The Wheel Specialist Annual Conference - 2019
February saw the annual conference of the UK’s premier alloy wheel refurbishment franchise take place just outside of Birmingham.
The Wheel Specialist has reported impressive growth, with signs the sector remains unaffected by the country’s biggest drop in new car sales since 2008. Thankfully for TWS, used car sales are up, which only means more wheels to be refurbished after taking a thrashing on Britain’s pothole laden roads.
According to the national wheel repair gurus, 1 in 3 of the alloy wheels they refurbished in 2018 was Diamond Cut. Ginny Murphy (CEO) said: “We’ve seen a rapid increase in the amount of Diamond Cut wheels that customers are bringing to us for refurbishment over the last few years, they’re becoming increasingly common on new vehicles and motorists love their eye-catching appearance."
Having opened its first Franchise in Belfast last year, TWS now boasts to be the only fixed-premises wheel refurbishment company with branches in all parts of the UK and with turnover now surpassing £10m, the rise looks only set to continue.
Awards at the conference saw the relatively new Kingston branch take home the award for ‘Best Overall Performing Franchise’ for outstanding franchisee performance across all areas of the business. Having only opened in 2016, the branch also claimed the ‘Best Customer Service’ award in recognition of their much lauded over testimonials and customer experience reviews.
“Customer experience is critical to our business,” said Ginny. “Customers use TWS because we place quality and experience right at the top of our priorities, we’ve learned that our service users want a premium offering and that’s exactly what we deliver”.
It’s telling that since 2014 the number of enquiries being received by The Wheel Specialist has now more than doubled, in no doubt part to a surge in Marketing efforts. Andy Thompson, who is the group’s Technical Director said: “More of the general public become aware of what we do every year, part of our challenge is consumer education and I think we’re getting that right, we’re also seeing more people coming to TWS because they see wheel refurbishment as a superior option to buying cheap and sometimes poorly manufactured replacement wheels from foreign suppliers”.
Over 115,000 wheels were refurbished by the group in 2018, that’s approximately 1 wheel for every 20 cars in the whole of London, impressive stuff.
The Wheel Specialist said that its theme for the annual conference this year was “Leading The Way”, a bold claim but one that is convincingly difficult to refute. Analysis of TWS’s franchisees showed that over three quarters of them had achieved substantial growth over the last 12 months and it was also announced that TWS are planning to open further Franchise locations before the end of this year.
A lot of Brexit doom and gloom has surrounded the automotive industry in recent weeks so it’s great to see a real success story. Is no wheel better than a bad wheel? Just get it refurbished say The Wheel Specialist!