Pirelli Tire North America (PTNA) Inc. has opened a new original equipment (OE) sales office in Southfield, Mich., a Detroit suburb.
"It was important for us to be physically present with an office in Detroit," says PTNA President and CEO Carlo Bianconi. "We are aggressively pursuing new contracts with a number of major car companies based in Detroit."
Currently, PTNA does not enjoy OE brand share in the United States and Canadian markets, according to Modern Tire Dealer statistics. However, it has captured 1% of the domestic replacement passenger tire market and 1.5% of the domestic replacement light truck tire market.
"We fully expect our strategy to gain OE market share in North America to begin to show positive results very soon," Bianconi says.
PTNA's Southfield OE office will be headed by John Hagan, director of OE sales; David Ortoli, OE technical account manager; and Paul Belloni, manager of testing engineering.
