As consumer expectations climb and the prestige automobile market segment grows, Pirelli has translated its luxury-brand approach into a new retail pilot store, P Zero World, opening today in Los Angeles. The shop combines retail, service and corporate offices into a single location for faster development and business practice testing to better customer engagement.
Located on Santa Monica Boulevard near Beverly Hills, the 8,000-square-foot, three-bay location features state-of-the-art equipment, luxury retail design and includes an open concept waiting area complete with iconic rare supercars, an espresso bar, and store displays to showcase Pirelli’s additional product lines, motorsport history and OE partnerships.
The company chose Los Angeles for its first location as it has the highest concentration of luxury and sports cars in the world. Geotargeting and advanced digital marketing approaches will be used to appropriately connect consumers with the brand and its dealers.
Pirelli is partnering with Claus Ettensberger of CEC Wheels fame to manage the retail sales at P Zero World. Ettensberger is well known by luxury car enthusiasts in the Beverly Hills area. “The location aims to deliver a unique shopping experience catered directly to high-end automotive enthusiasts. His knowledge of the market and its clientele is indispensable in our new endeavor,” said Paul Hembery, Pirelli global motorsports and prestige project director.
The new P Zero World is a continuation of strategy to maintain and increase Pirelli’s market share for the high and very high end vehicle segment, highlighting their “perfect fit” philosophy of made-to-measure tires developed for each specific vehicle model in collaboration with the car makers’ own engineers, the tiremaker said.
“This new venture is part of an aggressive growth plan for Pirelli in North America and beyond,” said Pierluigi Dinelli, CEO and chairman of Pirelli Tire North America. “P Zero World also speaks to a key part of Pirelli’s unique approach to the market – the strong expression of our corporate identity, which is tied deeply to both the innovative and the experiential. This new initiative brings the concept full circle with retail at the very heart of the brand.”
According to Rafael Navarro, senior vice president of prestige automotive, motorsports and communications, the company plans to take time to test and learn before rolling out concepts to their dealer base.
“I expect it will take about six months to roll out what we learn to our other dealers,” he said. Navarro added that this concept is not as a threat to the existing dealer base, but a means to gain a stronger connection with the Pirelli customer to learn more about how to serve them better so that knowledge can be transferred for better brand advocacy.
Additional P Zero World locations are planned. Though Navarro would not disclose specific future locations, he said they will center around areas of high concentration of high-end luxury vehicle ownership globally.
