TRURO, N.S. – A new Truro business is taking a novel approach to marketing automobile tires – online sales.
“I truly believe there is a niche for this type of market when it comes to selling a quality product at a fantastic price,” said Rob Dean, manager of the new TireTire.ca outlet in the Truro Business Park.
“And what I mean by that, is we don’t have the overhead of paying 15 or 20 employees. So, we can take our product and just put a small markup on it to obviously cover our costs and make a couple of dollars and offer the general public a great deal on product that they normally wouldn’t see that kind of prices on.”
Dean, 52, said he has spent his entire working life in the auto/tire business and he can fully appreciate the budgetary restraints that prevent some people from purchasing name-brand tires for their vehicles.
“I was never able to afford, on my own budget, a top, name-brand tire for my own vehicle. So, I always went with, what they said years ago not to buy, the cheap (tires from China). I put them on my wife’s vehicle every year for the winters. Never had an issue with them. And that was before the technology grew to what it is today,” he said.
“So I have all the faith in the world in these products because I’ve used them over the years.”
Tires ordered online are shipped to the Truro warehouse and then couriered to the customer’s home address. Or, they can bring their rims in to the warehouse to have the tires installed and balanced.
At this point, however, the warehouse is not equipped to actually put the tires on a customer’s vehicle, although Dean said that may change in the future.
“We can get away with that once we have the space,” he said. “Ideally what we want to set up for is that person that wants to do the Internet sales all online.”
Winter tire and rim packages are also available as well as summer alloy wheels.
Dean described the lower-priced tires as a quality product in other markets that are not necessarily recognized in North America because they have not been advertised in the way the top name brands are.
“We can get pretty much any name brand that’s out there on the market,” he added. “But what 99 per cent of the consumers don’t understand or realize, all the major players have plants in China.”
One of the most important points with getting good mileage out of any tire, Dean said, is to ensure they are rotated every 10,000 kms, while maintaining proper air pressure and vehicle alignment.
Anyone who would like further information is asked to call Dean at 902-890-4111 or check out the website at: www.tiretirecanada.ca .
“We want to bring a tire to the market, to the consumer that they can afford. A good, quality product,” he said. “We know everybody lives on a budget. And we want to be able to stay within their budget and still offer them a great quality tire.”
