Getting to the Point (S): Lots of pain but big gain

RIO GRANDE, Puerto Rico — The 40-year story that is Point S Tire & Automotive Service has been researched, written and published as a 44-page soft-cover pictorial distributed to members during the cooperative's recent anniversary celebration in Puerto Rico.

The coffee-table book tells the story of the group's inauspicious start: In 1983, five independent tire dealers from the Northwest — Dick Harris, Nick Hodel, Bud Holden Sr., Al Taylor and Klyde Thompson — banded together to purchase a container of tires, with the goal of improving their buying power.

The five couldn't have imagined that four decades later, a group of 542 members, vendors, guests and staff would be celebrating the enterprise's milestone anniversary with handshakes, hugs and high-fives on a Caribbean beach.

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The fireworks that lit up the Puerto Rican sky in celebration at the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve, however, brought back memories of some internal fireworks that detonated six years earlier, nearly imploding the group before it reached its 35th year.

It was January 2016. The group's leadership at the time had determined that Tire Factory, then a 33-year institution, would rebrand all of its stores with the "Point S" retail identity developed by the French-based Point S automotive group.

Walter Lybeck, who had just been promoted to CEO from chief financial officer, called it "harrowing," comparing it to today's divisive political discourse.

"There was a fracture in the middle that was wide. That's the harrowing part," Lybeck said. "You're looking at that precipice, that gap in the ice, and you're trying to figure out, 'How do I bridge this thing? ... Because it could split off and be not good for anybody.'"

He recalled the frustration members felt. The constant phone calls. The angry blog posts. Leaders on both sides, passionate about their position.

"And we're trying to evaluate, as a board and management and myself, how deep is this?" Lybeck said. "I can't see the bottom. I see the vibe on both sides that are communicating loudly. Where does the fault lie, and how do we bridge this back down to what it needs to be?"

Current Board Chair Chris Cornelius, co-owner of Clair & Dee's Point S in Rexburg, Idaho, favored the move, but he understood some members' reluctance.

"You take a group of 150 independent dealers, and you try to shove something down their throat …," Cornelius said, his voice trailing off.

"Here we are, 33 years as Tire Factory, and we were spending three quarters of a million dollars a year, at least, branding the name Tire Factory. So many people are like, 'Are you kidding me? We are throwing away $30 or $40 million of brand recognition out the door? Are you idiots?'"

Lybeck recalled one such incident that crystallized the rift.

He was visiting the shop of an Oregon dealer vehemently opposed to the change.

"He was frustrated. Angry. But he was professional," Lybeck recalled.

The member took him out to the first bay, pointing out a baby handprint in the cement.

"That's my handprint," the member told Lybeck. "Then he said, 'Look underneath it."

It read Tire Factory. That's what the name meant to this dealer.

"That brought all sorts of clarity to me about what the significance of what this was," Lybeck said. "We went to the core on this one. Really to the core."

While Lybeck, too, favored the switch, he said he focused on the emotion of both sides, emotion they cared so deeply.

On that January day, members voted on three board positions. Three members supported the move to Point S; three others opposed it.

"That was a bellwether moment," Lybeck said. "We all held our breath during the vote count. What's going to happen? Are we going to get 2 and 1? I had a sense we were going to get 3-0 or 0-3."

All three in favor of the move were elected.

"We said, 'OK. Let's go,'" Lybeck said. "Game on."

Clint Young, the group's chief operating officer, credits Lybeck, particularly because of his background in accounting, for navigating the Point S ship through those tumultuous waters.

"Walter was really the bridge of the entire event. Accounting is all about clarity, and Walter just came to the situation with honesty and integrity," Young said. "He did represent both sides. (He was) clearly stating (his) opinion that Point S was the direction we ought to go, but (he wasn't) putting off how people felt about Tire Factory."

"You take an accountant that is good, that has a lot of value," Cornelius said, "but if you take an accountant that is good with a personality, you got yourself a unicorn."

Several members, including that Oregon dealer, remained unhappy and left the group. Others refused to rebrand, even to this day.

Lybeck said the vote for Point S "congealed us" and aligned the remaining members from a branding perspective.

"I believe the group was immediately stronger," he said, "and you could feel it in the very first (owners') meeting in Phoenix," he said, the first Point S meeting held outside of Washington and the first open to families.

Seven years later, the Point S brand has grown to 275 locations in 29 states. Executives say the group is stronger and as united as ever, as it looks to grow to 500 locations in 50 states in five years, a strategy revealed during the 2023 Dealer Conference and Trade Show.

As the cooperative enters its next four decades, it is marketing a fictional character, Les Stressman, as spokesman to remind customers, "There's no stress with Point S."

The group, it seems, already has overcome enough internal stress to last another four decades.