Tire expert has tons of tread
Kumho sales director explains the challenges of getting rubber on the road
Greg Lamothe hates the thick, rubbery smell of a warehouse full of new tires. But after 30 years in the tire industry, he’s gotten used to it.
As the director of sales for Kumho Tire Canada’s head office in Mississauga, his job is not just to get tires into retail stores but to work with the Korean parent company to determine exactly which tires are needed across Canada and how many.
“The proliferation of (tire sizes) has grown tenfold in the last 10 years,” Lamothe says.
“It used to be you’d have 10 sizes that covered 90 per cent of the vehicles on the road. Now, almost every vehicle has a different size. The challenge to the distributor is that you can’t be everything to everybody.”
Lamothe fell into the tire business naturally. His father spent 45 years in management roles at Firestone and Lamothe started as a service manager at one of that brand’s stores. When Bridgestone bought Firestone, Lamothe became a territory manager in Northern Ontario.
He still lives there with his wife and two daughters, commuting from Sudbury. “It’s a long drive, but my family is grounded there,” he says.
“I’ve been involved in some pretty scary driving conditions. One night, the snow was really coming down — and I’ve done winter tire testing in Russia and Finland — but that’s the first time I’ve ever been scared, because I couldn’t even see the tree line. Once, in Parry Sound, I had to spend the night in Tim Hortons, playing euchre with some women who just came back from Mexico.”
After working with some national tire distributors, Lamothe joined Kumho last September, and all salespeople who get the tires into wholesale and retail outlets report to him.
Selling tires isn’t always easy. Although they’re essential to the vehicle’s safety, they’re primarily a grudge purchase: something you only buy because the old ones are worn out. It’s also a challenge to know what to stock and to forecast how many tire factories will need to make. Lamothe follows new-car sales numbers, noting how much product of each make and model are sold. In two years — the average length of time before a vehicle needs new tires — his warehouses will need to be stocked with the same number of tires in the correct sizes to “reshoe” them all.
In addition, he looks at which tires are selling the best, along with which vehicles are being bought, and works with Korea for the ideal product mix. “They send us samples of products they’re working on and we choose what is the best for Canada,” he says.
One of the company’s newest products is an all-weather tire, which meets federally regulated winter tire standards but can stay on the vehicle all year. While they’ll be offered across the country, Lamothe sees a market for them in urban centres such as Toronto and Montreal, where many people live in condos and don’t have space to store two sets of tires for winter and summer. “The Koreans make a phenomenal product, but what’s lacking is consumer brand awareness,” he says. “People take tires for granted. We use our distributors and dealers to get the message out about safety.”