Biz Smarts Have No Gender - Tire Review Magazine

Biz Smarts Have No Gender

Women the weaker sex? Bite your tongue.

Whether you’re male or female, to be successful in the retail or wholesale tire industry, you need business smarts, the ability to overcome challenges, and, above all, brass knuckles. An interesting combination of softness, intelligence and fiery spunk, women tire dealers are roaring.

Once an oddity in a male-dominated industry, women are now solidly in the rank and file, both as dealers and with tire companies. The most notable shift, however, has come on the dealer side.

"For years, women in the tire business have quietly been paying their dues," says Jilanna Swann of

Swann’s American Car Care Center in Ripley, W.Va. Swann isn’t talking about protesters and banner wavers. She’s talking about women like herself who dug in their high heels and learned everything they had to learn about a business.

And that brings us to the first trait these successful women have in common: an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. "When customers, men or women, enter my store, they are looking for someone with a solution to their problem. They don’t care if it’s a man or a woman behind the counter. They want answers," says Swann.

"I could have turned to another line of work, but I chose this," she adds, a political science major who went through a life-changing divorce. As a young mother with a three-year old daughter in tow, Swann knew what she had to do ®“ start fresh. So she chose going to work with her father, Walter, who founded the dealership 19 years earlier.

"I grew up in the business. I now co-own it with dad," she says. "He always said I had a good head for business, and he was right. But, without question, my success in the tire business is tied to knowledge," says Swann, "my ability to learn."

She broke out the books and spent her early days at the store listening more than talking. She participated in ACCC seminars, attended SEMA shows and regularly logged on to www.MAST.com, a Web site she says has been invaluable.

Her natural flair for business has also served her well. "We have to be able to buy at the right price so we can sell at the right price. This is not a high-profit business, so getting this part right is critical."

With her common-sense approach to business comes a period of adjustment. "My service techs have changed since I’ve been here," says Swann. "When I was brand new, I literally forced them to communicate with me. They responded and still do.

"If a customer came in with a bad ball joint, I asked to see the bad ball joint. What does a bad ball joint look like, where is it located on the vehicle and what can happen if it fails? I told my service techs to show me everything they face every day. Now I can talk about ball joints with the best of them."

So goes Swann’s world of being the boss. She is part of what she calls "the trickle-up theory." "Women were once village council people," she says. "Later, they became county commissioners and, later still, state or even federal senators."

Like other women in the business, Swann is on target. But there are still some surprises along the way. "I’ve discovered that 65% of our customer base is female," she says, "They are single moms, grandmothers, wives and daughters. I don’t believe their visits to our store have anything to do with my gender; that’s just the way it is in Ripley and, quite possibly, everywhere else."

Earning Respect

Like Swann, Janine Calabro, the business manager for Calabro Tire & Auto Service in Upper St. Clair, Pa., had to learn the business from the ground up. "Even though this is a family business, and I grew up around it, I don’t have a mechanical inclination," says Calabro. What she does have is a degree in business administration with a special focus in human resources.

Armed with book smarts, Calabro was quick to identify her strengths and weaknesses. "First, I developed a comfort level with the business and everything that goes with it. I did that by watching, studying and listening." She absorbed everything she saw, touched and felt. "It used to be that male customers would come in and ask to talk to one of the guys," says Calabro. "That doesn’t happen much anymore because I’ve earned their trust.

"Today, I greet customers and sell them tires or write up an automotive work order," she says. Calabro is also the one responsible for handling the paperwork for the family business. She is the firm’s insurance administrator, handles the company’s 401k program, does the hiring and firing, takes care of accounts payable and receivables and watches the cash flow.

"I’m not pushy, I’m not cold and I’m not abrupt," says Calabro. "To me, every sale is taken personally. When someone is laying out $600 to $800 or more for a set of tires and wheels, I think they have a right to know exactly what they’re paying for and why. I want them to know that they are not being ripped off.

"I believe I put a softness in the sales transaction that comes naturally," she says. But don’t make the mistake of thinking she’s too soft. She isn’t.

"I stand my ground when there is a confrontational moment, and the customer is wrong," she says. "To me, it’s about balance. If you do it right, you earn respect."

Recognizing her hard work, Michelin North America asked her to serve on the Michelin Alliance Dealer Council for the next three years. She’ll be the only woman on the Council and will take her business beliefs and practices with her.

Brass Knuckles

The women tire dealers we interviewed had no shortage of chutzpah. "The tire business is tough, but I’m a lot tougher," says Carol Dellabalma, president of TP Tire Service Inc. in Arcata, Calif. "I don’t say what I don’t mean, and I don’t order what I don’t need," she says. That’s her credo, and she’s sticking to it.

Tough as she is, Dellabalma has learned to listen to her customers. "If you don’t listen, you can’t do what should follow," she says. "When the environmental movement slowed down or closed some of our best customers, we had to make an adjustment. We were dependent on the logging and fishing industries," she points out.

"First, we diversified our business into more alignment and undercar work to pick up the slack," she explains. "Second, we expanded into the giant tire business, since many who once offered that service were out of business."

TP Tire Service handles everything from wheelchair tires to giant OTR tires. "Our saying around here is: ‘Do you have a problem? No problem!’ Even our competitors call us for answers to questions, and we spend time making sure our relationship with them is everything it should be."

Though women tire dealers are a tough breed, don’t expect them to sport hairy knuckles. "Vinnie" Cimino, owner of the Tire Place of Queens Ltd., in Middle Village, N.Y., paints her nails and wears jewelry and heels to work. But she’s no pushover.

"New York is a tough town," says Cimino, whose real name is Vincenza. "I’m known as the tire lady because I made it my business to become the tire lady. I’m honest, I’m fair and I help my customers solve their problems.

"There is nothing I don’t know about tires, so when a male customer comes in here asking for ‘Vinnie the guy,’ I say, ‘I’m Vinnie, and my brain works very well, thank you.’"

She adds: "It still bothers me when I fill in at our New Jersey store and the male customers don’t want to talk to me. That’s what happens when I deal with people who don’t know that I’m the tire lady."

A better sense of what Cimino is all about is linked to her mother, Frances Gerbino, and her dad, Vincent. "Dad founded the business and mom joined him. She sold wholesale to gas stations and ultimately asked me join her in the business," she says.

"At the time, I was a hairdresser and worked part time in mom’s side of the business doing the paperwork. She is the one who got this whole thing rolling. I owe what I am to her."

"Driven" best describes Cimino. "Not long after I joined the business, New York had a big snow storm, and nothing was moving. As I was getting out of bed, my husband asked me where I was going. ‘To work,’ I said. ‘But everything is closed,’ he said." Cimino’s reply: "Not our business; we’re open."

She trudged five blocks through the snow to the family dealership, then an eight-bay retail outlet with a growing wholesale arm. She met her mom and dad on the way, and they spent the day catching up on paperwork.

Today, Cimino co-owns a thriving eight-bay retail store with her brother in Richfield, N.J., and has recently closed the family’s retail outlet in Queens in favor of another business location a few blocks away that was supposed to be strictly wholesale.

"But 43% of my retail customers followed me," she says. "One guy who had suffered a heart attack told me I was going to continue to be his tire supplier. ‘You can’t abandon me after all we’ve been through,’ he told me. ‘I won’t let you.’

"So we still do some retail," she says. "Right now, we’re changing tires with jacks out in the alley and running the wholesale business indoors. We can mount anything, including 18- to 24-inch tires, and we just replaced our tire changing machine."

Like any employer, Vinnie has occasional personnel issues. "One day, one of my employees decided he wasn’t hired to unload tires in the snow, so he quit ®“ just walked off the job ®“ leaving me with a truckload of tires."

Then, Vinnie and three other employees offloaded 500 tires, snow be damned. "I won’t ask an employee to do anything I wouldn’t do," she says. "As far as employees are concerned, if you won’t help me, I won’t tolerate you."

Where customers are concerned, the rules change. But in NYC, it doesn’t pay to be a softie. "When a retail customer tells me the tire he bought here is defective, and I see that it has collided with a pothole, I don’t see it as a defective tire.

"Yet that same customer tells me he bought the tire here and it belongs to me," she says. "I remind him that he paid for it, and it’s his." All of this eventually works its way into what Cimino does to diffuse a difficult scenario.

"‘Do you drive that car in the city?’" Cimino asks the customer. "If he says ‘Yes,’ I ask the customer if he has found a way to make his car fly over New York highways. Because if he hasn’t, he can’t miss hitting a pothole," she jokes.

That’s Big Apple logic at it’s best. That’s why Cimino is the tire lady. "I do the best I can for the guy and move on to the next problem. Even an irate customer quickly sees that I’m not the bad guy, and neither is he. But we’ve got to get on the same page before we can do any problem-solving," she says.

These days, Cimino is about 80% wholesale and 20% retail, and as flexible as she has to be. "I tried to leave retail behind because Pep Boys and Sears moved in. How am I going to compete with their buying power? I can’t."

Well maybe she can, given the number of customers who refuse to buy their tires elsewhere. Still, Cimino knows she has to adjust to changing market conditions.

"That’s why I’m growing and reaching deeper and deeper into the wholesale market. I have two inside salespeople, four delivery drivers, three outside salespeople and me. I see customers one day a week and love it because it’s in my nature.

"Any recommendations I make are intended to fit the customer’s needs," she continues, "the right tire for the right application. I make it my business to guide the customer, whether it’s for the retail or wholesale side of the business."

Obstacles and Opportunities

Regardless of the strides made, being a woman tire dealer still has its difficulties. "We still need to work on better communication at the vendor/distributor level," says Swann. "Too often, when I ask for a price, it has to be renegotiated by my dad, who gets a lower price."

Although Swann isn’t happy about it, she knows this is a problem that will go away eventually because it doesn’t make any sense. "When I call for a price, I’m calling for my customer," Swann explains. "In other words, I’m calling upstream to the vendor/distributor level as their customer. Why should I receive different treatment? Too often, the distributor isn’t doing as much for me as a customer as I’m doing for my customers."

Calabro believes women customers, for the most part, feel more comfortable doing business with other women. "There is an element of distrust in the automotive aftermarket that comes down hard on some men in the business," she says. "Some customers don’t trust a man the way they trust a woman."

To gain and keep their trust, Calabro takes her customers into the service area to explain what’s being fixed. "I want customers to know up front what kind of work is being performed, why it is being performed and what it is going to cost. I don’t want them to be surprised when I hand them the bill."

TP Tire Service has been in the business for about 65 years. "We are now doing business with fourth and fifth generation families, and we’re pulling them from a 50-mile radius," Dellabalma says.

Even so, Dellabalma recalls what it was like to be a woman in the tire business 18 years ago. "In 1986, I went to Las Vegas to the tire dealers’ show to buy alignment equipment. I found the booth and approached the man in charge. I handed him my card, complete with title, which read ‘President,’ and told him I wanted quotes and delivery times," she recalls. "Everything I wanted was carefully printed on the back of the card. He looked at my card and asked if my business manager or husband was with me."

She handled the situation calmly yet firmly.

"I returned home and waited two months before calling the district manager," she remembers. "I told him what happened in Las Vegas and that I still needed quotes and delivery times. If he couldn’t deliver, I told him I would buy from another company, even though I wanted his equipment.

He asked me for another chance. I said, ‘I won’t give you another chance, but I’ll give you a first chance.’ He sent me the quotes and delivery dates immediately by fax, and I ordered the equipment. To this day, he is the only person from that company who calls on our dealership," says Dellabalma.

"For many years, women in the tire business didn’t get the respect warranted," she adds. "Well, we’re not different anymore."

Male or female, it takes guts to succeed in the tire business, or any business for that matter. Even in today’s PC world.

Women have always been a target consumer market, but it was their spending influence that was important to the economy. Today, women are more than just consumers.

Women business owners are critically important to the American economy, says the Small Business Administration. According to the agency, the country’s 9.1 million women-owned businesses employ 27.5 million people ®“ one-tenth of the U.S. population ®“ and contribute $3.6 trillion to the economy.

Now, that’s saying something.

You May Also Like

Tire Industry Labor Shortage: Improve This to Keep Employees

I’ve spoken to many representatives from manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers who report that techs, counter people, drivers and even white-collar team members have walked off the job, failed to report, or given notice, and their businesses have been impacted by these departures. This isn’t just a tire industry issue—and goes beyond the tech shortage that

Tire Industry-Labor Shortage-Great-Resignation

I’ve spoken to many representatives from manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers who report that techs, counter people, drivers and even white-collar team members have walked off the job, failed to report, or given notice, and their businesses have been impacted by these departures. This isn’t just a tire industry issue—and goes beyond the tech shortage that has plagued the industry for decades.

Consider Software Solutions to Streamline Operations

Representatives from several software providers share how solutions drive efficiency and profitability, as well as what to look for when considering a system in your shop.

software-solutions-stock
How Data, Analytics Can Boost Profitability for Tire Retailers

By collecting and analyzing data about a dealer’s sales history, inventory levels and market demand, data and analytics platforms can analyze the performance of each dealer’s store and recommend actionable improvement opportunities.

How to Start the PPP Loan Payback Process

For many PPP loan recipients, it is time to start the repayment process—or file for PPP loan forgiveness. Read on to find out which portion of your loan may be forgivable and how to apply for forgiveness, as well as how to start the repayment process.

Creating a Positive Work Environment

Larry Sutton of RNR Tire Express shares seven different practices that have helped him create a positive work environment.

Other Posts

Michelin sees steady sales volume in 2023 YOY, increases NA market sales

The company said sales for the year amounted to approx. $30.6 billion, down a slight 0.9% from 2022.

Michelin-Magog
Bauer Built reorganizes tire sales division with regional directors

Bauer Built promoted six to new regional director positions to handle customer service and operations across nine Midwest states.

restructure
FCPT Announces Sale-Leaseback of Tire Discounters Properties

Four Corners Property Trust acquired four Tire Discounters properties for $9.1 million.

Handshake agreement
Tire Dealers Have Positive Sales Outlook for the Rest of the Year

Many tire dealers had a great 2022 and have high expectations for the rest of 2023.