Q&A: Yokohama's products to seize on CUV, UHP popularity

Andrew Briggs, Yokohama Tire Corp.'s vice president of marketing and product management, discusses trends in the UHP and CUV/SUV tire market and how Yokohama is addressing those trends with new products.

How has the car manufacturers' move to light trucks, SUV and CUVs impacted your product mix?

Light truck tires have been a major focal point of our product initiatives over the past few years. With the introduction of the Geolandar X-AT in July, we will have completely turned our LTR line in just a few years. With seven products addressing nearly every need of the total category, we have one of the newest and most robust lineups in the industry.

How has the UHP market fared in light of the proliferation of LT, SUVs and CUVs? Are you seeing growth and potential for future growth? Any new innovations in the segment?

UHP, as a category, has actually grown—even as the vehicle trends continue to move toward CUVs—but this actually has come at the expense of more broad-line passenger car products, which have allowed both UHP and LTR to grow. The growth in UHP has been driven by all-season UHP, as speed-rating demands at OE have increased, while other OEMs have de-emphasized summer tires in favor of more balanced performance all-season products. Yokohama has served this category successfully with the ADVAN Sport A/S since the end of 2014, which will be replaced with a performance upgrade in the ADVAN Sport A/S+ this September.

What are UHP customers looking for most in a tire? How has the market changed over the past several years?

By definition, performance is still the priority, including wet and dry grip. The higher up in the category one goes, the more important some of the more refined performance attributes such as noise and comfort become. On the all-season side, in addition to the above, we see the importance of winter traction as well as mileage moving up the priority rank as consumers in all categories expect more from their tires.

Do you expect to roll out any additional products in 2019?

We're launching quite a few products in 2019—nine to be exact—serving light truck, high performance and passenger car. To begin, in April we activated our latest generation high-performance summer tire, the ADVAN V701, which replaces our S.drive line; a new track and competition tire, the ADVAN A052, which will set a new bar in the category; and our Geolandar X-CV, which is an all-season CUV/SUV tire intended for performance and luxury CUVs and SUVs.

This will be followed by the launch of our Geolandar X-AT in July, which will occupy the space between our traditional Geolandar A/T G015 and our Geolandar M/T.

In August, we will bring our ADVAN Apex to market, which will be our U.S. flagship UHP summer tire designed and developed with the replacement needs of the U.S. market in mind.

In September, our AVID Ascend will be replaced by the all-new AVID Ascend LX and our ADVAN Sport A/S will be replaced by the upgraded ADVAN Sport A/S+. Both tires represent significant performance upgrades vs. the predecessor products, along with additional sizes. Finally, we'll be releasing two new winter tires for passenger cars—the iceGuard iG53—and for light trucks, the iceGuard G075.

With these introductions, we'll address nearly every aspect of the market as we continue to manage our product lifecycles and look for incremental opportunities in underserved categories.

Do you foresee any price hikes in the last half of the year?

It's definitely possible later this year. As tread counts and the proliferation of SKUs continues to increase, service level expectations are at an all-time high. Additionally, promotional spending and marketing budgets are expected to increase collectively, creating an increase in the overall cost of doing business. Recently, manufacturers have become much better operationally, but these costs continue to rise.

Do you have a minimum advertised price? Why is it important?

Yes, our MAP policy went into effect on Feb. 1. It was important that we established this policy to maintain the integrity and premium stats of Yokohama products. Additionally, it is of paramount importance that we continue to support the strong customer service efforts of our authorized distribution and resale network by discouraging price-based advertising that undermines such efforts.