With only four years experience in the tyre industry, Raaz Aspire Sdn Bhd has opened six tyre shops, including one Hankook Masters outlet and another sub brand of Hankook in Setia Alam and Ara Damansara respectively.
Jeff Chin is one of the founders of Raaz Aspire Sdn Bhd. He worked as an accountant before joining the tyre industry. The company joined the Hankook Malaysia family in 2015, and they target to open one to two tyre shops per year.
“Four years ago, I realised that tyre is a necessity product. Therefore, I started to research and study the business,” says Chin.
With his strength in information technology (IT) and accounting, he always think outside the box to bring innovative marketing ideas into his tyre shops.
“The tyre industry in Malaysia is a highly competitive sector, which is a volume game. Everyone is trying to reduce price to gain the volume. To avoid joining the price war, we need to focus on controlling costs such as identifying the fast selling tyre patterns and sizes in order keep the right stocks.”
Customer retention strategies
Apart from controlling costs, Raaz Aspire Sdn Bhd also offers a lot of complementary after-sales services to retain their customers. In the tyre industry, customer retention is very crucial because it is often easier to retain an existing customer than to look for new customers.
“We know our profit margin level, and therefore we are able to provide free value added services for our customers who purchase new tyres. The free services include special rim wash and tyre rotation every 10,000 km. ”
He adds that another free service is filling the newly sold tyres with nitrogen gas, as well as free nitrogen gas top up for the entire lifespan of the tyres.
“With the advancement of technology, the business landscape has changed. We will utilise technology to build our customer database and use it to send service reminders to our customers to remind them when they need bring their cars back for tyre rotation, nitrogen gas top up etc. I hope that all these actions can help the company retain its customers. “
Strong support from Hankook Malaysia
Chin said 80% of the company’s tyre sales come from the Hankook brand.
“Although Hankook Malaysia does not advertise a lot, the brand is well accepted by customers through word-of-mouth. Our customer feedback is very good as they can purchase a quality tyre with an affordable price which is 10%-30% lower than other major tyre brands.”
“On top of that, Hankook Malaysia provides an attractive and transparent reward structure. We know clearly our rewards and sales targets.”
Chin adds that Hankook Malaysia also provides a very strong support system, which includes a full list of tyre details, flexible reward system, technical support, sales and technical training & marketing tools.
“The marketing tools that Hankook Malaysia provides are signages, uniform and promotional materials. They also train our staff on proper selling techniques, provide frequent news updates and product information. Hankook Malaysia is still in the early stage of developing the Malaysian market. I believe with their strong support and backup, we will be able to grow together with them.”
