Goodyear's Stewart: No 'fire sale' for Dunlop brand

LAS VEGAS—Don't expect Goodyear to sell off its Dunlop brand—a major part of the Goodyear Forward cost-savings initiative—in a "bargain fire sale."

In fact, Goodyear CEO and President Mark Stewart told Tire Business that the venerable Dunlop brand—which dates back to the late 1880s—has increased its market share in Europe despite what he called a "flat to overall declining" European market.

"So we feel very good about Dunlop, and we won't fire-sell that asset," Stewart said, talking from the Mickey Thompson booth at SEMA, just hours after conducting a conference call with financial analysts. "If we don't get the appropriate amount, then it won't go. So we'll just see how it goes in the process. And it's moving along in the process, but we'll see."

Stewart said Goodyear is selling around 5 million Dunlop units a year in Europe, and "a lot less here in the Americas."

Earlier this year, Goodyear repositioned the Dunlop brand as its "pan-European" value brand, positioned between the premium Goodyear and five "local hero brands," what Stewart called the upper part of Tier 2.

"It's a really storied racing brand, similar to Goodyear on the U.S. side of the house, or Mickey Thompson as well with the racing heritage," Stewart said. "And so from that, it absolutely has a name-brand pull, with a lot of fans of it, starting from the U.K., but also across Europe. It does was really well in Germany."

Shedding the brand no doubt will be a difficult process from a personal standpoint for Stewart: His father worked at Dunlop for 42 years, giving the Goodyear CEO some "genetic credibility."

"I knew about Banburys (rubber mixers) and my mom yelling at my dad every day to take those shoes and get that carbon black off of them," said Stewart, who grew up in Madison, Ala. His dad passed away five years ago.

Stewart pointed out that at the time his dad worked for the tire brand, it was owned by Sumitomo Rubber Industries Inc.

The Dunlop brand has been part of Goodyear's North American and European portfolio since 1999, and the company secured the rights to the Dunlop brand in those markets as part of the dissolution of its joint venture with Sumitomo in 2015.

"It is a historical nod for sure, but we've got to make the right business decision and it's not a heartstring-pull decision on it.

"But I will say it is pretty special to have some of my dad's cronies that I grew up with, you know, fishing and hunting with and different things, that are definitely in the camp of Team Goodyear and helping support me, which is nice."

Stewart also addressed the status of three relatively new brands to the Goodyear portfolio—Cooper, Mickey Thompson and Mastercraft—each acquired as part of Goodyear's $2.8 billion acquisition of the Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. in 2021.

The takeaway: Each is an integral part of the Akron-based tire maker's future, particularly the Cooper brand, which has a rabid fan base that includes tire dealers and consumers.

"Cooper was very good at doing a lot with the capital, money that they spent," Stewart said, "with a very, very scrappy go-to-market approach. And there is a huge group of folks that love Cooper tires, right? And that is an awesome place to be."

Stewart said he realized one of the missing pieces, particularly for the Cooper brand, was a lack of advertising or marketing. That has been addressed.

Less than two weeks ago, Goodyear rolled out a series of three Cooper digital media advertisements that were aired on ESPN and ABC-TV

"For me, it was really important, both for Cooper and Goodyear, that we get back out there and not only cultivate the consumer but also our loyal customer distributor base with Cooper as well as Goodyear. We're super pleased with the results."

Stewart reiterated Goodyear's commitment to the Cooper brand "for our super loyal dealers and our customers." There is no coincidence, he said tongue-in-check, that the Cooper ad features a hound dog named Cooper, and he used to own a hound dog named Cooper.

"As the obsolete engineer that likes to play marketing, it was like, I want a hound dog named Cooper in the ad," he said.

He said that Goodyear's support extends to Mickey Thompson and Mastercraft as well.

"We're looking across the whole portfolio at our blank spaces of SKUs—where are we missing them in the car parc for replacement. Those are the jobs of the engineering SWAT teams, to ... make sure we've got coverage there."

Stewart, nine months into his job after replacing Rich Kramer for the top leadership role at Goodyear, wants to make sure that dealer customers recognize that he is learning as much as he can as fast as he can, while "taking those learnings into action."

He said he has visited every Goodyear manufacturing facility in the U.S., except for a retread plant.

His message to dealers:

"(We want them to know) how much we appreciate our aligned dealer network and our dealers and the distributors both, and that we are absolutely committed to giving them a full portfolio of competitively priced products that they can be successful, and we can be successful with.

"We're working super hard to to fill in any gaps that we've got right now and to make sure we bring Goodyear back to being number one in tires and number one in service."