Hot, sticky and stormy. That’s a typical June day in south Florida, and it doesn’t make a bad atmosphere to track test some tires. Especially on a brand few have any familiarity with.

Hosting its very first media/dealer ride-and-drive event was TBC Brands, the wholesale distribution and private brand unit of TBC Corp., which is the exclusive U.S. importer and distributor of Sailun brand tires.
On hand, too, were representatives of Sailun’s Canadian distributor Dynamic Tire Corp. The Brampton, Ont., importer and distributor is also serving as the Sailun brand’s marketing representative for North Am-­ erica.

The location selected for the day-long event was Palm Beach International Raceway in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., just a short drive from TBC Corp.’s headquarters.

The event for tire media and select tire dealers included representatives from TBC Brands’ “distribution partners” for Sailun tires: Sullivan Tire & Auto Service, Flynn’s Tire & Auto Service, Les Schwab Tires, and Carroll Tire Co.

Borrowing from a similar media/­dealer driving event hosted in Can­ada earlier this year, the U.S. test drives were done “blind.” That is: the brand and model names were carefully removed from the sidewall of all test tires, and attendees were not told in advance which tire was which.

It didn’t take too much work to figure out which was the Sailun Atrezzo Z4+AS and which was the Continental ContiExtremeContact DWS; the Conti tire, after all, clearly has the initials “DWS” embedded in its tread, while the Sailun center rib carries the Atrezzo model name, as one can see by the photo on the next page.

The ContiExtremeContact DWS and the UHP Sailun tires, in size 225/45R17 and with nearly identical UTQG ratings, were mounted on identical Mercedes C250s, which were used in all three test segments throughout the day.

Brand Details
As vice president of marketing for Dynamic Tire, Brian Mielko is the point person for Sailun’s marketing and promotion efforts in North America, and he offered some background on the company and brand.

Sailun Tire Corp., according to Mielko, is active on six continents and in 50-plus countries, and offers five primary brands. The now publicly traded company, founded in 2002, has plants in Qingdao and Shenyang, China, and a new plant coming in Vietnam, which will give the company a combined annual capacity of 30 million passenger and light truck/SUV units.

In his presentation, Mielko stated that, “quality has no connection to a country or origin, but is directly related to the factory of origin,” a distinction Dynamic and TBC are working hard to help customers understand.

It’s important to Sailun and its North American efforts because it sees itself as a “value tier” brand along with such familiar names as Uniroyal, GT Radial, Hercules and others. Tier 3 – the value tier – carries some 24.3% of the North American consumer tire market. “Sailun has access to at least 50% of the market because of its value proposition,” the company claims, but, by and large, consumers “are uneducated about ‘value tier’ products.”

To Mielko and his team, the brand’s selling proposition to dealers and consumers is three-fold:

• Quality – “in every function and at every level”

• Trust – “earned through our commitment to our long-term goals and an understanding of our customers”

• Support – “for those we work for before, during and after any interaction”

One of those customers is TBC Brands, and Jon Vance, TBC Brands senior director of marketing, sees Sailun as a “product and partner that has a legacy of confidence, quality and performance.

“They understand that to succeed here and meet customer needs, you need to have a complete program,” Vance offered. “They are delivering game-changing products you just don’t see from a value tier supplier.”
Mielko, who joined Dynamic Tire 15 months ago from outside the tire industry, said, “I’m not saying we’re better than, say, Michelin, but the average consumer will get more than enough from our products.”

Mielko said that Sailun is not a “typical” Chinese tire company. The brand’s “North American engineering team” – primarily with Dynamic Tire – develops tire designs and desired performance parameters and then works with teams at Sailun in China to create and produce the final product. Every tire is tested for uniformity.

These are tires developed in North America for North American dealers and drivers, Sailun officials said.
The quality-trust-support is further paced by Sailun’s unique five-year workmanship warranty, he said. The way it chooses to do business, the products it offers and the support it provides, Mielko said, made it easy to arrive at Sailun’s new “With You Through Every Turn” tagline.

The takeaway at both the Canada and Florida events was the same: Don’t judge a tire based on its country of origin. “Many top shelf brands produce tires in China, and seem to go out of their way to hide that fact,” Mielko said. “Sailun is proud of its home country, its team and its products.”

Tire Offerings and Features
Sailun’s consumer tire lineup includes:

• Atrezzo SH402, an all-season performance radial with 37 sizes covering 13- through 16-inch wheel diameters

• Atrezzo Touring LS, an all-season touring line with 25 sizes over 14- through 17-inch wheel diameters

• Atrezzo SVR LX, a recently launched high performance SUV tire with 15 total sizes over 20- to 24-inch wheel diameters

• Terramax HT, an all-season light truck/SUV tire with 22 P-metric and LT-metric sizes over 15- to 17-inch wheel diameters

• Terramax AT, an on-/off-road light truck radial with 20 sizes ranging from 15- to 17-inch wheel diameters

• The new Terramax CVR, an all-season tire for luxury crossovers with 18 sizes covering 15- to 20-inch wheel diameters

Also in the Sailun offerings are two winter tires: Iceblazer WSL2 and Iceblazer WST1.

Capturing most of the event’s attention was the new Atrezzo Z4+AS, an all-season UHP line, and the UHP Atrezzo ZS-R.

The actual driving part of the event included routes on public roads – complete with cops and gators – near the track; a multi-discipline wet/dry set-up with a slalom, hard cornering, evasive maneuver and hard braking activities; followed by hot laps around PBIR’s two-mile road course, with top speeds around 80-90 mph.

The tires were not UHP radials and the cars were of the standard street variety, but that didn’t stop the participants from pushing the tires as hard as they could.

After a participant returned from an in-car exercise, marketing folks converged to collect driver impressions on both tires. End-of-the-day feedback from the participants was that the Sailun tire acquitted itself well compared to the Continental product.