TireConnect expands footprint, adds wheel sales

TORONTO — TireConnect, the Bridgestone- owned sales software company, operates on the mantra of making tire sales easier for dealers and customers. The company has grown its footprint, and earlier this year added wheel sales to the mix.

"We've been evolving as a solution, our footprint has been growing," Chance Harrington, director of business development, sales and marketing at TireConnect, said.

"When we were acquired by Bridgestone (in 2015), we had 290-something locations, and now we're over 6,500 in the U.S. and Canada, exclusively."

The TireConnect software embeds a tire shopping tool into a shop's website that allows customers to search and order tires with real-time inventory and pricing. The software is customizable to allow dealers to set their preferred brands and wholesalers.

"We've expanded our footprint so that we can be integrated into close to 50 different points-of-sale, some directly, some indirectly through our partnerships, which allows direct ordering," Harrington said.

"A dealer could be working with four or five wholesalers but manage and order everything from within TireConnect without ever having to log onto their systems."

TireConnect, he said, is driven by two questions: Does it make it easier to sell? And, does it make it easier for their customer to buy?"

Wheel sales are different than tire sales, Harrington said, because one has to buy tires, but wheels are a more personal purchase, such as enthusiasts looking to customize their vehicle. If a customer finds a set of wheels from a static "We asked, 'What is that common denominator?' And live inventory is a piece of it. We decided to approach wheels in the same way we approach tires: We went out and we created integrations with wheel manufacturers and wholesalers," he said.

"If you can get up-to-date inventory, then you've got something to sell."

With TireConnect Wheels, once customers make a wheel selection, they are given an option to shop tires that fit the wheels, and then are taken through a selection of other services — which can be customized by the individual shop. Customers also can sign up for credit cards, request an appointment and pay for everything in one transaction.

"It gives a very smooth and efficient way to sell wheels that did not exist before," Harrington said. "The lack of continuity to trying to sell them are one of the road blocks, and we feel we've made this easier."

Since launching wheels in January with partnerships with American Tire Distributors and Wheel Pros, TireConnect has added six more wheel wholesalers. More than 200 dealers have signed up so far.

In these early stages, TireConnect is focused on original equipment wheel sizes. A wheel visualizer will be added soon, Harrington said, as a premium addition to the subscription, which allows customers to see what the wheels will look like on their vehicle.

"We decided early on, our business model would be, 'It's better to partner than compete,' " Harrington said. "Display what the customer needs, give them what they want, and give them a way to pay.

"Everything we do has to make it easier for the dealer to sell and source, and easier for the customer to buy."

Harrington said TireConnect is "agnostic" in that the business wants to work with everyone.

"We work with all brands, all partners. There's some we don't have integrations with yet, but the keyword there is yet. "

TireConnect is a dealer-focused tool, he said, but it benefits manufacturers and wholesalers, too, for the multiple channels it opens up to the dealers.

"That's the approach Bridgestone took early on when they acquired us. They acquired us back when Michelin and Goodyear were going direct to consumer, and we were there to empower dealers to sell their own tires online," he said.

"That approach — which is very forward thinking of Bridgestone — we realized dealers do sell multiple brands, and in order to give them a valuable tool, they have to have something that is focused on them."

TireConnect was started in 2012 and was purchased by Bridgestone in 2015. Though owned by Bridgestone, TireConnect has a stringent policy on not sharing data.

"That was the hardest question to answer when we were being acquired, because we need to have complete isolation of data, and we never would have gotten the contracts we have in place with the supplier partners and manufacturers had we not had a very stringent nondisclosure and privacy agreement," Harrington said.

"What kept us unique is that instead of trying to be a marketing agency or a website company, we focused on one thing and one thing only in making it accessible to anyone that needs it.

"We don't change how a dealer does business, we just streamline it."