Tire Brands Report: New brands, Goodyear's Cooper bid make news

AKRON — Amazon.com Founder Jeff Bezos once said: "Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room."

That comment — or any numerous others like it from other marketing gurus — is at the heart of marketing/promotional campaigns large and small in all industries.

In the tire industry, attention is focused intently at the moment on how and to what extent Goodyear will integrate the brands it will be taking on-board with its pending acquisition of Cooper Tire & Rubber Co.

That deal will bring the Cooper, Mastercraft, Roadmaster, Starfire, Avon, Mickey Thompson and Dick Cepek brands to Goodyear, which already controls and uses brands such as Goodyear, Kelly-Springfield, Dunlop, Fulda and Sava.

In the past year in North America, the revolving door of tire brands has been getting a workout of late, with new brands popping up on a regular basis and some long-time "evergreens" fading away.

The crop of new brands is coming almost exclusively from Asia, where both tire manufacturers and private-brand marketers are leveraging new capacities in Thailand, Vietnam and elsewhere for business opportunities.

• This story is featured in the May 10 edition of Tire Business. Read the digital edition here.

The surge in new brand activity coincides, however, with the pending imposition of elevated import duties on passenger and light truck tires being sourced from South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

How much these duties will impact brands being sourced from those lands remains to be seen, although companies surveyed by Tire Business for this report are largely in agreement that prices will have to go up, an eventuality that likely will impact prices overall.

As a result of the Commerce Department's preliminary decision in late December to approve elevated import duties, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was directed at that time to start collecting cash deposits from importers of passenger and light truck tires from these three nations and Taiwan based on the preliminary rates published at that time.

Commerce is scheduled to announce its final determinations in these cases on or about May 14.

More specifically, the duties are:

• South Korea: Hankook Tire & Technology Co. Ltd. — 38.07%; Nexen Tire Corp. — 14.14%; all others — 27.81%.
• Taiwan: Cheng Shin Rubber Ind. Co. Ltd. — 52.42%; Nankang Rubber Tire Corp. Ltd.— 98.44%; all others — 88.82%.
• Thailand: LLIT Thailand Co. Ltd. — 22.21%; Sumitomo Rubber (Thailand) Co. Ltd. — 13.25%; all others — 16.66%.
• Vietnam: countrywide entity — 22.30%. Excluded are: Sailun Vietnam Co. Ltd.; Kenda Rubber (Vietnam) Co. Ltd.; Bridgestone Tire Manufacturing Vietnam L.L.C.; Kumho Tire (Vietnam) Co. Ltd.; and Yokohama Tyre Vietnam Co. Ltd.

As Tire Business has reported previously, Thailand emerged as the No. 1 source of imported tires into the U.S. the past few years after the U.S. imposed elevated antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese car/light truck tires seven years ago and truck/bus tires in 2018.

That decision led to a wave of offshore investment by leading Chinese tire makers in production sites in Thailand and Vietnam, predominantly, and which in turn has led to the emergence of a bevy of new tire brands in the U.S. sourced from those nations.

Among recent brand debuts tracked by Tire Business:

• Shandong Jinyu Tyres is preparing to launch a range of radial truck tires in the U.S. under the Amulet brand that will be sourced from the Chinese company's recently commissioned factory in Tay Ninh, Vietnam.
• Hixih Rubber Industry Group Co. Ltd. has struck a distribution agreement with Singapore-based Forceland Tyre Pte. Ltd. to bring the Forceland passenger and light-truck tire brand to the U.S. 

• Wuxi, China-based Atlander Tire Co. Ltd. is ramping up efforts to bring the Atlander brand to the U.S. using production at an undisclosed factory in Thailand.
• Transamerica Tire Co. Ltd., a four-year-old Memphis-based importer/distributor of specialty trailer tires, is expanding its portfolio into passenger and light truck with the launch of two brands, Predator and Venom Power, expected to compete in the Tier 2/Tier 3 arenas.
• Qingdao Nama Industrial Co. Ltd., which relaunched its Nama brand to the U.S. in late 2019, has secured an additional production site in Thailand — its fourth in Southeast Asia — to support a large-scale expansion of the brand's coverage.
• Statewide Tires Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of China's Jiangsu General Science Technology Co. Ltd., has added the Lancaster radial truck tire brand — produced at the firm's factory in Thailand — to its U.S. portfolio and signed Tire Group International as its first major U.S. distributor.
• Shandong Linglong Tire Co. Ltd. plans to launch a line of Hubtrac-brand commercial tires in the U.S. this year, rolling out as many as 140 SKUs covering long-haul, regional, on- and off-road, mining, winter and urban applications.

A number of existing brand marketers in the U.S. are planning product and/or physical expansions this year and into 2022. Among them are;

• India's Apollo Tyres Ltd. — which (re)launched the Vredestein brand of passenger tires in North America in 2020 — is rolling out a range of Apollo-branded truck/bus tires in the U.S. and Canada after several years of testing its products throughout the continent.
• Indian tire maker JK Tyre & Industries Ltd., which opened a U.S. sales company in June 2020 in Houston, is broadening its product portfolio for the U.S. market into radial truck tires with the launch of a range of Jetway and Jetsteel products.

• Sentury Tire USA, which plans to add a range of medium radial truck tires to its existing passenger/light truck tire portfolio under the Delinte, Groundspeed, Landsail and Sentury brands.
• TBC Corp. secured U.S. rights from China's Prinx Chengshan Tire Co. Ltd. for the Prinx radial truck tire brand, which is being distributed through its National Tire Wholesale (NTW) subsidiary. The deal covers seven on- and off-highway applications produced at Prinx Chengshan's factory in Chonburi, Thailand.

• Industrial and OTR tire supplier Maxam Tire North America is evaluating locations for additional warehouses in the U.S. to support OEM and aftermarket growth it anticipates as it expands its product portfolio thanks to the opening of an "advanced and automated" solid tire factory in Vietnam.
• Private-brand distributor Unicorn Tire Corp. moved to a larger headquarters/distribution center near to the Memphis International Airport and is evaluating locations in the Western U.S. for a second warehouse to service customers there better.

Other items of note regarding tire brands in North America:

Bridgestone Americas Inc. has phased out the Dayton medium truck tire brand, eight years after reviving the brand as an entry-level product targeted at independent drivers and small fleets.

Prior to relaunching the brand in 2013, Bridgestone had "retired" it in 2011. The company had sourced Dayton-brand tires offshore.

Bridgestone has controlled the Dayton brand since 1988 when it bought Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., which in turn had acquired the brand in 1961 when it bought the tire business of Dayton, Ohio-based Dayton Rubber Co. The company and brand date back to 1910.

Bridgestone instead is focusing on the Firestone brand and Bandag retreads as options that deliver a strong total-cost-of-ownership value proposition.

Sears Holdings, which has pared down its network of Sears Auto outlets to fewer than 50 nationwide, also has phased out its proprietary Diehard, Guardsman and Roadhandler brands.

The Diehard brand was launched in 2016 in partnership with Kumho Tire, while the Roadhandler brand was relaunched nine years ago in partnership with Hankook Tire America Corp.

Yokohama Off-Highway Tire, the new identity for Alliance Tire Americas (ATA), phased the Aeolus truck tire brand out of its portfolio a decade after taking it on board.

Last year ATA added Galaxy-branded radial all-steel truck and bus tires to the portfolio. Produced in Alliance Tire Group's plant in Dahej, India, the Galaxy lineup covers long-haul, regional and long/short hybrid tires for steer, drive and trailer positions.