Would you consider your business model average? Probably not. But you can learn a lot about your business when you benchmark your profile against the average dealer.
That’s what our annual Facts Issue is all about. It is full of information that will help you compare your numbers with the rest of the U.S. Take pricing, for example. We break down average advertised pricing for a number of popular sizes. One size in particular, 265/70R17, lists the national average by region, tire type (winter), price point (good, better, best) and online pricing.
Here’s how we define the “average” independent tire dealer. He or she:
- handles an average of 13.3 tire brands;
- employs five technicians per store;
- averages seven service bays per store;
- derives 46% of sales from automotive service.
Over the course of 2017, 25% of you either added or dropped one or more brands, which is a strong indication of not only your independence, but also the availability of profitable tire brands.
How strong is the independent tire dealer channel in the U.S.? As a group it controls 245,000 service bays and employs almost 175,000 techs, half of whom are ASE-certified. It also performs $25 billion worth of automotive service annually.
Independent tire dealers represent 61.5% of the passenger tires sold directly to the consumer. That totals 127 million tires; the next largest tire retail group, mass merchandisers, accounts for direct sales of 24 million tires.
When you take wholesaling into account, and give credit to the dealer selling to the retailer who then sells the tire to the consumer, independents dominate even more.
And these numbers are not the result of large dealers skewing the data. Close to 60% of the 29,000 independent tire dealers in the U.S. are single-store owners, more than enough to keep the figures statistically relevant.
So enjoy MTD’s analysis of the 2017 domestic tire industry, and find out how successful you really are! — Bob Ulrich
