Staggering Results: Stocking and Selling Innovative Products Can Boost Profits
Over the next few months, you will be reading a great deal about who had the biggest, most expensive or most outrageously modified product or vehicle at the SEMA show. Sure, it all looks good, but how will it help you grow your business? I want to take a different approach and tell you about
Looming Mandate: Without Help, Dealers Face Dark Future. How Will You Cope?
To many in the tire industry, TPMS is a four-letter acronym that is quickly becoming a four-letter word. That goes for retail dealers and, soon, consumers alike. But these people are only considering the hassles involved with servicing tire/wheel assemblies featuring these gizmos. Look a little deeper, and you’ll see the potential for independent tire
Hanging High and Dry: Blurred ‘Facts’ Leave Dealers to Answer Consumer Fuel Economy, Aging Questions
Ford. DaimlerChrysler. NADA. Sean Kane. California. Massachusetts. Sen. Chuck Schumer. Four think old tires are a plague. Three are convinced OE tires are highly fuel-efficient. Nice to be loved, isn’t it? TPMS regulations aside, this industry – tiremakers and dealers – faces two major issues: tire aging and tire fuel efficiency. Last year, California enacted
Roll Over? Never!: Vigilance, Skill, Backbone Needed to Deflect Ongoing Tire Criticism
Despite the obvious political expediency – 2000 was an election year, after all – the TREAD Act wasn’t about penalizing wrong-doers, enhancing standards, improving technology or even getting a better handle on occasional problems. No, the real reason behind the TREAD Act, if you really think about it, is quite basic: People are ignorant about
10 Sales Smashers: Avoid These Common Missteps to Ensure Solid Sales Growth and Content Customers
Retail business can be brutal. A tire dealer can spend countless hours contemplating broad business strategy, making sure each facet of the business is in line with overall profitability goals. But you don’t sell to a plan. You have to deal with real customers who, by their nature, are fickle, demanding and unforgiving. No matter
Badge of Honor: Tire/Wheel Certification Offers Customer-Capturing Credibility
What is your impression of someone who has a professional certification? Admiration? Perhaps respect for the achievement or recognition? When you’re being treated for a common cold, do you go to a first-year med student because it isn’t a life threatening illness? Of course not! You see a licensed professional, such as a doctor or
Service or Secrets?
Do you remember Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX)? Of course not. But he was the one who introduced the Right to Repair Act (H.R. 2735) on the floor of Congress back in 2001.
Wheel Anatomy: Part III
In the last of a series of three articles about how different types of wheels are made, we now turn our focus to three-piece designs. What are three-piece wheels? And, what is so great about them? As the name states, this type of wheel is an assembly of three components. Like a two-piece wheel, the
Significantly Deflating
Percentages are funny things. Sometimes they work for you, sometimes not. Take the figure 25%, for example. If you are right only 25% of the time, you’re either the parent of a teenager or in government service. If you’re wrong 25% of the time, you qualify for management. A profit increase of 25% means you
Here We Go Again
Once again, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued proposed regulations requiring vehicles to be equipped with tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS), this time by 2007.