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Episode 241

Ricky Ivey

Pueblo Tires & Service

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Ricky Ivey is the second-generation owner of Pueblo Tires & Service, a South Texas tire and automotive service company with 13 stores and a dedicated lube shop. His experience with tire shop marketing strategies spans decades of local advertising, brand development, store expansion, and operational growth.

Ivey also brings long-standing industry involvement to the conversation. He has served on the Texas Tire Dealers Association board since the 1980s and encourages dealers to build relationships through associations, buying groups, and operators in other markets.

In this episode…

Independent tire dealers sell products that customers can find in many places. Recognition comes from giving people a clear reason to remember the business. Pueblo Tires & Service approached the problem by creating “Shampoozie,” a made-up word tied to the company’s promise of superior service.

Building recognition required more than a memorable word. Pueblo placed the message across its advertising and kept funding marketing as media shifted from radio and television toward Google and social platforms. The expense remained visible every month, while the results took longer to measure.

Multi-location growth added another layer. Procedures helped Pueblo create consistency across stores, property ownership gave the company more control over its locations, and a separate lube shop created room for oil-change demand without disrupting tire sales. Marketing still depended on the experience customers received at the counter because advertising carried little value without honesty and a protected reputation.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[01:21] Ricky Ivey and Pueblo Tires & Service

[02:19] Development of the “Shampoozie” brand

[07:29] Long-term investment in marketing

[11:30] Pueblo Tires family business history

[18:13] Operational systems supporting company growth

[20:02] Business expansion and a $1 million loss

[23:30] Development of a dedicated lube operation

[26:31] Customer transparency and brand reputation

[28:11] Industry associations and professional relationships

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“You have to be really creative to sell tires because they’re kind of everywhere, especially nowadays.”
“You have to pay attention to marketing, and it’s always changing.”
“You can never, ever, ever recover your reputation.”
“I lost $1 million in one year, and that was in 1992.”
“You need to have some leverage over your properties.”
“Get involved with your association, your buying groups, and get to know people in different markets.”

Action Steps:

Choose one service promise customers can remember and write a one-sentence definition for it. Review every location’s website, signage, social profiles, and printed materials for consistent use.
Build tire shop marketing strategies into a 12-month calendar. Set the monthly budget as a fixed percentage of sales and assign the campaign, channel, owner, and review date before spending begins.
Review recent customer complaints, declined work, and callbacks before increasing advertising. Correct unclear estimates, inconsistent inspections, and counter communication that puts the shop’s reputation at risk.
Document one customer-facing process across all locations by tomorrow. Start with vehicle intake, inspection findings, estimate approval, or final delivery, then give each manager the same standard.
Contact an industry association or buying group and schedule conversations with two dealers outside your market. Compare one operating process, one marketing expense, and one growth decision.

Transcript

00:00
The first thing we did, let’s put on our capes. Yay. Let’s climb the roof.

00:04
Yay.

00:05
Let’s jump off the roof. And boy, we got scolded. And you guys, you put on a cape and you think you can do anything. And I kind of think the same way about this old hat. You know, you put on the hat.

00:18
Yeah.

00:19
It does something to your attitude. It’s just amazing how it works.

00:24
Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, the official podcast for tire business. I am Mike Edge, your host and I have the privilege of interviewing the tire dealers, shop owners, counter sales reps, technicians, industry executives and other thought leaders of our industry. This episode is brought to you by Tread Partners. Tread Partners is the leading digital marketing agency that specializes in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. Tread Partners works with clients that have hundreds of locations, down to five locations. Get a professional, unbiased opinion and let Tread Partners review what you’re doing. It starts with a simple conversation. To contact tread partners, visit treadpartners.com so let’s get started. Hey folks, welcome to the Game Traction podcast, the official podcast for tire business.

01:09
My guest today is Ricky Ivy, owner of Pueblo Tires and service with 13 stores and one lube shop in South Texas. Ricky, this has been a long time coming. Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast.

01:21
Yeah, it’s about time. Anyway, I’m honored to be here and honored to know you, of course. And your podcasts are amazing. They really taking the industry over. And thank you for what you do.

01:36
Well, it’s almost like shampoozi, right?

01:42
Yeah, that’s quite a story. Hopefully we get into that.

01:47
Well, I want to start out with it because it’s in all of your commercials. And I have taken the liberty of going to YouTube and watching some of your old commercials. And folks, if you don’t know it, you can find them on YouTube, but you can also just go to Pueblo Tires website and they’ve got a link to them. But he makes the best local commercials for tire dealers that I’ve seen. I mean they’re. And you’re very energetic in it. I mean, you’re actually a whole nother person in them.

02:19
I appreciate the flattery. This, this reminds me of when were little kids, especially my brother Jeffery. But our parents bought us Superman capes when were little kids for Christmas, I guess. So the first thing we did, let’s put it on our capes. Yay. Let’s climb the roof. Yay. Let’s jump off the Roof and we put the ladder there and went up and down, up and down. And, you know, nobody broke a bone then, but my mom caught us doing that and boy, we got scolded. And you guys, you put on a cape and you think you can do anything. And I, I kind of think the same way about this old hat. You know, you put on the hat and yeah, it does something to your attitude. It’s just amazing how it works. But anyway, Shampoozi came about because I read a book.

03:16
My brother was into marketing. He was running a company named Video News Service out of El Paso, Texas. And he was doing a great service to the local market there in advertising. And he was very aware. And he said, hey, man, everybody is doing this. Everybody’s assuming a phrase or catch all combination of two, three words, something like that, and attributing that to their advertising and everything they do and then defining what it means. And he sent me a book. It was guerrilla marketing. And we read the book, we got together and anyway, okay, now we need a word. And it was back in 1993 when went through this. So anyway, he was able to use something that was brand new in the industry. 94 Maybe was when we did this. But it was AOL dial up.

04:20
We had the dial up modem, made all the, you know, sound. And anyway, wow. We were on the Internet and anyway, were able to see what words had been, I guess, copyrighted or used by companies defined. And what were looking for was a definition anywhere on the Internet for words. So man, went through a list of words that we thought would work. And. And finally. Oh, that ain’t gonna work. That ain’t gonna work. How about Shapoopi? We thought that was cool. We laughed, you know, Shapoopi. And it was taken. It was taken by, I think, the cartoon character, the fall guy.

05:05
Oh, really?

05:07
So. So anyway. Oh, man, too bad. How about Shampoozi? And we both laughed. And we figured, hey, if we laughed, other people are probably going to laugh too. Great. Now we have to define it. Put the definition on a website and then in addition to that, get a trademark. So that was the objective. And the definition was in Spanish first. It’s a servicio desponible solamente. Servicio superior desponible solamente. And Pueblo tires. And in English, that superior service only available at pueblo. So that was that. We did it. And we started putting that word shampoozi on everything. We did the business cards, letterheads, shadow print, brochures, and of course our Advertising. And then. And then after that, he said, okay, here’s the hard part. You need to wear that crazy cowboy hat and get right up close to a camera like one foot away and.

06:19
And act like a used car salesman. You got to get your word out. And that. How do we do that? Well, you say that word shampoosy. And. And we laughed. Every time we heard it. We laughed and we said, oh, this is going to go over great. So. So we did. And we. One video in particular is called Tire Danger, I believe, but it had over half a million hits after we posted that. It’s just amazing how that worked. So that. Anyway, that shampoosy, and we’re tire dealers. You have to be really creative to sell tires because they’re kind of everywhere. Especially nowadays, things are a little different than they used to be.

07:04
Superior service is ultimately the Shampoo Z definition.

07:08
Absolutely. And now we have to live up to it.

07:11
Absolutely. Love that. But the marketing strategy with guerrilla marketing was pick out a word that you can define, and then it’s obviously got to be a catchy word like shampoo Z trade market, and then. And define it at the same time, and then it becomes your word. Right? Absolutely.

07:31
So not only that, guerrilla marketing is. There’s. There’s a lot to it. It’s marketing in ways that other people are not being very persistent about it. And, you know, advertising and marketing in general, if you do not invest consistently in your marketing, then you’re not marketing.

07:57
Yeah.

07:58
Take a percent of your sales and budget it. Budget it every month, every year, you’re going to spend this much on marketing. And we’ve been doing that for decades. And so. So, yes, we’re relatively well known here in the valley. One of our theme songs, one of them is Think Tires, Think Pueblo. So that was actually the advertising strategy or our logo before we came up with Shampoozi. And that was also a long time ago. That was back in the 80s when I came out with that.

08:40
I think some of the greatest commercials and advertising I’ve seen over my lifetime, when I think about what you guys have done and. And pulled off with that word, and then you might be in a catchphrase to Pueblo Tires is local people do that very well in different industries. I’ve seen it. You know, obviously there’s certain car dealers that have done a magnificent job in their local markets, and they can define certain phrases that last, you know, generational and. And you guys have done that. So that’s. That’s a. I mean, that’s a testament to your belief in marketing, but your consistency with it. And now, you know, when you get. I think this is important for people to realize because obviously I come from a market background. But once you’ve done it like you have with the longevity now, the inertia effect is over.

09:30
It just lives on its own. Like you’re three decades in now. So it’s, it’s an institution into the area now.

09:38
In, in a way, yes, but you have to pay attention to marketing and it’s always changing. And who would have thought 10 years ago that you’re going to take a third of your total budget and throw it at the Internet, throw it to Google, throw it to social media and these different venues. You know, 12, 15 years ago, it was 100% radio, television, sponsoring events, putting flyers in windows, business cards. It was exposure, cold calls, things like that. And boy, it’s a different world today, the way people perceive things, but a lot more than that. It’s, it’s the new generations, the way they’re raised, the digital age. These things are so dangerous. It, it’s just all of this put together.

10:37
Well, the weird thing is we’re the weird thing for all of us. And you know, I’m in 50s, but you know, I grew up without one of these, even went through college without it and didn’t have one until, you know, they became more readily available in the 90s and you know, they were still kind of archaic then. It was just a phone. And then, you know, texting came about and then next thing you know, you got. Steve Jobs creates this thing to where it does everything for you. I mean, it’s like you take your office with you know, if you got email with it. And it’s a tool that they’ve connected them. They’ve, they, they out there, you know, have connected themselves with us and vice versa. We, we can’t, you almost can’t disconnect at this point. Although I do say some.

11:22
At some point in my life, I’m going toss it. So I don’t know if that’s possible, but we’re gonna give it a try.

11:30
Yeah, it’s a, it’s so different today, but the tire industry is very different today. Back when I got into it, I’m second generation mom and dad with a partner of. Dad started the first store in Brownsville, Texas, and then they relocated to McAllen a few years after that. And the. I think it was the greatest move they ever did. It it just brought them more to a commercial center where there seems to be a lot more money in Macallan McAllen Market. And dad still lives. Mom passed away a few years ago, but they used to come in and work, and for years they would get on a plane or the Greyhound bus and come down and work with me. They worked with my brother Carter and my brother Jeffery before that. Just showing the kids the ropes.

12:38
What a testament to their character, huh?

12:40
Yeah.

12:41
Oh, wow. That’s awesome.

12:43
So this is receiving your tires on rail. And that’s. That’s about 25ft behind the store here where I am today.

12:52
That is a great picture.

12:54
We used to order the tires from. They were Lee tires. The. That train load was Lee tires. And I believe they were produced in Texarkana in what became the Cooper plant. Okay. And. And they were, anyway, put on a rail and shipped down here. But this. This is being a tire dealer back in the early days.

13:21
Yeah.

13:21
And it’s. It’s back when there were seven sizes of tires. I hope everybody got that.

13:29
Yeah, yeah.

13:31
It’s. It’s very different today. It’s very different. But mom and I really.

13:35
I’m. Oh, that’s awesome. I’m glad you showed those pictures. That is. You’ve gotta. So did you. Did you know that you wanted to be. Remain in the business even though you grew up in it? Did you know you wanted to stay in it or did you try to.

13:48
You know, I. I didn’t grow up in it. Dad was a financial partner. The business was eight miles away from the farm.

13:58
But I thought you said you were second generation.

14:00
I am second generation. Dad was a financial partner. He bought out his partner a few years after they started. And when he did, my oldest brother Carter came and managed the company. And he was amazing. He was just. He was so full of life and so energetic. I miss him dearly. He died in an accident when he was 27 years old. One year after that happened, I came into the company. I worked with my brother Jeffery just for a couple of years, and then he was out of the company. He eventually got back into farming, and I, at the time was working in grocery stores in Austin. I lived in Austin for about five years. It was a great education and terrific exposure, and I had some college, New Mexico State University and University of Texas under my belt.

15:12
And so I. I was ready. And I would say.

15:17
I want to interject here. I would say, just from my experience, and. And my son works in a grocery. You learn a lot about retail sales at a Grocery that I think brings a new. A whole other element to even tire sales.

15:33
Absolutely.

15:34
You’re not just selling. You’re not just selling one product and you’re doing a lot of sales at different things and you have different margins and you have, you know, you have a lot of different marketing going on just within that one roof. Am I right? And stating it that way. Yeah.

15:49
Yes. And. And aside from that, I was a service manager at this one store in particular in Austin. I had to count out 40 cashiers. We had double shifts and counting out all that money down to the penny and counting all the register tears. We had department keys and they were the old machines where you had to push the button down. It made clicks and everything. But the Cash Register Corporation. And even though they were plugged in, they were electronic, you know, you still had to hit department key. Total department key, total department key. I could do it without looking at it as long as I saw the price on the product. Of course, we had labelers. Taking inventory was a nightmare. And we did not have electronic bonds. We went through and counted everything.

16:44
And we had spreadsheets that somebody had a pen printer somewhere that did the white and green line sheets of paper. And we would go over what were what were supposed to have and what we actually had. We would put down and tabulate the difference. And guess what? Just like the tire industry. So there’s a lot of similarities. They invited me to help with some of the procedural updates that they did in a procedure manual. And that was just really enlightening. That opened my eyes like, wow, okay, here’s procedures had a uncle that did very well in the chemical business, Dad’s brother. And he came in and worked with me for a couple of weeks and helped me put together a procedure manual and a handbook. And they’re very different things.

17:47
And so that helped a great deal just in organizational skills and achieving what I consider the ability to grow. Because if you don’t have procedures, if you don’t have rules, accepted principles among your people and a cheerleader, it ain’t going to happen. So that. That was. I learned a lot of stuff from other.

18:13
So you have. You have. At Pueblo Tires, then you have procedure manuals.

18:17
Yes.

18:19
In place.

18:20
I wrote the procedure manuals. I had help.

18:23
And is it on each. Each position in the company.

18:28
When I came into the company, we had a computer that basically was used back office. We were still using manual invoices. We had card file system for inventory. And the telephone was the king at&t made a fortune off of us, Ma bell. And just calling a town next door, we opened a. A store in Weslaco. Guess what? Long distance. Yeah, but it’s 15 miles away. It doesn’t matter. It’s long distance. And, you know, so we had to go through that. And when we finally did get a point of sale system back in the day, yeah, it was dial up modem and discovered piggybacking the lines and all that stuff. So, yeah, 50.

19:22
50 Cents. It was like 50 cents a minute just to call the town next door.

19:26
Oh, yeah, it was crazy. It was thousands and thousands of dollars. It was by far our biggest expense. It was higher than our property tax, which is huge. Commercial insurance, which is huge. It just. It was by far the highest expense we had, except for labor that has yet to be drunk.

19:48
Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, so as you. As you progressed and everything, did you. Did you had the vision that you wanted to be 13, 14 stores like you are today? Or did it just. Did that just kind of happen as you were.

20:02
No, absolutely not. I wanted 4,000 stores. I wanted to take over the world. Typical, typical young man in his late 20s, early 30s. I had a lot of ambition, and my dad was very ambitious. Mom too. And, and we had this, you know, oh, let’s do this. And so anyway, I opened the third store in Brownsville after the original store was shut down, relocated to mcallen. So I went back to Brownsville, opened the third physical location, and by 1990, we had 11 stores in retread shop. We took over a Tire Co. 115 miles north of us called hub tire and another one called mormon tire in Corpus Christi. And the hub Tire, we changed the name to Pueblo, of course, rebuilt that store. Years later, the Corpus Christi outfit with the retread operation.

21:12
What a great experience to be a retreader and to get into the extraordinarily corrupt world of commercial products. So I dealt with some very corrupt people. I did not enjoy it. I lost $1 million in one year. And that was in 1992. And with a great decision, not just by me, but by myself, mom, dad, and the team, we reduced ourselves back to five locations, and two of them were under a lease. So the objective became a little different. Hey, let’s acquire the properties so that we don’t have to worry about the lease going up. Dealing contractors and, or contracts regarding lease and stuff. Because, you know, after five years, when you have to renegotiate it, people will take advantage of you. They’re like, I know you were paying 8,000amonth. But we think 15,000 is more fair.

22:20
Well that happens and it happens a lot. So you need to have some leverage over your properties. That’s my opinion. There’s a lot of people out there that would argue with me, but especially if your family owns the properties, it’s a good way to take money out of the business to increase your wealth by putting money in the pocket of the business holders. It works really well until there’s too many people involved. So that might be a completely different story for a different time. But, but it’s a very good strategy and it works especially if you’re like me and you need at least one and a half acres to maneuver around to bring the product in to store 15, 1800 tires. Just meet 70% of the needs that you have. We stock a lot of inventory. We stock some wheels, front end parts.

23:30
You do this at all your locations?

23:32
Absolutely, except for the lube shop. But, but of course they’re full on lube. That’s a full basement lube shop with three bay. And, and the story behind lube shop, we have beautiful stores still do in Alice, Texas, not Dallas Alice. And it’s a huge store, a lot of inventory. But were inundated with oil changes and it was bothering the heck out of our ability to sell tires. Can you imagine what a beautiful situation that was? So it was a no brainer to build a lube shop on the front of the property. We got four acres there so we actually had the room and, and it just worked out beautifully. So we put a three bay lube shop there and it’s been an eye opener, it’s been profitable, it’s a great lube shop and they stay pretty busy.

24:38
And of course in the oil field you’re going to do a lot of rotella. You’re going to change the oil on the most unique vehicles that you can imagine. We’re not doing necessarily 18 wheelers there, but the store there and in Kingsville and the story mission are set up for 18 wheeler service.

25:02
So what do you call your loop location?

25:05
Total lube.

25:07
Okay. Total lube. You didn’t, you did not. You chose not to brand it anywhere near the kind of the Pueblo name.

25:15
I thought for whatever reason that it would be a terrific franchise opportunity should it ever arise and if we ever took over just lube shops in the valley it, or anywhere else it would make a good immediate name that we could put on a lube Only business not associated with Pueblo Tires. For, for a lot of reasons. It made sense. Came up with a, with beautiful logo and it’s kind of a oval thing that says total loop. And we also have some different things. We’ve got your family care center. It’s a lot of words, but it’s in this long oval sign that’s also a registered trademark. So we, you know, we’ve got our stuff, man been here a long time and it’s nice to have stuff.

26:18
It aids in marketing and the more of your own personal logos you can put on a piece of paper, within reason, the better. That’s, that’s my opinion.

26:31
You’ve given a lot of good marketing advice today. And as we close in on our time here, if you had to coach somebody in marketing that’s in our industry and they’re sitting in, you know, the state of Washington or Nebraska or Kentucky, what would you tell them is. Is the key? I know you mentioned earlier, consistency, just making sure you have a budget for it. What’s something else that may. They might be able to take out of this conversation?

27:01
Wow. Transparency in what you do at the store.

27:10
I like that.

27:11
Being honest with your customers. If you don’t do that, I don’t care how much advertising you do in the world, it’s. You’re going to get burned and you can never, ever recover your reputation. So above all, protect your reputation. And in regards to marketing, what I already mentioned, you dedicate yourself, come up with a budget and you start spending it. And it’s amazing how two, three months into a program like this, when you’re spending the money, you don’t know where it goes. Is it like, where did that go? I can’t measure it. Be patient. Give it a year. Everything takes a year. You will start to see results.

27:59
That’s great advice.

28:00
It, it really is. Leap of faith in regards to marketing.

28:04
Ricky, I can’t thank you enough for being part of the podcast, but I know you and I have a lot more to talk about and I want to have you back on soon.

28:11
I mean, sure, anytime. I would just love to be on board with you. And there’s a. You’re right. There’s. There’s so many things we could cover. I’m. There’s a lot personally in my life that adds up to me. There’s, there’s my wife, there’s my daughter. My dad still lives. I do have family. I’ve got terrific brother in law, sister in laws. I married a lady from Mexico and those of you who know her, know that she’s a firecracker. We have a lot of fun and we know people industry wide. I’ve been on numerous boards for years. The probably most enjoyment, the Texas Tire Dealers Association. I’ve been on that board since the 80s and we recently know so many of these people and that I recommend if anybody wants to really be a professional in this business, get involved.

29:20
Get involved with your association, your buying groups and get to know people in different markets.

29:27
Well, a shout out to Chuck Space, who’s the executive director of the Texas Tire Association. We had him on the podcast. And I was introduced to both you gentlemen by Mike Burns with itdg. So shout out to Mike. But to all our listeners out there, thank you. And Ricky, thank you for doing this podcast. It’s been a pleasure having you on.

29:49
God bless you. God bless everybody.

29:51
Thank you. You too. Hey folks, Mike Edge here with the Gain Traction podcast. Real quick we get a lot of people ask us they know Gain Traction, but who’s Tread Partners? Well, Tread Partners is our parent company and they’re a marketing agency dedicated strictly to tire and automotive repair shops. Anywhere from five locations all the way up to hundreds of locations in primarily one field that is always a pain for most people is paid search or PPC or Google Ads. We see enormous amount of waste in it and we see inefficient spend in it. If you want to know if you’re doing well or not, give us a call. We’ll help you. We’ll audit your account. We’ll look under the hood and tell you if you’re doing things the right way or the wrong way and help you optimize that spend.

30:33
You can reach me and I’ll direct you in the right [email protected] or feel free to go to treadpartners.com the website. To all our listeners, thank you for being part of the Gain Traction Podcast. We are grateful for you. If you’d like to find more podcasts like this, please visit gaintractionpodcast.com if you’d like to make a guest recommendation, please email me@mike treadpartners.com this episode has been powered by Tread Partners, the leader in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. To learn more About TREAD partners, visit treadpartners.com.

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