Turbo is Focused on Growth of Brands

Turbo Wholesale Tires LLC is laser-focused on growing its Lexani, Lionhart and Rolling Big Power brands, according to Phillip Kane, the company’s CEO.

"We are here to grow our brands - and the brands we partner with - and want to work together with people who are committed to helping us do just that,” Kane recently told MTD.

He said Turbo’s “most significant area of investment” over the last few years has been in new product development. “In just the last two years, across our own three brands and dedicated products we are building for others, Turbo has announced and launched some 20 new lines in every industry category, except OTR and race.

"Even with all that, we’re not stopping. Based on customer requests, we have a half-dozen programs in our pipeline for delivery in the second half of this year or the first half of next, including a commercial van tire for Rolling Big Power, the seventh line in a brand that consisted of only a handful of mud tire sizes when we got here.”

Currently shipping are “entirely new all-Season, A/T, and H/T tires in Lionhart, part of the complete makeover of the (Lionhart) brand we started early this year. These are beautiful tires that have common design and branding elements across the three lines, creating a true and attractive power line for retailers. Early customer and consumer acceptance to just the first phase release has been overwhelmingly positive.

"We’ve also worked hard up to now to achieve success for our third-party brand partners as well, despite a down market and difficult sales environment, particularly for tier-one and tier-two products."

Thoughts on distribution

Kane told MTD that the highlight of Turbo’s 2025 has been the sale of its four Midwest distribution centers to K&M Tire Inc., a deal that closed this past May. Three of the warehouses are located in Michigan. The other is located in Hammond, Ind. (Turbo maintains a large distribution center in Irwindale, Calif., the company's home base.)

When private equity group Kingswood Capital Management first invested in Turbo three years ago, “we were very clear about the fact that we were interested in growing brand share, not distribution share," said Kane. "We have been dialing in the focus increasingly as time has gone on and I’m pleased to say that we’ve been tremendously successful doing so.

"With brand share as our goal, we contribute to the growth and profitability of the many regional distributors who make up our core customer set,” he continued. “If distribution share were our goal, we’d simply be competing with them. We have zero interest in that. All that said, actions speak louder than words and I think the sale of our Midwest warehouses to K&M Tire make this focus of ours clear to the market and hopefully demonstrate to our customers and prospective customers that our mission is to help them grow their businesses.” 

Ignite has ignited

Kane said Turbo will also continue to invest heavily in its Turbo Ignite associate dealer program, which was launched in early-2024.

Ignite, he noted, “has exceeded our every expectation. By now, we have some 800 dealers signed up and actively engaged in the program. I’m purposely using the word 'engaged.' Our goal at the outset was to prioritize quality over quantity. We didn’t want sign-ups for the sake of sign-ups. We were looking for dealers who were truly interested in programming our brands and growing with us.

"As a secondary benefit, a number of our distributors who, before Ignite, were not program distributors, per sé, have learned the value of program selling and have become very effective with our and other programs. It’s also attracted program-oriented distributors who were not previously associated with our brands to do business with us.

"I think the tremendous simplicity of Ignite, which was one of our primary program goals, has made these things possible. It’s a program that distributors want to represent and that dealers want to be a part of."

Turbo management has "a number of enhancements planned for Ignite as we look toward (the 2025) SEMA (Show) and 2026, including some potential alliances that will be revolutionary in our industry.” 

Industry outlook

“I think that after some uncertainty in the first half of the year, stronger fundamentals are returning to the economy and accordingly, to our industry,” Kane told MTD. “Consumer confidence is higher than it’s been since anyone can remember. The employment numbers look good and GDP is strong. And inflation is falling. People are out spending money.

"The pace of retail consolidation has slowed and independent tire dealers are doing well. Some help from the Fed would be nice, but we think things look good for a strong second half in consumer. And with buyers continuing to trade down, that makes us doubly happy.”

The condition of the commercial truck tire market “seems to be another story. Even with a strengthening economy, freight metrics are not good. Fleets are continuing to cancel equipment orders at very high rates. Artificial intelligence and other technologies are helping deliver step change improvements in miles to removal. And the hangover from the pre-tariff tire buys - coupled with the continued confusion wrought by the moving target of these reciprocal tariffs - seems to have the entire ecosystem buying only on an as-needed basis.

"Like many industries, tariffs seem to have been the number-one challenge in our industry this year,” said Kane. “Unlike some of our peers, we made a conscious decision not to become paralyzed and continue to make decisions and execute with conviction. While I can’t say we’ve been perfect, we took this approach with our customers and partners in mind and it has served us well, including earning us more share.”

In addition to ongoing investment in products and brands, Kane added that Turbo will continue to invest in marketing, including sponsorships, similar to companies that are “two tiers above us. These associations are important to our customers and are meaningful for our brands. We intend to keep moving faster in this regard to give our customers even greater advantage.”