At Cincinnati-based tire retailer Tire Discounters, success is measured more by the number of customer generations its 80-plus stores serve than by inventory turns. So when it was time to start planning the “Store of the Future” model for the 10 to 12 stores the company adds annually, one of the team’s top priorities was to make the customer experience as efficient as possible. It was only natural then, that when longtime equipment partner KOI Auto Parts mentioned that Rotary Lift had developed an incredibly fast new lift, Forry Hargitt, Tire Discounters director of sales and operations, checked it out.
“I went to a dealership that had the Rotary Lift Shockwave-equipped two-post lifts installed, and I talked to the technicians about how much they liked using them,” says Hargitt, himself a former Porsche technician. “Once I saw the lifts in action — how easy they were to set up and how fast they got the cars in the air — it was a no-brainer to put them into our stores.”
Every new store Tire Discounters builds now features Shockwave-equipped two-post lifts. Shockwave-equipped lifts are the world’s fastest. They go up and down twice as fast as standard lifts. A variety of quick-set frame-contact options means they can be set up more quickly, too. As a result, technicians using Shockwave-equipped lifts can be more productive, getting more work done in less time, said the company.
Not only is Tire Discounters adding stores at a steady pace, it is also renovating and updating the equipment in many of its existing stores, some of which date back to the company’s 1976 founding. Most of these older stores, like tire stores around the country, are equipped with mid-rise or low-rise lifts. Tire Discounters is gradually replacing these lifts with Rotary Lift Shockwave-equipped two-post lifts to increase bay productivity. Hargitt says that installing the Shockwave lifts has provided a “light switch effect” of instantly improving service efficiency and technician productivity.
“Replacing mid-rise and low-rise lifts with the Shockwave two-post lifts gives us added functionality and allows us to use the bays as full-service bays instead of just for tire work,” Hargitt explains. “Now we can do tire work, brakes, oil changes, suspensions and other service work right in the same bay. It becomes a complete profit center. The technicians love the Shockwave lifts. The techs are more efficient; they’re making more money; and they’re getting the customers in and out quickly. That’s the win for us: being able to more efficiently get the customer in, out and back on the road.”
To hear more from Hargitt about Tire Discounters’ experience with Rotary Lift Shockwave-equipped lifts, watch the new video interview at http://www.rotarylift.com/tirediscounters/. The website also includes additional Shockwave resources, including an interactive ROI calculator, product details, speed comparisons and other customer testimonials.
Learn more from your local Rotary Lift distributor or call (800) 640-5438. You can also find Rotary Lift on Facebook, www.facebook.com/RotaryLift; Twitter, twitter.com/RotaryLift; and YouTube, www.youtube.com/RotaryLiftMedia.
For more information about Tire Discounters, visit www.tirediscounters.com.
