Opportunity knocks: Ohio Tire Pros dealer expands during pandemic

AKRON — When tire shop owner Josh Baughman hung up the phone, it immediately rang again.

On this October day, he was helping run the front desk at Van's Auto Service Tire Pros in Akron, one of eight stores he owns in Northeast Ohio.

Pandemic or not, when Mr. Baughman saw an opportunity to expand, he went for it — opening his seventh and eighth stores in the last six months. His business has grown thanks to a bold approach, aggressive online presence and responsive customer service.

• This article appears in the Oct. 26 print edition of Tire Business.

The parking lot and bays at the large store were packed. Next to Mr. Baughman at the front desk, his store manager, Mike Spitale, thanked a departing customer and welcomed another.

A shop vendor popped in for a quick meeting. "Just need a few good minutes," the vendor said.

As Mr. Baughman took him to the office to talk, Cooper, his large Labrador Retriever puppy, calmly roamed the showroom floor until a customer reached down and greeted him in baby talk.

"I fill in where we are shorthanded, but typically I'm kind of more behind the scenes," Mr. Baughman said. "With as much tire business as we do, my focus is having the tire inventory that nobody else has. … We feel having the product on hand, on the shelf at our store location is worth the investment."

He said filling in occasionally helps him "stay in touch with how we do business, any flaws in our system, and I like it," he said.

When the vendor left, Mr. Baughman ran to the back to pull a set of tires.

He gets a workout moving around the shop. This location in west Akron, which opened April 1, is large — up to 16 bays plus room for inventory. Since the late 1990s, the store was a Parrish-McIntyre Tire Co. location before North Carolina-based Parrish Tire Co. decided to close its Ohio stores earlier this year.

When Mr. Baughman heard the Parrish-McIntyre stores — one in Akron and one in nearby Medina County — were going to close, he made a temporary offer to keep them open.

"Literally, in two weeks, we cut a deal," he said.

The Akron and Medina stores opened April 1 and Sept. 1, respectively.

"I will always look for good opportunities," he said. "My model has been finding business that were struggling — for nothing more than a lack of management or enthusiasm as owners, maybe, have gotten a little older."

Mr. Baughman said he prefers buying an existing shop and updating its infrastructure rather than building new from the ground up.

"If nothing else, there's a building there, and there's somebody coming in the door," he said.

Building business

Mr. Baughman bought his first tire shop in Wadsworth in 2013 from family-owned Van's Tires & Service. He now owns and operates eight locations in northeast Ohio and is affiliated with American Tire Distributors (ATD) Inc.'s Tire Pros franchise group, doing business as Van's Auto Service Tire Pros.

But he's been involved in the tire industry since he was a teenager.

"In 1991, as a senior in high school, I worked for Myers Tire (part of Myers Industries Inc.) in their mail room. … Half a day, I wore a tie. I pushed an old mail cart around their corporate offices down here on Main Street," he said.

He worked in the aftermarket tire supply business for a number of years before joining tire wholesaler North Central Tire Group for around 15 years until ATD acquired the company in 2011.

"Tire Pros is a very loose franchise, which is good and bad for independent business owners," Mr. Baughman said.

"It doesn't make everyone the exact same. It still allows you to run the business as an independent owner," he said.

He said he wanted to align his business with ATD as a vendor, adding that while his stores offer a variety of automotive services, they are focused on selling tires.

"At most of our stores, we're better than 50/50 on tires," he said.

Pandemic opening

Opening a new location in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges, but Mr. Baughman said the opportunity was just too good to pass up.

"The hard part with the new stores was you couldn't really advertise, because at the beginning of the pandemic, people were like 'stay home,' and you weren't really allowed to do anything," he said.

One way they spread the word about the new store was by offering free oil changes to first responders and health care workers. He said a number of customers have used the offer.

So far, he said business at the Akron store is "up double" where it was last year.

Across all of his locations, Mr. Baughman said business was down nearly 30% in April and May.

"June, we saw a good rebound," he said. "July was good; August kind of leveled back off."

When the pandemic hit, he started offering customers valet service and using the after-hours key drop box all day. He also has a small fleet of new "loaner" cars — anything to make the customers' experience a little better, he said.

His shops already were using digital inspection software to send videos and photos to customers, and "it really helped" communicate with them during the pandemic.

Good reviews

He joked that he may have an "advertising addiction" but stressed the importance of getting the word out about his business. He said more customers are doing their research online, so it's important to have your business come up in Google searches, to have a user-friendly website and to pay attention to reviews.

"We continue to take more and more money to our digital search platform, whether that be pay-per-click or optimizing our website," he said.

Online sales have grown at vanstirepros.com. He estimates that about 20% of business is done through the website.

"Our online presence does very good," he said. "We are very big on our reviews."

He said good reviews are helping push the business forward, adding that he has heard from many new customers who said they chose his business because they read positive reviews.

If they get a bad review, "we address them immediately and do whatever it takes to attempt to satisfy the customer," Mr. Baughman said.

Sometimes that doesn't work out, but they try, he added.

"It's a Catch-22, some customers want to know everything that's wrong with their car, and if you don't tell them, they're upset. And then there's other people, who as soon as you tell them what's wrong with their car, they're upset.

"It's difficult sometimes, but our philosophy is we will advise and let the customer decide. Our job is to be transparent as possible."

He said there always is a focus in the shop on conducting business in a way that makes customers want to return.

"It's just good customer service," he said. "We treat people the way they should be treated."

When it comes to tires, he said they don't deal at "the bottom of the barrel" and aim to sell the highest quality tires at the best prices.

"One of the things we do is we work very close to the manufacturers' rebates, and often match that with our own in-store rebate," he said. "… We look out for the best interests for the customer."

He said he's seen a number of good promotions during the pandemic.

"Especially with things being down, manufacturers have put incentives out there to grow your business," he said. "There are some extra dollars out there if you're willing to buy when it's time.

"In our industry, more and more people are keeping less and less inventory, and I'm doing the exact opposite. I am beefing up inventory."

Team building

In six months, employment at the west Akron location has grown to a dozen from three and included moving some "strong people we had at other locations," he said.

"We are constantly working on our bench. That's one thing that is part of our style is to bring people up through the channels."

When it comes to finding new technicians, Mr. Baughman said he tries just about everything.

"In general, our culture is a little bit different. People enjoy working here. … We try to make it fun. We reach out to the community."

Since the pandemic started, he said each store buys lunch for employees on Friday with the caveat they choose a locally owned restaurant.

He said someone asked him, "How come you don't have more gray hair?"

"I said, it's because I have good people. That's what makes us successful. We have a good culture within the company that everyone is willing to do anything."