement and a going forward strategy.
“We are dedicated to the continuous improvement of planning, product, service and marketing,” it reads. “We will provide our customers with quality products at competitive prices with fast, friendly service.” The goal of that statement is to motivate K&M Tire to be “the leading and most trusted provider of tires and services in our geographic markets.”
Those products and services include the dealer’s proprietary Weblink ordering portal, which underwent a significant overhaul last year. Bonnie Marlow, assistant marketing manager, reviewed Weblink 2.0, which features numerous dealer-suggested upgrades and improvements, and by Aug. 1, 2013, had generated 139,000 user visits. Marlow said the system has been extremely effective for dealers, with more than 800 orders being placed each day.
One key Weblink 2.0 upgrade, she noted, is that it is now mobile friendly, allowing dealers to place orders using their smartphones or tablet computers, extra convenience while a dealer walks through his own in-store inventory.
According to Jeff Wallick, marketing manager, K&M Tire is currently working on an expansion of its Delphos, Ohio, headquarters and during the course of 2013, the company opened a new warehouse in western Minnesota and another in Bismarck, N.D., entered the Oklahoma City market and moved into a new 201,000-square-foot warehouse in Dallas.
K&M Tire’s Mr. Tire and Big 3 Tire network of dealers grew by 34% last year, and now tops more than 600 dealer locations. That network and supporting distribution centers now gives K&M Tire geographic coverage from Texas to Minnesota, and the Dakotas east through Ohio.
John Miller of Best One Tire led attendees through a pair of engaging financial seminars.
Looking forward to this year, Wallick said K&M Tire will add delivery routes and expand its sales efforts to improve service to its customers, and focus on improved service capabilities, particularly in the “Southern territories.”
A major feature of K&M Tire’s annual dealer conference is its trade show, which this year took over two ballrooms at the Intercontinental O’Hare in Chicago. One hall was given to tire companies and their wares, while the other housed displays by auto parts and tool vendors, software and website producers, and other dealer support offerings.
Eighteen tire company booths covered the gamut from passenger through farm tires by tire firms like Bridgestone, Firestone, Goodyear, Kumho, Yokohama, Hankook, Double Coin, Continental, Pirelli, API, Carlisle, Mitas, BKT and Cooper. The other hall hosted 18 other exhibitors, including ASA Automotive Systems, Net Driven, Prontom Autozone, NAPA, Esco, Advance Auto Parts, Auto Value, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Carquest, Citibank and Exide.
K&M Tire offered a handful of educational seminars. John Miller, director of retail for Best One Tire & Service in Monroe, Ind., rolled out a pair of well-attended financial management sessions that provided participants with a real-world store-level look at financial benchmarking, planning and managing by the numbers.
Dealers converged on the annual trade fair, checking out the latest products and placing orders for the coming season.
Wallick discussed marketing best practices for dealers, and Bill Martellaro, national sales manager for Net Driven, talked to dealers about the importance of having and maintaining an up-to-date and effective website.
Closing out the presentations was a coffee table chat between Langhals, who was an amateur racer in his younger days, and racing legend Mario Andretti. The friendly, unrehearsed discussion yielded some entertaining and sometimes poignant stories from Andretti, still the only man to win the Indy 500, the Formula One World Championship and the Daytona 500.
And the program ended with Langhals picking up the dinner check for 600 people after K&M Tire’s annual appreciation dinner. He really didn’t mind.
