Michelin Buys a 40 % stake in the French market leader in online tyre sales, Allpneus, for 60 million euro.
Source: www.retaildetail.eu
Wow this is a shock?
A tyre manufacturer openly buying into an online tyre business?
In my opinion this will change the ball game and open the door for all sorts of ducking and diving amongst tyre manufacturers and wholesalers.
Will Michelin now miss the tyre wholesales out of the equation. By going online they are certainly missing out the middle man? the tyre wholesalers.
Watch this space
http://www.pellontyres.co.uk/Tyre/Brand/1272/MICHELIN
Michelin buys French Online Company ALLPNUES Throw Down the Gauntlet with the 40% Acquisition
Wow I have been saying for the past two years that we in the tyre trade are living in interesting times, but this announcement is one of the most interesting stories I have yet to come across?
Michelin are going online?
This will be done with a 40% acquisition of the French online tyre retailer “Allpnues”. The online tyre company sold 3 million tyres online last year, which accounts for 7% of the French tyre market.
Michelin to use ATS as the fitting stations
Michelin have also announced that they are going to use their network of ATS tyre depots to carry out their fitting work, across Europe.
When I first read the story I thought that Michelin were just going to supply France and use the French ATS depots, but they say that they will be using all the ATS depots across Europe. I did notice that some of the local ATS depots were not doing any truck work anymore and have been smartened up for retail, and so this has been a plan of theirs for some time.
One thing is for sure, this will kick off repercussions amongst tyre wholesalers and will there be a big rush from the other tyre manufacturers to compete on the same lines. This effectively means that Michelin are missing out the middle man, which at the moment, are the big tyre wholesalers.
I can remember years ago when Michelin decided to go into ASDA to sell tyres.
This too caused a huge rumpus and I think that it was ATS who eventually stopped the process and Michelin closed down the tyre shops within the supermarket. This time ATS will be one of the main players and have no complaints.
I also wonder what Michelin will do with other brands that Allpnues also sell? Will they be pushing out their own product? I think so. It is a big investment to make just to sell Dunlop’s and Continentals products.
Whatever happens, it has certainly changed the game big style? But I can’t help feeling that this is the way to go, it makes good business sense and will cut out the middle man as I have stated earlier. It could be the start of another dot/com boom, but in the tyre industry, watch this space?
Eric has spent all his working life apart from a brief 6 months as a firefighter in the tyre trade. Married to Michelle, having 8 children all now grownup.
Tyres are Eric's life long passion. Apart from running his business Eric is a keen Blogger and runs 4 online websites relating to his business.
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