Online tire sales pioneer Mike Welch setting up portal for U.S. retailers

MIAMI — Mike Welch, founder of the Blackcircles.com online tire-buying service acquired by Group Michelin in 2015, is bringing his "click and fit" style of online tire sourcing to the U.S. with the establishment of Tirescanner.com.

Mr. Welch, who was a strategic adviser to online tire retailer SimpleTire L.L.C. during the second half of 2017, claims Tirescanner.com will be North America's first "online portal for brick-and-mortar tire retailers."

"Tirescanner is a platform that celebrates and showcases the very best of the bricks-and-mortar retail stores the United States has to offer," Mr. Welch said, calling his new platform a "real strength-in-numbers opportunity for the traditional retailers."

Mr. Welch, who sold Blackcircles.com to Michelin for $75.5 million, plans to launch Tirescanner.com on Christmas Day and is inviting U.S. retailers to sign up before then to be part of the launch.

Tirescanner.com likely will launch with over 60,000 tire sizes, 3 million prices, 60 retailers and a handful of key manufacturer partners, Mr. Welch said.

"Our goal is to deliver an easy-to-use whole-of-market platform for customers and a low-cost high-performance solution for retailers to ensure they protect and grow their share of the market in the face of growing online competition," Mr. Welch said.

Retailers who use the platform will be charged a few dollars per transaction, Mr. Welch said, noting that dealers pay only for qualified leads.

Noting that tire makers and large wholesalers alike are becoming more active in the online sales sector, Mr. Welch said, "It is important that the brick-and-mortar retailers are able to keep hold of the tire margin as well as the installation fee, …

"The 'pure play' operators are farming out the tire installation to the brick-and-mortar guys and keeping control of the tire buying," he said. "That means they can control sell-out prices, which ultimately results in prices going down."

The net effect of eroding prices is the brick-and-mortar dealers then need to follow suit with their in-store prices, he said, noting the irony of the situation in that traditional retailers enabled the "pure players" to get into that position in the first place.

As for the issue of posting tire prices online, Mr. Welch said his experience has shown him that it's the combination of price and service that seals the deal, not price along.

"Tirescanner is here to preserve value for the retailer and deliver value to the customers," he said.

"[Being] great online is not about driving down price — any fool can do that — it is about reinforcing and showcasing to customers the value propositions of our partners."

Mr. Welch has extensive experience in the online tire business, launching his first effort in the sector in 1995 in Liverpool, England, at the age of 17. He sold that business to United Kingdom-based fast fit chain Kwik-Fit and joined them before leaving in 2002 to launch Blackcircles.com.

He built that business to the point it was generating more than $30 million annually by 2013, before Michelin offered to buy the business