Fountain Tire moves into employee-focused HQ
New head office includes patios, tons of windows
When they were planning a new corporate head office, Fountain Tire bosses had to think about where it should be located. Edmonton wasn’t a given, but all roads soon pointed to it.
“We had to, as part of good decision-making, think about other locations,” CEO Brent Hesje said Thursday at the grand opening of Fountain Tire Place.
“But we didn’t think about it very long, because we find this positive, robust economic climate very, very important to helping us achieve what we want to accomplish — and that’s to keep growing across the country.”
Thursday’s opening celebration featured four athletes flipping earthmover tires end-over-end in a show of strength. Funnyman Thom Sharp, the “bald guy” who stars in Fountain Tire’s TV commercials, provided droll commentary.
The tire retailer’s previous head office was in Strathcona County. It was a warehouse and distribution centre that didn’t function well for office staff, said Ryan Ross, general manager of corporate development.
“When it came time for us to go and find a new home,” Ross said, “we went to our staff and said, ‘What do you want out of a new space?’ And from that survey we came up with seven guiding principles.”
Fountain Tire Place is in The Village at Blackmud Creek, a new Melcor commercial development south of Ellerslie Road and west of Calgary Trail.
The company’s 136 headoffice employees work in 30,000 square feet of space on two floors. Walls of windows allow daylight into every office and workstation. Workers enjoy their “right to light” and feel more energetic, Ross said.
There are six formal boardrooms and seven informal “breakout” rooms designed to facilitate easy communication between employees.
The company’s signature yellow and blue colours are used, but sparingly, said Ross, who oversaw the design, the build and the move.
There are many reminders of the tire business. Some walls are finished to look like asphalt. Tread patterns are etched into glass partitions. Meeting rooms are named after Canadian highways, and hallways are adorned with photographs of all kinds of roads — two-lane blacktop to tractor ruts.
Amenities for workers include a large eat-in kitchen, two patio spaces, and showers for cyclists and joggers. Employees have started running and walking groups and yoga is coming, Ross said.
The new building operates like a resource centre, providing stores with support in purchasing, sales, training, accounting, credit, insurance, legal services, human resources and marketing.
“The people in here are doing everything in their power to take away the distractions from our partners in the field that get in the way of them serving their customers,” Hesje said.
Fountain Tire began in 1956 as a two-bay garage in Wainwright.
By 1976, the year founder Bill Fountain was killed in a car accident, it had grown to 19 stores.
In 1987, Goodyear Canada acquired a 49-per-cent stake, marking the start of a long-standing relationship that later saw Fountain Tire take over Goodyear’s corporate retail outlets in B.C. and Alberta.
Today the company has 155 tire and automotive stores in Western Canada and Ontario. It also has a wholesale division and an arm that serves the mining industry.
One key to Fountain Tire’s success is that managers are given the opportunity to become half-owners of their stores, Hesje said.
“When it’s a 50/50 partnership, it truly is a two-way street.”