Greg Ward joins Halfords
Greg Ward has joined the Halfords Autocentres business, where the experienced truck, bus and agricultural tyre specialist will be commercial sales director.
Greg Ward has joined the Halfords Autocentres business, where the experienced truck, bus and agricultural tyre specialist will be commercial sales director.
Halfords’ Tyre Safety video game, 20,000 Miles in Two Minutes, launched in October for tyre safety month, was aimed to test driver’s knowledge and raise awareness around tyre safety standards. As of today, the game has been played over 7,000 times, revealing that many drivers lacked basic safety knowledge.
Halfords Group plc has reported strong group sales up 10.4 per cent like-for-like over two years driven by “an outstanding Autocentres performance through the third quarter 2021 MOT peak.” Indeed, ‘Motoring services’ now account for 70 per cent of sales due to the combination of Autocentres growth and the recent National Tyres purchase. Not only do these movements reflect Halfords’ efforts to lead the tyre retail/motoring services market, but represent steps towards the creation of motoring retail “fusion towns.
A quick glance at our recent top 10 articles of 2021 email offers a unique overview of the major themes of the last 12 months. Since most of those issues are ongoing stories, they bring with them a useful insight into some of the things we can expect in 2022 – an insight that can be summarised by these three words: acquisitions, consolidation and sustainability.
In light of the news of Halfords acquisition of National Tyres and Iverson Tyres, Tyres & Accessories contacted various National Tyres and Halfords executives for comment on the subjects of branding and branch closures. In response, company spokesperson confirmed that the bulk of Axle Group businesses will be rebranded under the Halfords moniker with one or two exceptions.
Following the news that Halfords Group is buying Axle Group Holdings Ltd including 239 National Tyres garages and 60 mobile tyre fitting vans, further details relating to the transaction have emerged. Firstly, while company announcements refer to the purchase of “National”, Halfords’ latest acquisition actually sees the company purchase the entire issued share capital of Axle Group Holdings Ltd (“National”) for £62 million. And the transaction is expected to be completed on 9 December 2021.
According to Halfords, the acquisition of National Tyres delivers “on its strategy to become a Motoring Services focused business”. Halfords Autocentres has always been amongst the most profitable parts of the overall Halfords Group businesses and financial figures have consistently shown that autocentre-related revenue is amongst the fastest-growing parts of the group. But what the National Tyres acquisition specifically means is that what Halfords terms “motoring revenue” will “represent more than 70 per cent of Group pro-forma revenue”.
In addition to the acquisition of Axle Group/National Tyres, Halfords has also bought London-based Iverson Tyres, which describes itself as a “specialist supplier and fitter of tyres and provider of adjacent maintenance services”. Iverson Tyres was founded in 1992 and is made up of four locations in Chiswick, Hanwell, Northolt and Farnham Common.
Halfords is paying £62 million for National, the tyre and automotive servicing, maintenance and repair business, which operates under the National Tyres and Autocare, Viking Wholesale Tyres and Tyre Shopper brands. As a result, Halfords’ garage estate will grow by more than 60 per cent (from 372 to 604 garages), offering MOT, servicing, fitting and repair services. According to Halfords, this deal makes it “the largest vehicle service, maintenance and repair business in the UK, with the majority of UK households within a 20-minute drive of a Halfords garage.” However, Tyres & Accessories data suggests European Tyre Enterprises Ltd (ETEL), which incorporates 650 Kwik Fits in its portfolio, is still the largest in the UK with a total estate of 740 at the last count.
Halfords has been drawing motorists to a two-minute tyre safety video game to test drivers’ knowledge during Tyre Safety Month. The game, 20,000 Miles in Two Minutes, has condensed a tyre’s 20,000-mile lifespan into two minutes – testing how drivers will react to and overcome road hazards as they make their way along a dual carriageway.
Just a few months after Halfords announced that it has entered the B2B software market by making American Tire Distributors Inc. (ATD) the first customer of Halfords’ Avayler proprietary multiple location “service delivery” software, Michael Welch reports that he has been collaborating with Halfords in a bid to find out more about Avayler.
From Bond villain hideout to American retro, the shortlist for the Halfords Garage of the Year competition has everything. Launched in June, and having attracted hundreds of entries, a shortlist of 20 has now been selected. The winner will be announced in the coming weeks.
Halfords Group plc announced a strong trading update on 8 September, with the 20-week figures once again illustrating the rapid growth of the company’s automotive businesses such as Halfords Autocentres and its more recently-acquired tyre wholesale and truck tyre operations.
On Friday 3 September Halfords unveiled its new retail concept at its recently refurbished Colchester branch. The new concept seeks to integrate the differing parts of the Halfords portfolio (including autocentres and mobile experts) and was hailed by CEO Graham Stapleton as “the future of Halfords”. As well as the Colchester pilot, the new concept will be trialled in two other locations.
A coalition of trade associations (including the NTDA) and commercial organisations (including Halfords and Kwik Fit) has been formed to lobby the UK government to uphold “the rights of the independent aftermarket and consumers in the post-Brexit era.” The UK Alliance for the Freedom of Car Repair (AFCAR), which derives its name from the European group of the same name, will primarily lobby on the Motor Vehicle Block Exemption Regulations (MV-BER), Vehicle Type Approval (including access to Repair & Maintenance Information) and Cybersecurity.
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