All men (and women) may have been created equal, but that is not the case with tire industry news.
If that news is about you and your business, it’s the most vital information in the world. If it’s about one of your suppliers or a competitor, then you’d be rightly interested. A new product or option or concept? Certainly deserves your interest. Something off-beat? Well, we all need a laugh, don’t we?
News has always been around, and the amount and value has not changed even as delivery systems have. Based on declining readership, the experts say that newspapers are a dying breed, but that has not diminished the sheer volume of news. If anything, it has intensified. And that has certainly been the case in the tire world – primarily because we cover the world.
Back when I first started covering this industry, we worked within the four walls of the U.S. There was plenty of meat then, to be sure, what with dozens of tire companies (companies, not just brands) and quite a few thousand more dealers and other retail tire outlets all making hay. Of course, everything moved slowly; there were no cell phones or laptops, and the fax was still a new concept. We had landline telephones and snail mail.
Today, our “beat” has expanded from every street corner in America to virtually every street corner in every country on the planet. There are more companies, more products, more suppliers, more of everything – and it is all important, especially to the one sending the news. Envelopes (and many phone calls) have been replaced by the Internet and e-mail, which has brought us more and more and more important news from around the globe.
The same technologies that bring us more news faster also demand we deliver more news faster.
The news matters. About your business, your people, your successes, even your tragedies. That’s why we dedicate so much to gathering and delivering the most up-to-date tire industry news that we can each day on our website (tirereview.com) and via our free e-newsletter. On any given day we are finding, writing and posting anywhere from 10 to 30 breaking stories, analysis pieces and even blog posts, delivering both a macro- and micro-view of the tire industry.
And it truly runs the gamut, from lawsuits to job promotions, new plants or plant closures, tire thieves to tire engineers – and everything in between, around or near the tire world.
Yes, we continue to publish news stories in our monthly print issues, and we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Those items are the highlights from the month prior – “old” news by the time you read it in this format. The freshest news runs online five days a week, 52 weeks each year, and every day by 11 a.m. eastern (usually before 10 a.m.).
If you don’t already do so, I urge you to spend some time at tirereview.com, not just to check out the news each day (though that is a great way to stay up-to-date on your business), but to peruse the vast collection of articles on tires, markets, vehicle service, sales and marketing ideas, new products, industry events (state/province, national and international), finance and insurance, business operations, human resources and so much more.
Plus, there are years and years of back issues of Tire Review for the asking. Oh, and the industry’s largest, most comprehensive Buyer’s Guide, organized by both company name and product category. Thousands of dealers and tire company folks from around the world hit our website each and every day – more than 100,000 page views each month!
In the upper right-hand corner of our homepage, you will see a place where you can register to receive the Tire Review World Tire Report – our daily e-newsletter that is delivered to your computer each weekday. Free. Totally, absolutely free. Each issue is packed with the top news stories and commentary of the day, and has become the industry’s “go-to” daily news source. Did I mention that it’s free?
We know that you get a lot of junk e-mail and spam, and we certainly don’t want to contribute to that with faux “stop the presses” news and endless strings of e-mailings. That’s why the WTR is published just once a day, every business day (except for holidays). Try it – just as thousands of your colleagues already have – and you’ll like it. And if you don’t, you can always unsubscribe. It’s totally free, so how can you go wrong?
The other important thing we want you to know is that your news is important to us.
New store? Expansion? Awards? Remodeling? Whatever is going on, please let us know. Send your news to me at [email protected] and/or to managing editor Denise Koeth at [email protected]. We’ll make sure to spread the word!
