Mercer, Pa.-based Flynn’s Tire Wholesale met with 105 of its dealers in late March to unveil several of its new marketing programs.
The meeting at the Marriott Hotel in Cranberry Township, Pa., drew 53 of Flynn’s Tire dealers and was hosted by Shaun Fitzgerald, general manager of Flynn’s Tire Wholesale Division.
After opening remarks were presented by president Joe Flynn III, Fitzgerald introduced Matt Peters and Rob Rupert of E-Solutions Professionals, and together they rolled out details of the new cooperative website – family-tires.com – to the group.
The website was conceived to serve Flynn’s Tire independent dealer customers, and will serve as base for all tire inventory information the individual dealers can use for their own e-commerce websites with their own specific pricing. Each dealer participating with the website will appear on the site’s dealer locator.
Peters explained that famliy-tires.com will be heavily promoted through a “strategic and aggressive search engine optimization campaign.”
As Peters said, “This will be employed to position this website at or near the top of several of the most popular search engines for customers looking for tires online. Once an online shopper reaches the website, they can then choose from any of the dealers listed there and get specific tire prices from a specific store.
“We have designed this website to be clean, simple and extremely user friendly,” Peters said. “It’s a well-known fact that most tire buyers research tires online before buying. Family-tires.com will help even the smallest independent tire dealer to be positioned near the top when people do search for tires.”
In addition to the store-specific tire pricing, addresses, phone numbers and maps to each of the participating stores can be found on the website. If the store has its own website, the URL link for it will also be listed. In addition, general information about tire inflation, tread depth, flat tires and descriptions of auto repair services are featured on the site.
Rupert presented price mark-up enhancements that were recently added to the current Flynn’s Tire Wholesale dealer website – flynntire.tireloop.com. He explained how the enhancements functioned within that website and how they interact with the family-tires.com website.
John Hobbing from ASA Automotive Systems briefed the group on the latest updates to the ASA point-of-sale software.
Later in the meeting, Fitzgerald, Tim Brennan and Jeff Wonderling of Flynn’s Tire introduced three new associate dealer programs available to dealers, including the Nexen Nitro Program, the Sumitomo Select Program and the Towmax STR Program. They then reviewed the ongoing Goodyear G3Xpress and Yokohama Advantage programs.
Fitzgerald also explained how Flynn’s independent dealers can earn a free trip to Dublin, Ireland, in April 2013. Dealers qualify by earning points toward the trip by purchasing tires from Flynn’s Tire Wholesale.
Established in 1964, Flynn’s Tire Group operates 18 retail Flynn’s Tire & Auto Service stores in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, as well as four tire warehouses in both states, and five commercial truck tire centers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.
