Bonus Feature - Yokohama plans strategy in Europe

By David Shaw, ERJ staff

Geneva - Yokohama is serious about developing its sales in the European tyre market. "Europe is considered one of the most important and strongest markets, [for Yokohama]" said Felix Graf von Westphalen, the company's marketing manager for Europe. The company is addressing the original equipment (OE) market, having won fitments on Porsche's 997 and Cayenne models. The company also has fitments on other high performance vehicles, including AMG, Lotus, Aston Martin and Audi's S8 model.

Within OE, said, von Westphalen, "we consider Europe to be the most important market outside Japan."

Currently, the company has limited resources in Europe, but it is steadily building towards a more comprehensive presence in the region. Although there is no technical centre, nor any factories in the European sphere, von Westphalen said the company is steadily working toward that kind of presence. The first step - in 2005 - was to upgrade the representative office in Düsseldorf to a full GmbH company. This, said Von Westphalen was the first step to granting the European operations a limited form of independence. In the 18 months since then, the number of staff at the Düsseldorf HQ has doubled. All of these, said von Westphalen are Europeans. "We have realised that we need people from the local market, who know the culture, the language and the way of doing business."

He said Yokohama's main focus in Europe is on the replacement market, since, "OE is mostly about price" He added, however, that the OE team at Yokohama has been doing a lot of work on the testing side and developing relationships with the car makers.

On the research side, the company has been setting up a a database of all the current car models in Europe and their various tyre fitments. Von Westphalen said this database is still being developed, but it is helping the company to better understand the market dynamics, and is a good tool in helping Yokohama to understand the market and to begin to anticipate the needs of its customers, and so continue the transition from a tyre supplier to a true technology partner.

Von Westphalen said, all Yokohama's current OE contracts in Europe are relatively low volume and high performance tyres. "When we tackle the volume models we have to do something about it, that is well realised." He added that Yokohama executives in Japan have discussed a time line that shows increased facilities in Europe but declined to give any details of what investments might be made, or when. Von Westphalen said Yokohama thinks of BMW's 3-series or Mercedes' C-class as a volume model.

Currently, the company has no intention of going after such high volumes in Europe.

The main priority at present, he said, is to develop the brand image of the Advan name and of the Yokohama name. "What we have done with Advan is to position ourselves where we came from - from UHP."

In another example, Yokohama has introduced a high performance winter tyre in the Advan range. Von Westphalen said, "the Advan winter is 20-inch 255mm tyre. This shows we are capable of HP winter. That is where things are going definitely."

Von Westphalen said the typical Yokohama customer is a "Petrol-head" This has directed the marketing strategy, which is focussed around motorsport, he added. This was one of the reasons Yokohama made a bid to supply tyres to the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC). He added that Yokohama had been successful in winning that bid from Michelin. He said The FIA had made the decision to change tyre suppliers and that Yokohama did not question how the FIA arrived at its decision, but added that Yokohama had put in a great deal of effort into the bid and was pleased to have been successful.

Von Westphalen said Yokohama also supplies tyres to the the Formula Masters and Formula 3 in Germany, this shows the commitment in Formula, he added.

Von Westphalen said motor sport is a big commitment for Yokohama. He added that it is one of the three basic poles that Yokohama addresses with the Advan brand: the other two are OE and replacement sales.

Von Westphalen said Yokohama is studying the future of runflat tyres. He said there are strong differences of opinion within Yokohama on the future of that technology, but whether the technology will take off or not, Yokohama believes it needs to have a product to meet the future replacement demand. Yokohama showed a runflat tyre at the Geneva Motor Show. but the company does not currently have any OE fitments for the system. "We introduce it to European replacement market this year. and we will try to supply [it] to OE customers. There are different opinions about it, but we think it is a tyre you need to have, because it is the latest technology it is the latest type of tyre.

Von Westphalen said he thought runflat tyres were uncomfortable and offer poor performance. He said one of his relatives had bought a new BMW with runflat tyres. After the winter season, the owner removed the winter tyres and replaced the OE spec runflats. After a few kilomettre driving, he went back to the dealer and said, " take them off, I do not want them, This car is not driveable [with the runflat tyres]."

Von Westphalen added that the well-known tuners, AMG, Brabus and others, "they absolutely hate the [runflat] tyre. They are working with high spec alloy rims and they are into real performance, but this tyre is not what they want."