Phil May, owner of Strood based RM Tyres, passed the million-pound milestone at the end of February, the peak of 12 months during which his company has seen an unprecedented increase in online sales. For all of the tyre sales processed by RM Tyres through TyreClick, 28 per cent have come in the past 12 months, an indication of the surge in consumers opting to buy their tyres online.
Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS) reports that it is offers a “gripping” SUV proposition for retail customers in 2021, with a range of new products available to its tyre retailer network. According to the company, MTS supplies SUV tyres to over 6,000 customers, including a national network of over 250 independent 4×4 and SUV tyre specialists. Changes include new upgraded patterns, helping to bolster MTS’s range of SUV tyres – for both for on and off-road usage.
Falken Tyres will sponsor a series of television programmes on UKTV’s entertainment channel, Dave. The first national TV advertising campaign for the Sumitomo Rubber Industries global tyre brand was developed by the brand’s UK distributor Micheldever Tyre Services and its partner agency Spark Foundry. Falken idents will appear before and after selected programmes – collectively called “Characters on Dave” – between February and November 2021. These programmes include the popular entertainment shows QI XL, Travel Man, and Would I Lie To You?
Micheldever Tyre Service’s wholesale team covered almost 2000km by foot and bike in raising £11,000 for men’s health charities in November. The 28-strong team is sending the funs to organisations involved in providing support and raising awareness for prostate and testicular cancer, mental health, and suicide prevention. Various team members also sported newly grown moustaches for “Movember”. Readers can find the MTS team fundraising page here.
A couple of weeks after the end of the UK’s second lockdown, Tyres & Accessories spoke with Micheldever Tyre Services wholesale director Graham Mitchell. Since Mitchell was part of the panel in our inaugural “Kickstarting your tyre business” webinar in May 2020 at the end of the first lockdown, we thought it would be good to catch up at the end of the year and compare the differences between the first and second lockdowns. In short, while many shops closed during the first lockdown, the vast majority were open for business during the second. We also discussed 2020 as a whole and looked forward to 2021.
Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS) has expanded its tyre distribution capacity with the addition of a new warehouse in Exeter and the expansion of its Nottingham and Walsall sites. The new 22,078 square foot Exeter location became fully operational in the summer. According to the company, the site expands stock-holding capacity by roughly 50 per cent from 11,000 to 16,000 tyres, whilst also providing an improved stock-keeping unit (SKU) range of 2,518 SKUs.
The Micheldever Group recorded its tenth TyreSafe Award in 2020, as Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS) and Protyre recorded their respective third and seventh consecutive victories in their categories. MTS won Wholesaler of the Year, while Protyre retained the Large Retailer of the Year accolade. Micheldever also paid tribute to MTS customer Stone Tyres, which swept the board at this year’s event with a hat-trick of awards.
TyreSafe usually presents its awards at a Gala ceremony, but the Coronavirus Crisis has made such an event unviable. TyreSafe has instead announced its award winners via social media and video presentation by its chair and chair of judges, Stuart Jackson. Tyrepress previously revealed the winners of the Tyre Manufacturer of the Year Award and the Innovation & Use of Technology Award, but the full list of the winners joining Hankook and Bridgestone is reproduced below. Additionally, you can view the judges’ review of submissions for several of the awards on Tyrepress below, or on TyreSafe’s YouTube channel.
There have been serious challenges to tyre distribution in 2020, and while demand has returned with the end of the national lockdown, Covid-19’s autumn rise means the spectre of spring’s market conditions looms over the winter months. This year, companies have needed to manage the operational problems posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns throughout Europe; they also needed to weigh up wildly fluctuating supply and demand. Whether there is a return to a concerted national effort similar to the UK’s actions in April and May or not, the lessons learned during this period continue to prove relevant. Meanwhile, the sector was already experiencing difficult times prior to the outbreak, with European tyre market demand flat overall in the light vehicle sector – a situation that certainly deteriorated in the pandemic. For the October magazine’s wholesale feature, Tyres & Accessories spoke to a range of players in the wholesale sector in Western Europe to look at the lessons of this year, and how recovery is progressing. We start with Micheldever Tyre Services, a leading UK player in the light vehicle tyre market especially, which has experienced a “strong” return of demand in the second half of the year, according to wholesale director Graham Mitchell.
Official tyre partner of the VW Fun Cup 2020 season, Giti Tire is racing in a fully liveried GT Radial car. At each race weekend Ellis Hadley, senior test engineer at Giti Tire, leads a line-up of race enthusiasts from the GT Radial Performance Centre (GTPC) network. This activation of the event provides a great opportunity to get together with key distribution partners and customers of the brand’s exclusive distribution partner Micheldever Tyre Services, as well as increasing coverage of the brand. This approach to the series is demonstrated in a new Facebook video distributed on the championship’s Facebook channel, featuring Hadley and customers Carl Churchill and Alan Baldwin.
Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS) is celebrating 25 years of its partnership as the sole distributor of the General Tire products in the UK.
Upon launching in July 1995, the partnership set out to introduce General Tire’s world-renowned 4×4 tyres to the British market and as the working relationship developed and General Tire’s reputation in the UK grew, in 2009 the General Tire range of car and van tyres was also made available for UK customers.
With the 2019/20 season’s Premier League back underway, runaway leaders Liverpool FC’s team bus is primed to roll on official tyre sponsor, Falken rubber. The manufacturer’s RI151 pattern is fitted by Protyre and supplied in the UK by Micheldever Tyre Services.
During our recent “Kickstarting your tyre business webinar”, the panel shared lockdown stories of how they have survived and even experienced success during these difficult times. For his part, Graham Mitchell, wholesale director of Micheldever Tyre Services, shared details of how his company moved from its role as a leading wholesaler to a more support-orientated position. For those pivoting into this new role during lockdown, far from having less to do, this meant being even busier than normal despite wholesale volumes dropping to 25 per cent of normal levels during the depths of lockdown (levels are much more normal now, however).
Protyre confirms that all its centres are operational at this point in time, adding that the company is monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic daily and will respond accordingly to government advice.
Winchester-based Micheldever Tyre Services – which has established a wholesale distribution network of 15 sites around the country, supplying over 6,000 retailers nationwide – will stock a large selection of BFGoodrich’s All Terrain T/A KO2 and Mud-Terrain T/A KM3 ranges, helping to ensure excellent product availability throughout the year.
RM Tyres, MTS
MTS
Falken
MTS
TyreSafe
MTS
General Tire
Falken
Tyre Industry Publications Ltd