The 2024 Big O Tires‘ conference and convention took place in New Orleans, LA, from March 18-20 at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. Over three days, roughly 60 TBC corporate support members and 50 vendor partners joined franchisees from across the country for a series of sessions featuring presentations from representatives of Big O Tires and TBC Corp.

The event also showcased new winners of the Standing O awards and welcomed a new member into the companies’ Hall of Fame. Additionally, attendees had the opportunity to explore a trade show and participate in breakout sessions focusing on fleet management and new training tools available to Big O Tires’ locations and staff.

2023 sales growth and future outlook

In his opening remarks, Gary Skidmore, senior vice president and general manager for Big O Tires, highlighted the brand’s 2023 achievements, which included average store sales exceeding $2.7 million and total chain store sales over $1.28 billion. He applauded franchisees for delivering over 7% retail sales growth and a 10% increase in gross profit.

According to Skidmore, more than 40% of Big O Tires’ stores had a double-digit retail increase and 80% had an increase in sales. In 2023, Skidmore said both the daily average car count and tire units increased slightly, as Big O Tires’ locations serviced almost 3.9 million cars and sold almost 3.2 million tires.

“We want to go from good to great as a franchisor,” Skidmore said. “Big O Tires has had more than 10 years of retail sales growth and we want to continue the momentum. We have aggressive growth plans and are focused on increasing your profitability and same-store sales. This doesn’t happen overnight. To accomplish this, we are taking a measured approach and building for the future by giving you the tools you need to grow.”

Skidmore said one aspect of those growth plans includes opening new franchise stores and providing incentives for folks who do so, including reduced royalties and marketing funds offered for franchisees to open additional locations. He emphasized the importance of fostering stronger relationships with existing customers and increasing car count to drive growth. This, he said, involves delivering high-quality products and services consistently, prioritizing customer satisfaction and empowering customers in decision-making.

“We need to continue playing to our strengths and our commitment to having skilled technicians who are honest and empower our customers in their decision-making process,” he explained. “Yes, tires are our bread and butter and an important part of our business, but we need to continue to educate our existing customers so they know our menu expands beyond tires and that we can service the entire car.”

Part of the Big O Tires’ growth plan also includes investment into digital training through Today’s Class, a mobile training platform that uses AI to identify and eliminate knowledge gaps by offering automotive technician training in just five minutes every day.

“In 2022, you completed a franchise satisfaction survey and told us training needed to be improved,” Skidmore said. “We listened to your feedback and, after much due diligence, we are making a significant investment in the new learning management system.”

During a breakout session on the new training program, David Boyes, president of Today’s Class, gave a live demonstration of the app, which will roll out on April 1. The app includes just four short questions per day, educating technicians and staff in small increments instead of long-form training sessions.

Darrell Jackson, senior manager of franchise learning and development for Big O Tires, said the program has a monthly cost of $150 per store, but Big O will pay that back to any store with a participation rate of over 30%.

Marketing and brand refresh

Patricia del Aguila, TBC’s VP of marketing and merchandising, said Big O Tires wants to grow its production of its Big Foot A/T II and the Legacy All-Season Plus tires, originally announced in 2022. She said these tires made up just over 17% of all tires shipped to Big O locations in the last four months, with a goal of 20% in the next 12 months.

“We are working with Nitto Tire and Toyo Tires on the development of 12 new Big Foot A/T II and 16 new Legacy All-Season Plus sizes, which we hope to deliver in 2025,” she said.

Aguila also announced a new partnership with Pricemoov, which she said will deliver more effective retail pricing solutions for Big O locations.

“Soon the days of receiving recommended retail prices via email in Excel format will be gone and so will the wait every two weeks to update your prices,” Aguila said.

In 2022, Big O Tires launched the “Trust Legends” ad campaign which highlighted trust, value and convenience as its key themes for the company. Following exposure to this campaign, Aguila said there was a notable increase in customers’ likelihood to consider Big O Tires and, by late 2023, the campaign had boosted ad awareness and brand recognition. Due to its success, she said Big O Tires is launching “Trust Legends 2.0” to further emphasize these values and strengthen customer trust, particularly focusing on relationships as a key component.

She then unveiled Big O’s comprehensive brand refresh initiatives, including a new brand guide, signage standards and redesigned store concepts – all aimed at elevating brand recognition and building customer trust.

“The vision was to evolve our look and feel, stay relevant in a changing environment, appeal to new demographics, revitalize our identity and address negative associations,” she explained.

Franchisee questions panel

Tim Washburn, division VP at Big O Tires, introduced a panel on stage to answer some questions directly from Big O Tires franchisees. Washburn was joined by Don Byrd, chief strategy and marketing officer for TBC; Darryl Maraj, chief technology officer at TBC; Chris Stearman, chief supply chain officer at TBC; and Gary Skidmore.

One of the questions pertained to Big O Tires’ stated goal to double franchisee gross profit in five years and how the panel plans to execute on those plans.

“What we’ve done over the last six months is we’ve methodically gone through and looked at our prior five years of sales,” Skidmore explained. “We know where our strengths were as far as car count, tire unit growth, wholesale tires, the mix of products and all these various items, and we’ve examined those. But where do we see us going over the next five years and how do we get there?”

“I think when marketing, there needs to be a car count machine that is building more traffic for you. Our car count has been good, but it needs to be better,” Byrd said. “Honestly, we’re all on notice that we need to be working together, to work with you to do better driving car count to essentially one more car per day every year for the next five years. That’s how we go from around 26 to above 30 per day. Do we know how to do that yet? No, because if we did, we’d probably be doing it already. I don’t know that we completely know how to do it, but it means that we can’t be comfortable just continuing to do the same thing because we need different results.”

“A big part of it is transparency,” Maraj said. “How are we enabling our franchisees to be as transparent with their customers? Because one thing you hear a lot at this conference is trust and empowerment. Trust and empowerment come with transparency. How are we helping you to be more transparent with your customers?”

“When you have a car in your bay, we can’t disappoint that customer,” Stearman said. “So that’s primary mission number one. Making sure that we’re positioning inventory appropriately to service the varying needs of all the business owners in this room is of critical importance.”

The panel also answered questions about when TBC Big O representatives will be back to full staff levels, when dealers can expect more inventory on entry-level, low-cost products that compete with some other competitive offerings available in warehouses, distribution of inventory and technology advancements within the next five years.

Standing O Award winners and new Hall of Fame member

During her presentation, Aguila presented Big O Tires’ first Standing O award to Matt Story, an owner/operator of a Big O Tires store in Louisville, CO, and is involved in the ownership group of two other locations.

“We are so happy to recognize those people who consistently give that extra effort to the organization, to everyone they work with and support,” she said. “They’re the core of everything we do.”

Washburn presented the second Standing O award winner, Jose Perez, and Skidmore presented the third and final Standing O award winner, Jason Kassing.

Finishing off the general session, Big O Tires inducted longtime franchisee, Scott Koldenhoven, into the Big O Tires Hall of Fame.