From Dreaming to Doing: Building Your Dream Shop

This entry was posted on Jun 1, 2017 by Patti Renner, Tire Review.

Excerpt from the article “From Dreaming to Doing: Building Your Dream Shop" by Patti Renner, Editor of Tire Review, June 2017.

Another builder of dream shops –certainly at scale – is Tire Discounters, headquartered in Cincinnati. The leadership team indicated that once a solid, well-tested plan is in place, the rest gets easier. In fact, their eight-bay dream shop template has helped them quickly grow from 50 locations in 2010 to 103 locations today – with more currently under construction.

“About five or six years ago, we decided not only to make a push on our growth, but if we were going to make this big growth push, let’s do it right,” says Jamie Ward, president of Tire Discounters. “Let’s take our known store footprints and really put some efficiencies into it, really look at our building materials, really look at parking lot size, really look at everything. We just pretty much dumped the box upside down and kind of refilled it with as many best practices as we could…. Then we assembled a team to get it done.”

The process included testing many of the details. Some of those tests included floor finishes (tested inside their distribution center for heavy use), alignment and balancing equipment (they chose Hunter Engineering), children’s areas, and in-store counter placement.

Location is also a key growth consideration. According to Bob Oestreicher, senior vice president, corporate secretary and chief legal officer who handles the company’s real estate development efforts, the team chose locations close to businesses like Starbucks and Panera. Though more expensive, they see it adding value to the customer.

“We’d love it if they stay in our shop all day, and we’ve built it that way, but again, we recognize that people are busy, and we want to make sure that they can knock out their other chores and tasks if at all possible.”

Abbey Dryden, vice president of marketing for Tire Discounters, added, “Being a dream shop isn’t just building the most beautiful store in the world– although we’re very, very proud of how beautiful ours is. It’s about how we treat people, and I think we do a pretty darn good job of that, and it’s a huge priority for us.”

Full article can be read here.