Month: March 2023

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TORQATA ANNOUNCES NEW ADDITIONS TO THE TEAM, CONTINUING TO STRIVE FOR A WORKFORCE IN THE TIRE INDUSTRY INCLUSIVE OF WOMEN

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Embracing the small number of women in the automotive industry, Torqata continues to value women with automotive and tire industry experience, bringing three new experienced women in 2023, and promoting another to Vice President.

Huntersville, NC, March 31, 2023 — Torqata Data & Analytics, a software company in the tire industry, welcomes Kirsten Zaremba, Ashley Hoyt, and Kate Beirowski to the team, bringing additional experienced women into the automotive industry. Torqata also congratulates Elizabeth (Liz) Schneider on her new promotion to Vice President of Product.

Kirsten is on board as the new Director of Marketing, bringing more than 25 years’ experience in the automotive industry supporting the automotive aftermarket, dealers, and vehicle manufacturers, such as Volkswagen. Among the key initiatives while at the Auto Care Association, she led efforts to ensure secure and direct access to vehicle data with the “Your Car. Your Data.” campaign and Right to Repair. In addition, she is a Women in Auto Care member, on the Wheel and Tire Council for SEMA, and an Ambassador of TechForce.

Ashley joins as the newly created Senior Manager of Business Development and Partnerships, bringing on more than ten years’ of experience.  Along with her childhood roots in the automotive industry, she is an experienced partnership manager. Most recently, she created the Enterprise CSM team at RepairPal, a software company for auto repair and maintenance, and defined the team’s mission and recruitment goals. In addition, she is a member of Women in Auto Care and YANG.

With more than ten years’ experience as an inspirational sales leader in the logistics and automotive industries, Kate joins Torqata as the Director of Inside Sales. She has built successful sales teams from the ground up and will bring that success to Torqata as we continue to grow and transform the tire industry. In addition, she is a member of Women in Auto Care.

It is with great pride that we announce the recent promotion of Liz Schneider to Vice President of Product. Liz joined Torqata in 2021 as the Product Area Manager, and has been a considerable part of Torqata’s success and growth in her previous role. She has more than 25 years of experience in the financial industry in various roles serving retail, small business, and commercial clients. Leveraging data to enable better customer experiences that drive revenue and deliver efficiencies has been at the heart of every role she’s had. In her new role with Torqata as the VP of Product, Liz will continue to lead her teams to meet their strategic goals and contribute to Torqata’s success.

“The uniqueness of every team member here at Torqata, combined with their knowledge and expertise in the industry, will help Torqata to, as we say, drive better decisions,” said Tim Eisenmann, CEO of Torqata Data and Analytics, “We celebrate equity and encourage women of the industry to continue to lead and pioneer our efforts. We’re proud of our new additions and promotion to Team Torqata!”

About Torqata

Torqata Data & Analytics is a data analytics software company that helps tire manufacturers, distributors and retailers maximize profits and customer value by providing data visibility and connectivity across the supply chain. Torqata offers a full suite of data-driven software tools for pricing, inventory management, and sales insights designed to streamline operations and reduce or eliminate stale inventory. This allows manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to improve key areas of their business performance using patented technologies, and data-driven analytics and insights.

Torqata’s vision is to enable and inform manufacturers, distributors, service, and tire shop owners to source, price, and optimize their inventory; this reduces waste and drives profits through the entire distribution channel.

Interested individuals and organizations can visit Torqata.com to schedule a demonstration or to learn more.

Media Contact

Kirsten Zaremba
Torqata Data & Analtyics
kzaremba@torqata.com

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Trends and Treads: 2022 Wrap-up

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March 2023

Torqata is proud to present Trends + Treads, a blog series that brings you actionable market insights in the automotive tire industry! We’re dedicated to equipping tire and service shops with actionable data and analytics tools that can help increase profits, identify blind spots in the business, and optimize the supply chain. 

For our first Trends + Treads post of 2023, our very own Tyler Martines, Business Development Manager and long-time tire and finance guy, takes our 2022 wrap-up and breaks it down for you.  

2022 Store visits decreased YOY, but more miles were driven:

2022 marked a major change in tire demand throughout the United States.  After two years of record setting growth, most retailers found traffic to their stores down, with research showing a 4.1% drop in store visits on average nationwide. 

Some would argue that this was the result of inflation hitting the consumer, as gas prices rose nearly 17% over the same period.  But here is where the story gets a bit more interesting.  Our data shows that total miles traveled increased YOY in 2022. 

So where did that demand go and are there tire demand tailwinds coming in 2023?  

Drivers were putting more miles on their vehicles in 2022 than in the previous three years, even with gas prices up 31.4% year-over-year. However, where would typically see an increase in store visits with more miles driven, the impact of inflation and supply issues ended 2022 with a 4.1% decrease.

Economy hits volume; how did you compare?

Most tire retailers struggled to grow their tire sales in 2022 as demand slumped nationwide. An important factor to consider when reflecting on your business performance over the last 12 months is your relative performance to the overall market. 

A declining year is never something to celebrate but if you were +/- a few percentage points YOY in 2022 there is a good chance you took market share from your competitors.  How?

On average, tire volumes declined by just over 10 percent, so if you outperformed that in 2022, you outperformed a number of your fellow tire dealers and potentially took a portion of their business.  

Tiering down:  

In addition to tire volumes falling, a major shift happened in the tiers of tires sold with the largest declines seen in tier 2 and tier 3 products.  While some of this can certainly be attributed to inventory constraints of those brands that make up those tiers, tier 4 tires were the only category that saw an increase in volume.

Inflation hit every tire manufacturer in 2022 but tier 4 products suffered the smallest price increases from a dollar standpoint. This supports the case for the tiering down recognized in our data, as consumers were more cost conscious and shifted their spending habits to meet the increasing costs of common goods.  

Price also continued to impact the market with Tier 2 and Tier 3 volumes decreasing, and Tier 4 tires picked up only a portion of those sales.

Protecting margins:

Many retailers take a fixed-rate approach to pricing their tires.  Think cost of a tire plus a certain fixed percentage. This strategy played well in 2022 as tire dealers not only passed along the increased acquisition cost of the tire to the consumer but saw growth in profits made per tire sold.

This same strategy will have an equally negative impact on profits as the acquisition costs moderate and start to decline. Taking a more strategic approach, with visibility to market level pricing data, will be imperative to keeping the margin expansion seen in 2022.  

Pricing has a significant impact on not only the profitability of your business but the ability to attract and retain new customers. Amid supply chain-related cost increases in the production and distribution of tires… is your pricing strategy still right for your business and customers? Your pricing strategies, along with your competition in a volatile market, can make the difference when your customers are shopping around.

A positive outlook for 2023:

In a changing market environment, it is vital that businesses make a shift from what used to work historically, to a more future focused strategy. Everything from stocking tires, pricing tires, and manufacturer program profitability needs to be looked at through a brand-new lens as consumer demands have shifted significantly from historic demands.

Tire volumes will increase, as more miles driven and falling new car sales support the replacement market outlook in 2023.  The question is, do you have the information you need to be prepared to take advantage of what is to come?    

Article written by Tyler Martines, Business Development Manager for Torqata Data and Analytics

Where our insights come from:

Our exclusive insights leverage data from over 15 thousand tire retailers and 50 million tires sold, which we combine with our comprehensive catalog of 221 thousand tires. For more information on our tools, contact support@torqata.com or call 828-TORQATA.