American Tire Distributors Inc.’s Tire Pros franchise program has 440 “owner-operators” who represent 609 locations, according to Tire Pros President Greg Bell. He says the group wants 2,000 locations within the next five years. “But I don’t want to stop there.”
The Tire Pros group held its annual meeting last month in Nashville, Tenn., which was “about setting our three-year strategic direction,” says Bell.
“We want to support existing franchises to expand, as well as create new relationships with dealers who would like to join the Tire Pros family.
“We’ve added 25 locations this year through a combination of prospects we’ve brought on (and) we’ve also seen growth through our existing franchises.”
One - Van’s Tire Pros, which is based in northeast Ohio - “has added seven Tire Pros locations over the last 18 months,” notes Bell.
“We’re here to support (our members) and their business needs. The fact that they are independent in their local markets under a nationwide brand has been a great opportunity.
"We work together. It’s not top-driven. We do it collaboratively. They give us feedback when things are going well and I also rely on the them to give us feedback when considering alternative solutions.”
Tire Pros will target dealers in areas where the program currently does not have a presence.
“If you look at a heat map from the Northwest down through California, we have more locations in California than any other state and Texas is a close second. The Southwest - as well as the Southeast - is pretty well-saturated.”
The program wants to push into “newer markets,” like the upper Midwest and Northeast. “We just signed a two-location dealership in Wisconsin. We’re starting to fill in some strategic areas where we lack a little bit of density.”
