The replacement tire market is a very highly fragmented market, with restraints all around for the participants. Conversely, the market is offering growth opportunities to participants with a strong brand image and those who target specific customer groups. For others brand image is very important, but the issue of efficient inventory management and lowering costs are proving themselves to be the key to successful sales.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (www.transportation.frost.com), finds that the North American Replacement Tire Aftermarket earned revenues of $14.4 billion in 2005 and estimates to reach $19.1 billion in 2012.

In 2005, all-season tires had the largest share of unit shipments and revenues. All-season tires expect to continue to be the most prominent tire, but consumers in the Northern states and Canada will still opt for snow tires in the winter seasons due to harsh weather and heavy ice and snow road conditions.

“HP & UHP tires are still growing in terms of unit shipments and revenues. HP tires’ unit shipments may have slowed down, but it is still on a growing trend,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Kyu-min Oh. “Whatever shares HP has lost, UHP tires have picked up. UHP tires expect to grow at a high rate in terms of unit shipments and revenues. Run-Flat tires represent less than one percent of the industry revenues in 2005. Unit shipments expect to increase by 50 percent annually due to increased OE implementation of Run-Flat tires as original equipment.”

In terms of rim diameter, 15 and 16 inches are still the most popular, but although the 16-inch category is still on the rising trend, the 15-inch category expects to decrease, with the 17-inch category rising to its place. Before 2009, the 16 and 17-inch category will have the highest share of unit shipments.

In North America today, automakers are equipping their new model vehicles with larger rims. This is mostly due to the fact that modern cars are equipped with bigger brakes and the trend of ‘up-sizing’ with low profile tires remains strong. With wheels being the one of the first customizations that an end-user goes through, tires naturally follow this trend. Because tires and wheels have become a performance upgrade, end-users’ driving styles have changed as well. People accelerate faster and take sharper corners. This results in faster wear of tires, which results in faster replacement rates.

“With the tire aftermarket participants having to comply with the TREAD act, manufacturing costs have increased, on top of the fact that raw material prices such as rubber and petroleum have skyrocketed,” says Oh. “This all results in price increases for the end-user. Unit shipments and revenues expects to continue to rise at a steady rate during the forecast period of 2006-2012.”

With oil prices at a historical peak, and the situation in the Middle East being so unstable, oil prices will not be coming down anytime soon. With crude oil being one of the important materials used in manufacturing a tire, tire prices will increase steadily throughout the forecast period. Because of these reasons, consumers are expected to stretch the life of the tire as much as possible disregarding manufacturer’s safety guidelines. This in turn would slow down the replacement rate and decrease unit shipments.

“Rising material and manufacturing costs force price increases throughout the distribution channel,” says Oh. “Wider variety of size and styles results in difficulty of product differentiation in the distribution channels and the importance of training technicians become important as TPMS kicks in. The increased focus on safety within the industry results in higher business costs, which then results in a need to specialize in sales of high-margin products.”

Tire manufacturers need to understand end-user trends and demands, especially with costs raising so high, the risk of backed up inventory is higher. Finding the right combination of demand and supply will generally guarantee strong revenue growth. For large participants, it is important to note that there is minimum value in competing at the value market, as there are many small participants and private labels that sell the tires at the cheapest prices. It is suggested that those participants concentrate on high-margin quality tires, which would bring in the revenues and cut down on unnecessary production costs.