The centres are being developed with recent TAFF wholesale award winners Group Tyre (UK) Ltd.

McMartin describes the Maxxis Centres of Excellence programme as a key element of U.K. growth strategy. While the Maxxis brand is already well known within the industry and particularly strong in sectors like motorcycle and speciality, the move to develop a retail network is seen as the company’s pathway towards increased passenger car/4×4 market penetration.

The first step towards this goal was to publicise the company’s presence and promote its plans by exhibiting at the recent Brityrex International show in Manchester. With strong positioning by the entrance, bright colours, and the presence of Maxxis girls, no visitor could attend the show without being impacted by the Maxxis presence. Group Tyre representatives were equally pleased to see the promotion of the Maxxis brand and therefore the new Centres of Excellence scheme.

“The Maxxis stand was very impressive and reiterated the extent to which Maxxis is investing in the brand and showed it is serious about growing its share of the U.K.’s PCR market,” said Karl Naylor, director of commercial operations at Group Tyre UK. “We were also delighted to discuss the key commercial opportunities that will benefit Maxxis Centres of Excellence and are following up with dealers who indicated they were interested in signing up,” he continued.

A host of sales and marketing benefits are on offer to any dealers that are interested in becoming Centres of Excellence. Key features include a wide range of high quality, high visibility point of sale material, high profile Centre of Excellence signage and useful product and strategy information.

According to McMartin, any such retailers would receive Maxxis-branded signage which includes a wide range of signs and banners, designed to generate a clear image and increase exposure, resulting in better customer footfall and therefore sales. One of the items offered on joining the Centres of Excellence programme is a foamex board to position outside the retail outlet, which is personalised with the outlet’s name, opening times and a list of the products/services the outlet offers. In addition to this, theoretically unlimited amounts of signage can be made available to participating dealers, but the exact amount and positioning of it will be determined in cooperation with the relevant Group Tyre business development manager in the area.

These will be supported by a range of slick point-of-sale material and a range of Maxxis-brand goodies for staff.

There is very strong competition within the PCR sector, but after operating in the U.K. for 12 years the Maxxis management team has decided that it is now that the company can achieve growth by nurturing extensive distribution across the U.K.

In recent months Maxxis has taken its sponsorship work up a gear. What started with boards and banners at Aston Villa FC and the British Motocross Championship has now grown to include more high profile events, most recently the British Supersport Motorcyle championship.

In addition, Maxxis is planning to use a range of marketing tools including the Internet to help direct some of its current loyal ATV and motorbike customers towards the car tyre ranges. All this comes on the back of successful tyre test results in Auto Express in the UK, and test wins in Australia’s Wheels magazine.

Sales will be further supported by a lifetime guarantee programme. This graduated scheme sees the manufacturer replace any accidentally damaged tyre with more than 80 per cent of its tread remaining free of charge. There is then a sliding discount scale for consumers with between 80 and 20 per cent of tread depth left before the tyre failure. The guarantee covers damage caused by normal road use, and is in addition to the industry standard guarantee against manufacturing faults.

Not a lot of returns are expected however, as, according to McMartin, on a global scale Maxxis has the highest quality control procedures in place demanded to meet OE requirements.

All Maxxis Centres, both existing Group Tyre account holders and new customers, will benefit from a complete one-stop service, which includes competitive pricing, same-day deliveries (from at least twice a day for all Maxxis Centres and up to an hourly delivery service in certain locations), staff training, carcass removal and stock management support.