On the heels of a fiscal fourth quarter that resulted in a loss of $21.2 million, Monro Inc.’s new President and CEO Peter Fitzsimmons has unveiled the initial steps of an improvement plan, which will include closing 145 unprofitable stores and scaling back its tire brand portfolio.
The plan includes four key areas of focus:
- Closing unprofitable stores;
- Improving the customer experience and selling effectiveness;
- Driving profitable customer acquisition and activation; and
- Increasing merchandising productivity and mitigating tariff risk.
Here’s how Monro outlined each of the four concentrations.
Closing unprofitable stores: In the eight weeks Fitzsimmons has been on the job, Monro has conducted a “comprehensive’ review of its store portfolio and found 145 “underperforming stores” it will prioritize for closure.
With 1,260 total stores in its footprint as of the end of the company's fiscal fourth quarter, the 145 closures represent 11.5% of Monro's total rooftops.
The review included an evaluation of store performance, market segmentation and geographic area specific to each location. Plans are in process to close these locations during the first quarter of fiscal 2026 — so by end of June 2025.
“(The) closure of these stores will have a limited impact on total sales,” but they are “expected to deliver meaningful improvement to profitability,” Monro said.
Improving the customer experience and selling effectiveness: Monro reviewed stores across its portfolio “to understand the store experience from both the customer and teammate perspective.” The company found that customers had “an uneven experience” mostly due to inconsistent execution of core processes, “including scheduling and appointments, communication and quality of service.”
Monro is working to develop an approach that addresses customer pain points in a way to “improve the customer experience and unlock value in selling effectiveness.” The company will continue to utilize its ConfiDrive initiative as part of the in-store experience.
Driving profitable customer acquisition and activation: A review shows a “recent decline” in quality and retention of customers. Monro believes the cause is less-than-optimal marketing. The company’s analysis shows that “Monro’s highest value customers deliver 25-times more profit than our lowest tier of customers.”
So Monro is reallocating marketing resource to target more of those customers, and says the early results of those efforts are “encouraging.” The company will also do more testing of its marketing.
Increasing merchandising productivity and mitigating tariff risk: Monro will narrow its core tire brand offerings “which will simplify the in-store selling process for both customers and teammates.” Fitzsimmons noted the company will still have access to any tire that a customer might specifically request, but this effort will focus on decreasing the size of its core portfolio.
Monro is also reviewing its pricing and promotions for both tires and services to provide both value to customers as well as “appropriate levels of profitability.”
Additionally, Monro has activated an internal team to focus on negotiations with top suppliers “to mitigate as much of the anticipated tariffs as possible” as Monro expects tariffs to drive cost increases in “most product categories.”
“We expect that we may need to adjust prices to our customers to counter the impact of tariff-related cost increases.”
