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Cody Lang is Vice President of Sales at Tire Solutions. He embarked on his journey in the tire industry from a young age, inspired by his father’s passion for the trade. Cody’s dedication is evident from playful childhood memories of “playing tire store” with Matchbox cars to overcoming challenges as a young salesperson in a seasoned industry. His proudest achievement is contributing to the growth of Tire Solutions, a startup that began in 2010 with only five employees and has since flourished, boasting a team of 35 today.
In this episode…
If you are a relatively small family-owned tire business, how do you compete against and differentiate yourself from larger, corporate-owned competition?
According to Cody Lang, Tire Solutions takes a different approach to its business by primarily focusing on the customer experience. When you visit one of its locations, in the conference room, you’ll see one thing written across the top of the board: “We can be the best in the world at relationships.” And in today’s market, Cody says, it’s not just all about tires. He knows there are a lot of big businesses out there, and the amount of small businesses is decreasing. Still, he believes many people desire to support small businesses above purchasing a product for its price alone.
On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge visits with Cody about the challenges small business owners face in the tire and auto repair industry and the possible ways to overcome them. He discusses the importance of trust in a shop’s relationship with customers and tire dealers and why going above and beyond can have great value. Cody also explains why offering an additional warranty at no cost to the customer can instill confidence in a product.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Cody Lang describes the makeup of his Tire Solutions team and how it stacks up against similar entities
- Why going above and beyond for the customer can have tremendous value
- How Cody anticipates his brand expanding in the near future
- What tire brands does Tire Solutions offer its customers?
- Why a shop needs to gain the trust of tire dealers
- Cody tells a funny story about being drenched by an exploding radiator hose before an important sales dinner
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Cody Lang on LinkedIn
- Tire Solutions
- Giorgio Andonian on LinkedIn
- Sonny McDonald on LinkedIn
- Mike Edge on LinkedIn
- Tread Partners
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Game Traction podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.
Mike:
Welcome to the Game Traction podcast. I am Mike Edge, your host today. The Game Traction podcast is where I talk with top tire and auto automotive business leaders. This episode is brought to you by Tread Partners and the Retread Marketing Program. So what in the heck is a retread marketing program? It is a full-scale customer re-engagement program to win back your best lost customers. It is a one-time, 120-day program that generates a guaranteed ten to one return on investment. That is correct, a ten to one guaranteed ROI, no tricks or gimmicks. These are customers that are in your POS right now. So if you invest $4,000 today, what we’re saying is that you’ll see a $40,000 return in 120 days from customers that are already in your POS.
So what are you waiting for? Visit treadpartners.com. I’d like to give a shout-out to my new friend, Giorgio Andonian, Managing Director of Focused Investment Banking. If you need guidance on how to put your shop in financial order, to sell your business someday in the future, or simply to pass it on to a family, you need to listen to this episode. It’s a good one. And look, I think they’re all good, so I’m a little biased, but this one, particularly on this topic, I think is very helpful.
If you haven’t already, please listen to an interview I did with Sonny McDonald a few months ago, National Trainer for Toyota Tires. Sonny’s become a big fan of our podcast and we’re huge fans of Sonny, and he introduced me to our guest today, Cody Lang. Cody is Vice President of Sales at Tire Solutions out of Minnesota. It is a family operated tire distributor with a huge upside. Cody, welcome to the Gain Traction podcast.
Cody:
Hey, thanks for having me, Mike. I greatly appreciate being a part of your show.
Mike:
Man. It’s easy when you come from Sonny.
Cody:
Yeah, if he recommends you, it’s always good. He is a legend in our industry, no doubt about it.
Mike:
Well, and it was cool because after you and I got acquainted and we were able to talk, I think we both have a fondness for the guy and he’s as sincere as they come, right?
Cody:
Yeah.
Mike:
And then I learned a little bit about your relationship with him and like I said, we’ve just become friends. So when Sonny calls or if he gives me a recommendation, it’s easy. So we’re happy.
Cody:
Yeah, I’ve known him for about 10 years. As you say, he’s a great guy, do anything for you and wants everyone to succeed and win. He’s a guy you want on your side for sure.
Mike:
Amen. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself. A little bit of a spoiler here, you grew up in the industry, but tell us where you are today. I mean you’re in Minnesota, but how you grew up and et cetera.
Cody:
Yep. I’m not too far from where I grew up actually. I grew up in Clearwater, Minnesota, and for those of you that don’t know where Clearwater, Minnesota is, it’s about 50 miles northwest of Minneapolis St. Paul. So close enough to the cities, but a little far away. I grew up in the country hunting, fishing, anything outside was really my passion growing up.
Mike:
Nice.
Cody:
And I graduated from Monticello High School a couple miles down the road here, but I’ve really been in tires my whole life. My dad was part of a different tire company growing up, and so I grew up, sounds dumb to say Mike, but playing tires at home. So Hot Wheel cars always were, “Hey, change the tires,” or “Look at the tires on this Hot Wheel.” Or “Look at the big tires on that.” It was always tires, tires, tires, tires.
Mike:
That’s so funny.
Cody:
You know how it is, once it gets in your blood, it really doesn’t get out.
Mike:
So I’ve had a couple guests that have grown up in the tire business and they tell me the smell is nostalgic to them.
Cody:
Yeah, yeah.
Mike:
They love the smell and it brings back their youth and it’s always a positive thing for them. Is that the same way with you?
Cody:
It’s my favorite thing to come to work in the morning. You open the office door and you sniff that whiff of tires. My wife doesn’t necessarily like it as much as I do. I don’t know why, but I sure love it and guys here the same way, you can’t get enough. And if we could bottle it up and burn it as a candle at home, I think we probably would.
Mike:
It’s true. Look, I didn’t grow up in it, but I do love the smell of it. But listen, I’m an odd duck. There’s a couple of things I like to smell of that people are like, “What’s wrong with you?” Kind of like, what’s the movie? Remember Tommy Boy? And they always go, “Did you eat paint chips as a kid?” And he goes, “No, why?”
Cody:
Yeah.
Mike:
So you’ve been in the tire business, what generation are you?
Cody:
So we’re second generation, I would be. So kind of a quick backstory on that. My dad worked for another regional wholesaler in the area. In 2010 that wholesaler was actually bought out by a big nationwide conglomerate, which left him and some other sales guys obviously without a job. As most buyouts happen, they don’t need every employee of the current business that’s running. So at that point, I was actually a senior in high school, finishing up my senior year. My dad obviously didn’t have a job at that point, but sitting at home and he was actually in the industry 25 years before that happened.
Mike:
Oh, wow.
Cody:
So he had a lot of contacts, in both sides, from customer wise to brand wise, everyone was calling him saying, “Hey Rick, what are you going to do? What are you are going to do? When are you opening?” You’re giving him a little jar here and there saying, “Hey, we want to buy it from you.” So it was kind of fun. So he fielded a lot of those phone calls and lo and behold, he said, “You know what? What’s the worst that can happen? Might as well give it a shot.”
That was 2010. We opened up February 1st. So I kind of finished my senior year of high school and came to work for the company business and never looked back. So we’re technically only coming up on our 14th year in business, but the way we go to market and relationships, we have go way back even farther than that with his 25 years in basically its exact same town, it’s exact same industry. We kind of just, for lack of better terms, changed the name so to speak, and kept playing the same game.
Mike:
That’s awesome. So do you have any siblings in it with you?
Cody:
I’m sorry?
Mike:
Siblings. You have any siblings in?
Cody:
Yeah, so my brother’s in the business as well. We have it split up where I do a lot of the sales orientated and he’s in charge of distribution center, so does all the drivers and ordering and all that sort of fun stuff. So a nice compliment for us both to handle the workload from my dad here too. So it’s been a fun journey. We had a good group of guys. At one time we’re up to 35 employees now. At one time, over 75% graduated from Monticello High School with us.
So we’ve got a very young team, which I think is helping our success. These guys, they work hard. They basically grew up in tires now too. A lot of us, it’s really the only industry we’ve been in is tires. The only thing we know is tires. And when we get that kind of passion from a whole group of people, you really can make a difference in the industry you’re trying to grow.
Mike:
Oh no, that’s absolutely true. Well, what do you think, how do you guys stack up with let’s say, versus the group that bought out your dad that probably still services the area to some degree?
Cody:
Yeah, yeah. So obviously, they’re a phenomenal company. They’re nationwide growing a ton every year. So I mean nothing but good things to say about them. But we take a little bit different approach to our business. We cover five state Midwest here, so a little smaller, but we really focus on the customer experience and the customer itself. If you ever get a chance to visit us, Mike, and hope you do, hope you stop by, you come up to our conference room, there’s one thing written across the top of the board that’s never gets erased. It’s “We can be the best in the world at relationships.” So every guest that comes in here, every employee, that’s first place we take and we say, “Hey, hey Mike, read the board. What does that say for us?”
Mike:
That’s awesome.
Cody:
“We can be the best in the world at relationships.” And that’s really how we run our business, Mike, and in today’s market up, that’s not just tires either. There’s a lot of big business out there and the amount of small businesses just really are getting fewer and fewer and fewer. And I really think there’s a desire for a lot of people out there to support small business, to support businesses that really want to help them grow too and create these business partnerships versus just buy a product, buy a price.
So we really embrace being that guy. We can be the guy that knows your kid’s name, know when your kid’s birthday is, knows your kid’s playing football tonight. Whatever the case may be, we pride ourselves in building top quality relationships with our customers and be able to bring things to the table to help them grow their business because at the end of the day, we help them grow our business. We’re going to grow too. So it’s a really … We operate on a win-win relationship with our customers and even our vendors at that aspect as well.
Mike:
Well, I’ll give a little testimony, shout-out to you, and we don’t even know each other that well, but one of our phone calls you had to postpone because you were driving three hours one way, so six-hour round trip just to take some tires to a customer that needed them that day. So instead of telling them, “Hey, you got to wait till the truck comes again” or whatever, you literally got in your truck and took them that day to them.
Cody:
Yep. Nice day for drive, right? That’s the right way you look at it. At the end of the day, is that something anybody wants to do? Not necessarily, right? But is it something that that customer is going to remember hopefully forever? I hope so. You’d leave a good impression and there’s not many other people that’ll do that for them. So make yourself stand out. And that’s a small thing. It’s one set of tires. It’s not going to make or break anybody. But to that customer and their customer’s customer that was leaving out of town to go back to college, that made a big difference. Now that kid’s going back to college on safe new tires, parents don’t have to worry about it. It really affected more than just my day. There’s two, three, four families involved that now had a way better experience through that one little task.
Mike:
It kind of coincides with that old cliche, tires aren’t bought, they’re sold. When that dealer has a chance to sell tires in the future and he’s got to think about who’s supplying him in a certain circumstance, you guys are going to probably win that deal.
Cody:
Yep, yep, exactly. They know we’re going to be there for them, help them through whatever they need and help them get that sale. Absolutely.
Mike:
So going forward, where do you guys see yourselves? So you mentioned that you’re in five states right now. I mean, do you see yourself expanding more or do you see yourself growing within the region you cover? What’s kind of a growth strategy?
Cody:
Yeah, I’m really glad you asked that actually find a kind of funny timing. So our distribution centers in Clearwater, Minnesota here. We actually just got approval last week from the county to do a major addition on our building here. So very exciting times around here. We’re actually going to start pushing dirt middle of September here. Our customers don’t even know that. So this may be the first time they hear that, but we’ll be adding about 40% more inventory than we have on this location here, which will help us add a few more routes and expand a little bit too.
So we’re really excited for that. Obviously that extra space will have us get more inventory to service more customers. We’ll be able to get more trucks out of here on a daily basis that span our footprint. So we’re really right in the midst of our next growth phase with that. So that’s again, start here September, hoping to wrap that up March 1st or so. By the time we build-
Mike:
Oh, really?
Cody:
We’ll really hit thousand 2024 hard with more inventory, more routes on the road and really hopefully can help a few more dealers out just by having that bigger footprint.
Mike:
You’re hoping to have the expansion completed by March 1st.
Cody:
Yeah. So they’re going to bust a butt on that and get that done quick.
Mike:
Awesome. Where you’re located, weather is a big issue, right?
Cody:
Yeah. Yep. They’re going to try to get it in before snowfall, let’s say that for sure. So get the shell done and work on the inside all winter long.
Mike:
The key for you guys is probably, I know I’ll digress again, but the key for you guys is probably just getting the foundation done before the snow.
Cody:
Exactly. Yep. Get the concrete poured and we’re from Minnesota, we’ll stress for it and they’ll fix it. It wouldn’t be the first building they’re going to build with 20 below, you know? So we’re really excited about that project coming up here too.
Mike:
And I don’t know if you want to talk about this today, but what kind of brands do you guys carry for your clients?
Cody:
Yeah, no, I would love to share that with you guys. Obviously our biggest brand is about Sonny McDonald. Toyo Tires is our number one selling brand here, but we have a lot of phenomenal brands. I said Toyo, we do a lot with Falcon Tires, Hankook Tires, we carry nets in tires, and then we do a lot with some private labels too. Multi-Mile, which is a phenomenal private label that’s been around for a long time. Carries a great name, especially in the truck market. For those of you that have been around a while, that Wild Country XTS is a phenomenal private label tire, which has been a nice blessing for us with people sometimes being a little more price conscious at the moment. A Multi-Mile or privately owned product like our Westlake or Milestar has been a huge fulfillment for a lot of our customers because they’re good products at a price that some people can afford when money gets a little tighter.
So those are kind of our main brands, but what we do different than almost anybody else in the industry, Mike, is all those brands I just listed is if you buy them from me, I put a free road hazard warranty on it for the whole life of the tire. So it’s a great deal for if you own a shop, Mike, turn around and tell your customer, “Hey, you run over a nail on this thing, you blow a tire somewhere, don’t worry, my distributor’s you covered.” So it’s a great way of making your independent stand out when all the box stores or dealerships, they charge for that service, right? 15% of invoice, $20 a tire, whatever it is.
It’s an upsell. It’s an upsell for sure.
Mike:
It’s an upsell. But now these independent service stations on Main Street America can offer that warranty at no cost at all. So it’s kind of a cool way of making these independent dealers have really the best warranties in the industry, even to be at single locations.
Cody:
You’re not only building loyalty with your dealer, but you’re allowing the dealer to build loyalty with their customer. And we all want to run shops that, I’ve got relationships in my hometown where I literally dropped the keys on the counter and said, “Call me and tell me what I need.”
Mike:
Get it done, yeah.
Cody:
And that’s the relationship you want. Look, I’ve got five kids and the fifth one will be driving this fall. So you can imagine running, it’s like a little mini fleet that-
Mike:
A fleet, yeah.
Cody:
It can be a pain in the butt sometimes because Dad’s got to do everything it seems like. But it’s nice to have people you trust and what you’re creating is an opportunity to deepen that trust level with your client, but most of all for that end user.
Mike:
Yep. And as you know in our industry, word of mouth goes a long ways. Huge, right? People in the community talk, especially small towns that we really do a good job in. They’d go to dinner that night or go to diner the next morning and said, “Hey, I had a knee on my tire and can you believe the guys uptown, they replaced it for free.” What’s the advertisement worth to you? You guys do a lot of advertising and there’s a lot of ways of doing a good job, but word of mouth is so powerful when it comes from your neighbors, stuff like that. So being able to have these guys have something that unique and that powerful, it goes along ways for them building their business and loyalty, like you say.
Cody:
Well, and I think it’s a big deal for the dealer to be confident in you guys because like I said, we all say that old cliche, tires aren’t bought, they’re sold because a lot of people depend on the dealer, “Tell me what I need,” or whatever. Well, he’s going to be thinking, “Man, these guys will do, they’ll go the extra mile. I can trust them. I feel good about them.” So it’s comforting to tell my customer the same thing. In a sense you’re selling that confidence.
Mike:
100%, yeah. Confidence in the products for one, and confidence in what the selling price is too. A lot of independents sometimes get nervous about quoting tires. They think they can’t compete with discount tires or some of the big bot stores out there when really everyone’s really in the same playing field. But if you can offer additional warranty at no cost to your customer, you can be confident handing that quote and say, “Hey, here’s what we got for four tires out the door, and here’s what we’re doing for a warranty for you, with a free road hazard for the whole life of the tire.”
We also put a free ride guarantee on everything. If you don’t like the way it tastes, touch, sounds for two weeks or a thousand miles, we give everyone 100% money back on everything. So as a front counter person, you can’t really go wrong recommending a product that has that backing behind it, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what brand we sell you, it says independent on the sidewall, it says Mike’s Tire once it leaves, you’re the one that has to deal with the problem. If it doesn’t matter what brand it is, you’re the one that has to deal with the problem. So having somebody behind you that can do with it for you is a nice weight lifted off your shoulders.
Cody:
I love the fact that you guys cater to the independents because look, I’m one of these guys that I call myself seasoned in the sense of buying product and dealing and working with a lot of different people. And at the end of the day, I’m a sucker for small town businesses because I know the guy. My kids played ball with his kids, et cetera story. But the bottom line is I got his cell phone in my phone and I can call him if we’ve got a problem.
And I think that means a ton. And look, we’re all going to run into problems. Somewhere along the way, the rain’s going to happen. You’re going to hit a bump in the road, whatever. It’s going to happen, and you’re going to have to figure out how to solve a problem, whether it’s with your car or whatever. And it’s nice to have people you can trust and you don’t have that headache of trying to get a refund or replacement or whatever. I’ve been treated the way I would like to treat other people. It’s just, don’t worry about it. I got you. I got it. We’ll take care of it.
Mike:
You want confidence in what you’re doing. That’s it.
Cody:
And it’s worth a few extra bucks knowing that. And the other thing is the money’s local, right? It stays local, it’s cycles locally. If a buy from a big box store, it leaves, but they don’t really do they really care about me? I mean, you know what I’m saying, in the same way? Do they really live here or do they send a manager in, et cetera like that. And I’m not trying to beat up on all box stores, I get it.
Mike:
No, they do a great job too. Yep, yep.
Cody:
They’ve got their angles. I understand that. But I will say this on the record, that there’s less relationship.
Mike:
Exactly. And we kind of align in that. Our thoughts on that and even our business philosophy as a whole aligns exactly with what you just said. Our go-to-market approach is, “Hey, let’s help small town America thrive in automotive.” A lot of small town shops, if you go to these towns of 1000, 1500 people, which are kind of off the map for most of America, you drive through one, they’re off the interstate, you don’t think much of it. But if the service centers in those small towns die, where do those people go? They drive 30, 40 miles to a dealership that can’t probably absorb if every small town center went away.
But automotive is not an easy industry. Technology’s changing so much. Equipment’s changing so much. It’s not easy for these independents to stay in it. So we really try to hey, how can we help these independents the best we can, thrive in the changing market like we have.
Cody:
That’s another reason for me to make this plug, which we’ve done on this show regularly. But right to work is extremely important. And if you don’t know anything about that issue, folks, look it up. It’s all over the internet. You can read about it. But basically there is a higher power, whatever you want to call it, trying to prevent small shops, independence, even yourself from being able to have access to data to be able to fix your own vehicle. That’s bad news for America.
Mike:
It really is. It doesn’t help the average person at all. It depends on where you live. You might not be able to find someone that can work on your car if that happens.
Cody:
But I will say at least, this is my gut, from a legislative standpoint, it seems like both parties agree that it’s bad and we do need rights of work legislation and protection for all these shops across the United States. I can’t imagine what would happen if we don’t have that. So it’s hard for me to concede that it was happening in a sense that they were the threat of not receiving data to be able to fix certain cars, et cetera, and replacement parts, all that stuff.
Mike:
Yeah, it’s a tough one to wrap your head around. It is for sure.
Cody:
Especially for, you just don’t think about that in the US. Well, man, I’ll tell you, this has been a fun interview, but I’m going to ask you, you’ve now reached the zone that we call it Make Us Laugh, and we like to hear a funny story from our guest. If you’ve got one that your work life, it can be self-deprecating if you choose to go embarrassing moment, et cetera. But do you have a funny story for us?
Mike:
Yeah, I do. And for me it was a little embarrassing, but for the people around it, I made the relationship stronger. So at the end of the day, it’s probably a good story that had happened, but I first started here, I was a driver helping my dad out, and then progressed through the roles as an outside salesman and a sales manager, VP of sales. And it was literally probably the first month that I graduated from a salesman role to a leadership role. And I went on a ride along with one of our sales guys out in Wisconsin actually.
The dad was showing us a beautiful shop. He has five stores. We were visiting him, taking him out to dinner that night. He said, “Yeah, come back, see our tire room.” So I’m following him and my sales guy through the shop and a guy’s putting a new radiator in, walk right by, and boom, the radiator hose explodes and drenches me hard, right before a big dinner meeting. And I was just dripping and junk. Of course, technician felt bad. Owner was laughing, having a great time of it. But new to my role, I’m like, “Oh man, how do I recover from this? I got this first big meeting in a new position, and this is how it starts off.”
Cody:
Yeah, that’s brutal. Almost like it was planned, right? Let’s see how you respond to this.
Mike:
It’s one of those deals I said, “You have cameras in the shop? Because if you do, I want that video forever.”
Cody:
Exactly. I want the video and only copy of it. Better have only one copy of it.
Mike:
Yep. Yeah. Burn the other one. Yeah.
Cody:
That’s fabulous. Well, I’ll ask you another question here. So on a personal note, this is biographical and we like to get to know our guests, and this is going to tell us a lot about you. Okay. So if you were given the opportunity to only have one last meal in your lifetime, what would it be?
Mike:
Tough question, Mike. Especially for a Midwest boy, there’s a lot of options for us, but sad as it sounds, I’m pretty simple. Give me one last meal. Just give me a burger and fries and maybe a cold beer to go along with it, right? No cheese, no nothing. Plain burger. Maybe a pickle or two ketchup, mustard. And just let me enjoy it with a cold beer. That’s all. That’s all I really ask for. Nothing crazy, a cut of filet mignon, a cut of seafood, but I just want something easy.
Cody:
I love it. I mean, it is basic, but you know what? When we know what we love to eat, we know what we love to eat, right?
Mike:
Yep. If you only get one last chance at it.
Cody:
I’ve got a son, I’m not kidding you, and he’s actually told us this. He would eat hamburgers every day if we would let him.
Mike:
Good man. I can relate to that, yeah.
Cody:
You might meet him one day. But yeah, he would love to eat hamburgers every day. And we’re always like, excuse me. We’ll be like, “What would you like to eat tonight?” If mom’s not going to fix dinner or I’m not, whatever. And they’ll be like, “What should we get?” And he’ll literally say a hamburger place 10 out of 10 times when everybody else is always going, let me think about it. No, his is, “Let’s go get a hamburger.” That’s awesome.
Mike:
You can’t really mess it up. It’s always phenomenal.
Cody:
I like it. Well, I got to tell you, Cody, it’s been a pleasure having you. Thanks for being on the Gain Traction podcast.
Mike:
No, thank you, Mike. Thank you for all the kind words, and it was a pleasure to get to know you a little bit more.
Cody:
Yeah, you too. And I’m glad that Sonny introduced us and we’ll have you on again. And like I said, I’m going to take you up on your offer and I’m going to be up in your way one day and let you get-
Mike:
Yep. Swing on in. Yep. Hamburgers are on me.
Cody:
Really. All right. We’ll be up there tomorrow.
Mike:
Listen, to all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of our podcast. If you would like to recommend a guest to us, please email me at [email protected]. Till next time, have a great day and be safe.
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