Three years after Prinx Chengshan Tire North America Inc. introduced a pair of new tire brands to North America, the tiremaker hired Samuel Felberbaum last summer to serve as president and usher in the next growth phase.
Felberbaum, a 30-year veteran of the tire industry who most recently spent eight years working for Toyo Tire U.S.A. Corp., leads a team that is off and running. By the end of the year, the company expects to increase its current offering of 350 SKUs to more than 400. And most of those SKUs are coming from a three-year-old plant the company is hungry to fill with orders. Once a one-million-unit automated warehouse comes online, the tiremaker expects to have passenger and light truck tires on the shelf ready for immediate shipment, cutting turnaround time on those orders by 30 days.
There are a lot of moving parts, but Felberbaum says it all boils down to some simple tasks.
“We’re focused on being best-in-class for our segment. I think if we’re able to be recognized as that, where distributors and retailers can both make an attractive profit on our products, and we do what we say we’re going to do, I think we’re going to be in real good shape.
“We’re not going to be the deal of the day or the lowest price. There’s always somebody that could be lower. But our goal (is to) have a consistent program (for) retailers and distributors” to offer their customers.
New products
This year the company is bringing new passenger, light truck and commercial truck tires to the North American market.
An all-weather tire is on the docket for both the U.S. and Canada, as is a Canada-only new winter tire line. On the commercial side, a long haul steer tire that fleets have been testing over the past nine months will become available in the third quarter of 2023. A new severe service trailer tire for spread-axle applications in multiple sizes, including 255/7022.5, will join the catalog. Plus, the company will be adding key sizes to existing tread patterns, too.
Kent Coltrane, vice president of marketing and product development, says one of the company’s product priorities last year was a tire for last-mile delivery, the Tormenta LMD. He sees adding a tire for electric vehicles on the horizon soon.
“We make EV tires for the China market, and I believe they’re sold in some other markets, as well. It’s growing here and we will have it here. We just felt that priority was better placed on tires for last-mile delivery, because that’s absolutely huge right now. EV will get bigger and the volume will be there as we move on down the road. We’ll probably do EV in 2024.”
Felberbaum says, “We’re working hard to meet the demands for both the PLT and TBR markets simultaneously. Having a facility and the backing of the head office to do that is really crucial for our success.”
The “facility” he mentions is Prinx Chengshan’s plant in Thailand, which opened in 2020. The plant has the capacity to produce more than two million TBR tires and more than eight million PLT tires annually. (Four million of those PLT tires and 800,000 of those TBR units are earmarked for the North American market.) It’s the company’s first production facility outside of China and it opened a year after Prinx Chenghsan introduced both the Prinx and Fortune brands to North America.
Felberbaum says nearly every tire for the North American market is manufactured in Thailand. The exceptions are semi-steel ST radial tires and the new winter tire for Canada, both of which will be produced in China. (All-steel ST tires are manufactured in Thailand.)
Dealer network
Felberbaum and his team are working to expand the company’s existing network of dealers for the Fortune brand. TBC Corp. is the national distributor of the Prinx brand and was “instrumental” in building the brand.
“TBC has been a great partner for us to help get the brand launched nationally,” Felberbaum says.
With Fortune, the company is relying on regional tire distributors to power its sales. At this point, the company’s strongest reach is in the southern U.S. and it is looking to fill in gaps and broaden its coverage in the northern half of the country, as well as in Canada.
Prinx Chengshan doesn’t have its own warehouses in the U.S. yet, so its priority is to work with distributors who can buy container loads of tires at a time. Then with the help of those distributors, the hope is to push the Fortune brand out to more retailers across the country.
Felberbaum says his sales team is on the ground and they’re willing to work alongside a distributor’s salesforce to talk to and reach more retailers.
He acknowledges the timing has been difficult, as lots of imported products arrived stateside in bulk in 2022, leaving distributors and retailers with more stock on hand than they’re accustomed to. And in many instances, those products came with premium shipping costs.
“In the fourth quarter of 2022, distributors and retailers were really loaded with PLT product, and even ST (tires). In the first quarter (of 2023), levels (were) starting to go back to normal,” Felberbaum says, noting truck tires eventually followed a similar pattern.
“So that’s a challenge, but I do believe that between Pete (Salvan, vice president of sales), Ken and myself, we have over 80 years in this industry. From our industry experience…and due to all of our relationships, this allows us to at least open the door to present our products. We want to develop long-term partnerships.”
Betting on pickleball
Tiremakers have tried all sorts of partnerships and sponsorships to put their brand names in front of consumers and Prinx Chengshan decided to zig where others might zag. And so in March, the Fortune brand was named the Official Tire Sponsor of USA Pickleball, the sanctioning body of the sport.
Coltrane says, “We could have been like the others and tried to go the motorsports route, or the off-road enthusiast route. That’s a great way to do it, but we wanted to try something different.”
He says there are some estimates that 10 million people are playing pickleball.
“That’s a lot of people that are driving cars and vans,” says Felberbaum, “and we’re hopeful that people who play pickleball and buy equipment support the sponsors.”
The new Fortune website soon will have a dealer locator to help consumers find their nearest retailer.
“We look at ourselves as an emerging brand. Pickleball is an emerging and growing sport that has taken off since 2019, really since the pandemic. We’re hopeful this will lead us to new customers.”
