Page 10 - CTB N16 - 2016-04

NEWS
CommercialTyre
Management
and Fleet Business
Kingsway Complete £450,000 Investment
Up to £450,000 has been spent on a new autocentre in Retford for car and van drivers to benefit from, which will immediately create two new jobs and further positions in the future.
Kingsway Tyres, which boasts 16 depots across the east of England, will now be able to offer full MOT testing facilities, four-wheel Bluetooth geometry alignment, and air-conditioning, along with the very best in tyre repairs.
The facilities, based in Trinity Park
said: “This is an exciting new chapter for Kingsway and the Retford team. To be able to boast these facilities at a brand new centre is such a boost for us. We hope that motorists will benefit from an even better service and we look forward to welcoming them onto the forecourt.” Kingsway Tyres’ Director and General Manager Martin O’Brien added: “We have already welcomed so many new and old customers in our first week, so it
Kingway’s new facilities based in Trinity Park Industrial Estate
Industrial Estate, Sloswick Drive, will also be complimented by Kingsway’s 24/7 support for commercial trucks, buses and lorries, replacing Kingsway’s old depot in Victoria Road, which had been home for 40 years.
Centre manager Dave Spooner
has been a really encouraging start to life at Trinity Park Industrial Estate. We offer plenty of parking and excellent customer facilities while they wait for their vehicles, along with a range of premium Bridgestone tyres, which perform consistently well.”
An additional upgrade of BKT’s online platform is due in 2017.
Bridgestone collecting the 2016 NTDA’s Tyre Manufacturer of the Year award for a second year in a row.
BKT Launches New Website for Mobile Devices
BKT’s new website m.bkt-tires.com for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, has now gone officially online, offering immediate access to the manifold and specially selected contents, thanks to a tailored layout, making mobile browsing easier.
Users can choose between two measurement standards as far as
technical data and tyre features are concerned: the international metric system and the US standard. The new version is immediately available in six languages: English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese with additional languages being introduced soon. This digital strategy has been confirmed by the results on the social media channels with BKT’s Facebook page
having 134 thousand fans along with an active presence on Twitter, Linkedin and Youtube, which presents numerous videos showing BKT tyres in action. The new m.bkt- tires.com menu clearly highlights the links to all corporate social media channels, so that browsing through all the available contents is simple.
Bridgestone Repeats Success by Winning Tyre Manufacturer of the Year Award
Bridgestone is celebrating back-to- back tyre manufacturer of the year titles for the first time, after winning the National Tyre Distributors Association’s headline award for a second successive year.
In receiving the award, Bridgestone’s Managing Director Robin Shaw said: “We are so proud to win the NTDA’s Tyre Manufacturer of the Year award for 2016, after also triumphing 12 months ago in the same category. It is such a difficult award to win. It validates the tremendous amount of hard work that everyone at the company carries out on a daily basis
in an attempt to meet our ‘Serving Society with Superior Quality’ mission statement.”
Meanwhile, Bridgestone also celebrated winning the NTDA’s Staff Training and Development award. Bridgestone’s training scheme, headed up by training and development managers Phil Thirsk and Paul Turner, covers a broad range of relevant, practical courses for its network of dealers. It is the only known provision to provide assessments in the workplace to minimise disruption, while Bridgestone can also tailor its
package of support to suit each individual dealer, as and when required. Phil Thirsk said: “Our customers don’t need to lose their technicians for a day. We like to assess technicians within their working environment rather than having to take time out of their place of work.
Michelin Tyre Academy ‘Class of 2016’ Get in the Groove at Dundee Factory
Tyre dealership staff selected to join the Michelin Tyre Academy ‘Class of 2016’ travelled to the company’s Dundee factor y recently for the course’s second module, as their journey towards becoming expert technicians continues.
The manufacturer flew a group of 17 attendees – selected from dealerships of the Michelin Auto Professional network – to Scotland for the second Tyre Academy module, which combined classroom-based training with a tour of the city’s Michelin tyre factory. Mark Meagher, Retail Programme Development Manager at Michelin, says: “It’s one thing to learn about Michelin’s premium tyres in a classroom, but there’s no substitute for on-site education – and the staff that made the trip to Dundee got to see what goes into Michelin fitments
first-hand.”
This year’s Tyre Academy course was launched in June, with the first module held at Michelin’s Stoke-on- Trent headquarters. The initial module covered key technical knowledge of tyre sidewall markings and construction, the legal issues surrounding tyres, and how to provide excellent customer service. A separate Tyre Academy module was also held earlier this year at a location near Gatwick Airport, with Michelin inviting independent dealerships in the south of the country to send their best and brightest.
10 Commercial Tyre Business