OE INTERVIEW: ZC RUBBER COMING TO TTI speaks to ZC Rubber marketing director Richard Li to find out the latest North American plans of the tire maker responsible for the Westlake, Goodride and Arisun brands By GRAHAM HEEPS We’re talking here at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. What’s your assessment of the North American market? The market is pretty good. Demand is strong and customers are accepting our tires. American consumers are more realistic. They do not care about things like brand or perception. They just choose tires based on their value. The competition is tough in this market because all the brands are involved. But we believe that we have a good chance. How do you test your North American products? We have good relationships with the North American test tracks that we use. Mostly we test for mileage. This is a big country and people drive long distances every day. We use STL in Texas and test at the Toyota track [Arizona Mobility Test Center] in Arizona. With Smithers, we’re mostly working with the Suzhou [China] office now – it’s much more convenient than shipping tires. How do you position your brands differently for North American consumers? Arisun is controlled by our US subsidiary’s sales team. We use it to approach the local distributors and wholesalers. Westlake and Goodride have a longer history and are mostly sold to national importers. But we plan to make some adjustments in the future. We hope that we will approach more local distributors with those brands, too. Are you still looking at having more factories overseas? Yes. We believe that the biggest tire markets are the US, Europe, China and Southeast Asia. Currently, we mostly rely on China and Southeast Asia to supply the tires to the global market. But we know this business model does not make sense if we want to be a premium brand. We need a local team to serve local customers, and we need the products to be designed in and suitable for the local market. 30 www.tiretechnologyinternational.com March 2024