Goodyear steps into West Africa

The deal will expand Goodyear's operations in West Africa

One of the Middle East’s largest tyre companies has signed a retail agreement for its Vulco retail brand to bring in car, bus and truck tyres, and undercarriage parts and services into West Africa.

The retail agreement was signed by Octavian Velcan, general manager of Goodyear Middle East & Africa, Essam Odaymat, CEO of Rana Motors, and Vinay Kapoor, managing director of West Africa Tyre Services Ltd. (WATS), an affiliated company of Rana Motors – Goodyear’s distributors in Ghana. The products will be sold through the retail brand in a variety of underserved African countries, such as Gabon, Western Sahara, Chad and the Central African Republic.

“Our long business partnership with Rana Motors will be strengthened by the introduction of the Vulco retail stores in West Africa. This will serve motorists and fleet professionals with best-in-class value-added customer service expertise, friendliness, reliability and convenience,” said Velcan.

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The Vulco tyre retail concept serves individual customers and automobile fleet professionals. The concept was originally developed by Goodyear in 1996 and is already successfully operating in France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Morocco.

Goodyear owns several premium tyre retail concepts, namely Vulco, Hi-Q, Premio, Trentyre and Quick. In addition to its dealer partner development program, Goodyear is successfully operating over 4,000 retail outlets network worldwide.

According to Kapoor, increasing competition, continued higher end-user demands and the growing complexity of the retail business have led tyre retailers to search for a strong, reliable and secured franchise business partner.

“As a result we are transferring the long and successful experience of Goodyear’s retail concept brand to West Africa,” explained Kapoor.

“WATS Ltd. plans to open a minimum of three Vulco outlets in Ghana by the end of 2009. To further boost the strong business partnership with Goodyear, the Vulco retail concept will be introduced in thirteen countries across West Africa by 2013,” he added.