AKRON — As Reinalt Thomas Corp. makes its long-awaited move into the Northeast, it won't be under the company's ubiquitous Discount Tire brand, but rather under the America's Tire brand and the recently acquired Dunn Tire brand.
Due to a trademark registration agreement Reinalt Thomas signed in 2019 with Mavis Tire Supply L.L.C., the company will make increasing use of its America's Tire brand as it opens stores in the Northeast/New England.
In the past several months, Reinalt Thomas/Discount Tire has opened retail stores in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., under the America's Tire brand it has used up to now only in northern California. The company as yet, however, has not disclosed specific plans for further growth in the region.
The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company also has opened Discount Tire-branded stores in Altoona and West Mifflin, Pa., in the western half of the state, to complement a store it opened in Pittsburgh in February 2020, two-and-a-half years after disclosing it was targeting the Keystone state as an area for growth.
When asked about the use of America's Tire in Pennsylvania, Discount Tire acknowledged it's tied to a trademark ownership dispute with Mavis Tire Supply dating back to 2019.
At that time Reinalt Thomas sued Mavis over its use of "Discount" in the name of its retail stores in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina and Texas, states where Discount Tire already had established a measurable market presence.
At issue was Mavis' intention to use the Mavis Discount Tire name on stores it had acquired from Kauffman Tire in 2018. Instead it agreed after a court case to use "Mavis Tires & Brakes at Discount Prices" on approximately 200 stores in the targeted areas.
At the same time, Reinalt Thomas and Mavis agreed to a "concurrent registration" agreement that ensured that Mavis would be able to continue using Mavis Discount Tire on its stores in New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
As a result, Reinalt Thomas opted to use the America's Tire brand in eastern Pennsylvania and, presumably, on any other new stores it might open in the areas covered by the concurrent registration agreement.
Reinalt-Thomas has used "America's Tire" throughout most of California since 1991, when AKH Co. Inc. defended its Discount Tire Centers trade name in a lawsuit against Discount Tire Co. Inc.
Mavis has Mavis Discount Tire-branded stores as far east as Springville, N.Y., roughly 35 miles south of Buffalo. Mavis' presence in Pennsylvania is predominantly through the NTB stores it acquired earlier this year from TBC Corp. (Pittsburgh area) and the 39-plus Jack Williams Tire stores throughout eastern Pennsylvania it acquired in 2022.
Discount Tire's acquisition of Dunn Tire in early October covers 25 retail outlets in western and central New York and Pennsylvania, marking Discount Tire's entrance into the New York market and expands a limited presence in Pennsylvania.
The acquired locations will continue to operate under the Dunn Tire brand name and continue to offer a wide range of automotive maintenance and repair services, which represents a change from Discount Tire's tires-only approach.
