Last June, Tire Review challenged design students to rethink the consumer-facing image of the tire store and make shops more welcoming to customers. Design students from Kent State University reimagined the tire store with their own “Shop of the Future” designs featuring rooftop gardens, restaurants, and even a Starbucks.
While the students’ waiting room designs were beautiful, the real moneymakers of the dealerships were missing: the service bays. If the waiting room is the face of your tire dealership, the service bays are the lifeblood.
An efficient service bay area and a welcoming waiting space are key pieces to a successful tire dealership, so this year, Tire Review decided to examine real-world applications tire dealers can do both in the front and in the back of the shop.
Below are links to three real-world locations reimagined by Hunter Engineering Co.’s team:
Colony Tire
Hill County Radiator
Richards Tire
Customer waiting areas were redesigned to be more inviting and consumer friendly. And, the backs of the shops were reshuffled to maximize a technician’s efficiency.
Hunter has created its own “Shop of the Future” program that sends sales reps to locations across the U.S. to help recreate a shop’s layout, all with efficiency and ROI in mind.
Alan Hagerty, inspection product manager for Hunter, notes that a successful shop – and Hunter’s Shop of the Future – consists of four pillars:
1. Facility design – The layout and design of the shop and service bays.
2. Technology – The tools used in the shop; particularly the incorporation of Hunter’s Quick Check inspection system.
3. Process – How you inspect the vehicles every time, how you present information to customer, and how you eventually provide the right conversation talking points to close the sale.
4. Integration – Taking the data, the opportunities identified, and tying it into your customer relationship.
“The facility design, the technology, the process and integration are core to a successful shop of the future and if you remove one, just like a pillar, the overall performance crumbles,” Hagerty says.
Designing the Future
Hunter Engineering helps design a futuristic tire dealership first by optimizing space and updating the layout using software.
“We offer with our local field representatives a full consultative approach that begins cradle to grave and continues after the building has been finished,” Hagerty says.
Starting out, a rep will take initial measurements of a facility. Using software called EC Design, the rep is able to plug and play different aspects of a shop, showing a dealer where equipment best helps workflow in an existing space.
Without any intense remodeling, a Hunter rep can reorganize equipment and integrate Hunter equipment such as the Quick Check system to speed up service checks, creating a high-tech and productive tire store.
“We offer flexible configurations depending on a shop’s needs. Every shop environment is different so we have different mounting configurations, console type sizes. We even go so far as to assist developing 3-D renderings of a shop environment and provide those in different configurations and formats. And, we’ll even help build a facility from the ground up if a customer has drawings or blueprints or ideas. We have the software and the tools,” Hagerty adds.
In about 15 minutes a Hunter rep can have a tire shop layout designed in EC Design to present to the dealer.
Because Hunter’s Shop of the Future doesn’t necessarily mean a full remodel, a shop can rework its pre-existing service bays for maximum efficiency or simply add one new piece of equipment to generate a significant amount of sales.
Technology of the Future
An integral part of the Shop of the Future is Hunter’s Quick Check system that combines technology, process and integration to find more service opportunities fast, while easily communicating results to customers in a transparent manner.
The Quick Check system is very much an à la carte system, allowing dealers to run a series of inspection options, including alignment, brakes, battery, tire pressure and tire tread, and diagnostic codes on the vehicle. Hagerty notes that about 60% of vehicles are actually out of alignment, an opportunity the Quick Check system would pick up.
“With the Quick Check system we offer a vehicle inspection in less than two minutes where a shop can identify needed repair opportunities for a vehicle and generate additional revenue for the shop,” says Hagerty.
After finding additional service opportunities, the Quick Check system also creates a color-coated, customer-friendly report that can be displayed on paper with the customer, or on tablets and TV monitors in the shop.
“With the Quick Check system you are maximizing your opportunities. You’re not missing service or needed repairs for that vehicle, whether it’s the alignment, the tires, or the battery that may be missed during a general visit,” Hagerty adds.
Return on Investment
Dealers looking to integrate the Quick Check system into their own “Shop of the Future” will work with a Hunter rep to determine payback time and ROI.
“It’s all based on a one-on-one consultative approach. We have industry data trends that we’ve observed that we use as a baseline and then we’ll customize that for that particular shop,” Hagerty notes.
Using a template on hunter.com/quickcheckroi, Hunter enters a dealer’s shop numbers to determine what their equipment investment will be, what payback will be in a certain timeframe and what their initial revenue will be over the years.
