“We are absolutely committed to getting back to being number one in tires and number one in service,” says Mark Stewart, CEO and president of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
In this wide-ranging interview, which was conducted at the 2024 SEMA Show, Stewart discusses the role independent tire dealers will play in Goodyear’s future, how the company will manage its expansive brand portfolio, next steps in the Goodyear Forward plan and much more.
MTD: When you took the job, you knew there were some challenges facing Goodyear. What opportunities do you see right now and what are some of the challenges you’re working through?
Stewart: It was over a year-and-a-half ago now that Goodyear reached out and sort of doing the research about the challenges of things...and at that time, the Goodyear Forward plan was just coming out as I was getting to the end of the process, so a lot of time going through that and looking at it and that plan really resonated with me. I said, ‘OK, this makes sense and that makes sense. These are things I’ve done in terms of turnarounds,’ So I got really excited about that and then the people I started meeting at Goodyear. And for me, that cultural fit was there. I was just really impressed with the folks and the pride people have working there.
Coming on board, I really spent time listening to folks, meeting as many people as possible, getting to all the factories, meeting the retailers, meeting the distributors, finding out what the challenges were, what was going well and what wasn’t, so we could put it together. And some of these things I (still) do every week. So what we did was we took the Goodyear Forward plan and we’ve enhanced it - taking a fresh-eye look coming in, taking (in) feedback from the teams.
Goodyear Forward is very much grassroots. It’s coming from our folks. And it's going very well. We increased our guidance on it... $450 million (in cost savings) this year, so up $100 million. The original plan was $1.3 billion by the end of next year. We upped that today to $1.5 billion. (Editor's note: MTD interviewed Stewart a few hours after the company’s third quarter 2024 earnings call.) We feel very confident in the work the team is doing around the world and we continue to fill the pipeline up with new projects. Back to the basics is really the thing.
MTD: Do you expect to sell the Dunlop brand and Goodyear’s chemical division in the new year? (Editor’s note: This past July, Goodyear announced that it will sell its OTR tire business to Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. for $905 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in early-2025.)
Stewart: We can't say a lot about it right now. As we get to the right spots, we can communicate more. They’re still going through the process. What I'll share with you on Dunlop ... is we’re very pleased with the progress of Dunlop. It’s got a good following in the U.S. What I’ll assure you is, it’s not a fire sale. We’ll either get the right value for that or we won’t sell it.
MTD: Are you making progress on spinning off chemical, as well?
Stewart: It’s going through that process right now.
MTD: Goodyear now has a lot of brands with the addition of Cooper Tire & Rubber Co.’s portfolio. How are you planning to manage all those brands and what’s the future of your brand portfolio in North America?
Stewart: We're making sure in the realignment of the brands in each of the regions (that) we’re not bumping into each other. The last thing we want to do is go head-to-head and cannibalize each other. Ryan Waldron (the president of Goodyear’s Americas region) and the Americas team have restructured the sales group and how we go to market with the distributors. We've brought in a new chief marketing officer.
What I’m really pleased about is we're specifically working on catching up and filling the holes in our portfolio in high performance and the upper part of tier-one. We were too slow in getting those into the marketplace. We have the WeatherReady 2 coming out right now. By the end of the year, we’ll have roughly 90 SKUs. The ElectricDrive 2 is coming out. We’re also bringing Eagle F1 SuperSports into the marketplace. We're bringing in the (Eagle F1) Asymmetric 6. They’re on the boats right now. We’re doing more of a global capacity look and a global allocation fill. We’ve got those high-end fitments/SKUs in the market in Europe and we can effectively move them in.
A week-and-a-half ago, we launched our first marketing campaign – in terms of new advertising, TV advertising and digital advertising – for the Cooper brand. We wanted to make sure that our really dedicated Cooper distributors can see and feel that we are committed to the Cooper brand. Step one was putting this fresh series of commercials into the marketplace.
MTD: The Cooper acquisition happened before your time with Goodyear. Would you say all of Cooper’s former operations are fully integrated?
Stewart: I would say it mostly is. The synergy side of it – the teams playing together with that merger - is completed. But I’ve taken a fresh-eye look at it, as well - not just with the Americas team, but around the world, and there were a lot of great processes within Cooper that we can learn from as a broader group on a broader scale. We're being really efficient with capex and that's what we’re bringing into the marketplace, as well ... looking at our equipment standards, helping us to modernize faster (and) being more efficient with that capital to do it. Some of (Cooper’s) prowess in going to market – being really scrappy in the replacement market – I think is absolutely outstanding.
MTD: What are Goodyear’s long-term plans for its company-owned stores, both on the retail side and the commercial side?
Stewart: I’m really excited about retail. Ryan and I meet with the (retail) team every week. We just had our best performance in over 15 years and so I feel absolutely outstanding about where we’re at, in terms of the health of the retail market. We’ve also bolted on, over the last four months or so, the last-mile fleet business into the stores. We have nearly 50 activations on that. We're doing in the neighborhood of 600 to 800 appointments in last- mile.
We’ve changed our mix in the stores, as well, making sure we have the right assortment - the same as we’re doing with our distributors. And we’ve really up-ticked our service mix in the retail stores. We're ready to go into a growth mode in our stores. I feel super-positive about it.
MTD: What's happening on the TBR side? How’s that part of your business doing?
Stewart: Commercial truck continues to be an overall struggle in the marketplace. It’s always the peaks and valleys of the cycle. We have upcoming regulatory changes, so on the OE side, we should start seeing some builds coming next year for that. It feels like things have kind of bottomed out and (are) starting to pick up.
Our national fleet account (business) is going very well. I've been spending a lot of time with our fleet customers and getting to know them. We’re hoping things pick up in the (TBR) arena. The team’s doing a good job of flexing the cost structure despite the volumes.
MTD: The recent bankruptcy of American Tire Distributors Inc. (ATD) is a huge story. What does that mean for Goodyear and the wholesale channel, in general, and also, how do you see that affecting TireHub?
Stewart: We continue to watch it, as you guys do, as well. What I can share is in the last few days, we’ve got agreements in place with ATD for continued supply and protecting our part of the bankruptcy receivables, so we feel good about that and the process they're going through with it. We continue to assess that situation and also feel good, looking backwards, that we have a joint venture with Bridgestone in TireHub as a nice alternative, as well as our other aligned distributor network customers. We have the means to get the tires to people.
MTD: What role will Goodyear's partnership with independent tire distributors and dealers play in the company's success? How will you make sure your dealers won't feel overlooked, neglected or left behind?
Stewart: I think it goes back to us making sure we have the right, full assortment for each of our distributors, so it's a one-stop shop for their customer base, for their retailers - whether it’s a Goodyear product, a Cooper product, a Kelly, a Mastercraft, etc. So from that side, we’ll make sure we have full coverage for them.
MTD: What message do you want to convey to your independent dealers?
Stewart: One, a big shout-out and thank you to all those folks. We thank them for their loyalty, their dedication, for representing Goodyear and Cooper and (our) family of brands. We are absolutely committed to getting back to being number one in tires and number one in service. It's a lofty goal, but something Goodyear was known for (over) the bulk of 125 years and we are absolutely laser-focused on making sure we do that.
You’re going to hear us be much louder and prouder than we’ve been in recent years. We want to support our independent retailers, our own retail network (and) the distributors and help them to not just push, but to get pull from end users. We have to give them the tools to do that.
