Darren Thomas, president and CEO of Dunlop Tires North America (DTNA), discusses plans for the company's Dunlop and Falken brands in this MTD exclusive.

MTD: Can you bring us up to speed on DTNA’s business so far in 2026?

Thomas: The question I’m sure that’s on a lot of people’s minds is, ‘How is our Dunlop launch going?’ Launching an upper tier-two/lower tier-one brand that hasn’t been in the marketplace for quite some time is not a simple proposition. Though we’ve had great response from our independent dealers and very good support from our national and regional distributors, the primary obstacle has simply been our ability to provide the quantity of products the marketplace needs for a good retailer to make a jump from an existing brand they’re doing business with over to the Dunlop brand. It’s not as if we haven’t had our share of success. It’s not as if our KPIs (key performance indicators) we’ve had by channel have not been achieved. But holistically, it’s difficult to measure the launch of a brand when you launch with one product that, let’s say, has 80 sizes (in total) and you launch 45 of those.

The market’s competitive. It needs full ranges. Salespeople need to be able to depend on a product line from one size to another. It hasn’t been an uphill battle in terms of product acceptance. That’s been good. The ongoing challenge that our company will have is just the ability to continue to develop products at a tier-one level, considering the strides tier-one brands have made in launching new categories and just the overall industry’s willingness to switch to lower-tier products because of the economic environment the U.S. is in at the moment.

It’s been a combination of a lot of different competing issues that have just made it a challenging time to launch a new brand. We didn’t expect it to be a simple thing. But we’re up for the task. We still have the Falken brand, which obviously is the main driver of our business, and we’re not losing sight of that. So we just have to be realistic that this is additive to our business. It’s an investment in our business for the long-term. For us to expect all of the rewards and all of the success to come in the first quarter or first half of the year of having the Dunlop brand ... that would be somewhat naive. So we have a realistic view.

MTD: Last December, DTNA introduced its first Dunlop brand tire, the Blue Response A/S. What does the Dunlop brand’s North American product roadmap look like? Can you give us a preview of some new Dunlop products that are in the pipeline?

Thomas: What I can say is it’s going to be a full suite of products. We don’t expect to launch the Dunlop brand and just assume dealers are going to come rushing to the table to buy them simply because of the name on the tire. The products have to stand on their own. They have to compete in their segment. They have to make sense for retailers in terms of margin. They have to make sense for distributors in terms of wholesale margins. All of the standard things that every other manufacturer has to deal with, we have to deal with. We’re just going to have to figure out for the Dunlop brand what it means to be successful in tier-one because we do not have a distribution channel that we control – nor do we need that in today’s marketplace.

MTD: How will DTNA accomplish this?

Thomas: It’s going to be through innovation. What we’re doing with Synchro Weather and Active Tread and the other new technologies that are coming out of SRI (Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd., DTNA’s parent company) are going to be the backbone of what happens with the Dunlop brand. So we just need to allow these products to come to market. We have faith that they’re going to perform how our parent company says they’re going to perform, technology-wise. We need to allow innovation to be what drives the Dunlop brand, combined with a legacy of brand awareness and our connection to motorsports and our other tier-one tennis and golf products. That should give us a great suite of assets to drive the brand forward. It’s through products and it’s through those products having some legitimate amount of innovation that makes them have real equity in tier-one.

MTD: We’ve heard that Dunlop brand tires are now being sold through American Tire Distributors (ATD). Can you confirm that?

Thomas: ATD has taken on the brand completely. We have a unique commercial relationship with ATD that we’re really proud of and has done a good job for us. We also have great relationships with other national distributors. It’s no secret that each large national distributor has its own strategy. We respect those strategies. If we look at ATD, if we look at U.S. AutoForce, if we look at TBC ... they all have very different business models. I think the Dunlop brand makes a lot of sense at ATD because ATD lost some upper tier-two/tier-one brands. So to slide Dunlop in there, of course, works. That makes a lot of sense. It’s been successful, but everything takes some effort. ATD, we believe, is a company that’s putting all of its efforts towards being sellers and that aligns well with what we need for the Dunlop brand. So the fit has been very good.

MTD: Can you update us on the new Dunlop associate dealer program that you mentioned when we talked last year – the one you said will eventually replace the Falken Fanatic program?

Thomas: That’s a work in progress, largely tied to the fact we just have limited products. We have no interest at the moment to substantially change the narrative of Fanatic when we have a whole suite of successful Falken brand products that are doing excellent in the market. To change the narrative or focus over to Dunlop will take at least two years. It wouldn’t treat our independent dealers fairly to start asking them to walk away from the Falken brand when we don’t have (Dunlop) product.

Is it a concept we’re talking about? Absolutely. Is it something that will happen? Absolutely. Will it happen right now? No. It will happen in the appropriate time based on the products we have available and the style and path of distribution that Dunlop ultimately takes. We will continue to modify the Fanatic program to be inclusive of Dunlop because we do have, in our opinion, one of the strongest associate dealer programs out there. We support it well. To not give Dunlop that same support wouldn’t make any sense.

MTD: What’s in the works for the Falken brand during the rest of the year? Any new products that Falken dealers should know about?

Thomas: The main challenge with the launch of Dunlop is we had to put a lot of effort into Dunlop’s development, which means Falken has taken a little bit of a pause while we invest resources into launching Dunlop products. We have to launch them globally, so Falken has taken a brief moment of pause. That’s been an area of trepidation for our company here in North America. This has to be something we can only accept for a very small period of time. I can’t get into the details, but what I will say is our distributors have been made aware of some of our strategies for the Falken brand. Falken is not going away. The Falken brand will actually get more investment in terms of product expansion than it would have had.

One of the most exciting parts – and exciting in parallel to our Dunlop launch – is the amount of freedom we’re going to have to be able to expand the Falken brand in terms of other channels, categories and price points, so that Falken can be used to serve not only the upper- or mid-tier-two positions with our passenger tire lines and our tier-one position with our light truck (line), but we’re also able to expand Falken into some fighter lines to deal with tier-three/tier-four-level prices. That’s something we would not have had the ability to do had we not made the Dunlop purchase. Our overall suite of products is going to substantially improve. So long-term, this is nothing but a net-plus for Falken as far as positioning, product planning and further investments. We’ll probably have double the amount of Falken products at double the amount of price points. And we have an innovative Dunlop legacy brand that we can continue to allow to mature. We just have to be patient because the first couple of years is where all the heavy lifting is done. And that’s the eye of the storm we’re in: how do we maintain our business, maintain our relationships and maintain our focus on what has brought us to this place, then allow Dunlop to be an additive resource to the success of our company?

MTD: What can we expect to see from DTNA during the rest of 2026 and into next year?

Thomas: This year is going to be a continued peppering in of new Dunlop products. We’re going to pepper them into distribution. But mainly, we’re going to be fighting in the marketplace just like every other tire manufacturer is fighting now, regardless of new brand launches, because of the overall economic condition. We’re seeing challenges that rival the 2008 economic collapse environment. Combine that with lower demand and a real increase in raw material costs related to the Iran War situation, we have a migration toward continued lower prices. So this is going to be a battle for all manufacturers.