Ozzy Tyres driving e-commerce sales
Launched around 30 years ago initially as a wholesale business, Ozzy Tyres is an Aussie success story. One of the first parallel importers into the country, the company revolutionised the Australian market by offering existing brands at cheaper prices. Around 1990 the business ventured into retail, and director Hus Chahine joined his older siblings in the family business established by their father.
Starting out with the delivery drivers and fitting tyres, Chahine observed that stacks of tyres were backed up in the warehouse. “It started to bother me because we had all this product there and it wasn’t moving – not at the rate it should be.” So he became a tyre salesperson. “I’d sell a couple of hundred tyres per day. I’d go to see maybe 20-plus customers,” he said.
Now Ozzy Tyres sells wheel and tyres packages, having started manufacturing wheels around five years ago. “I created my own brand called Hussla, which has become the largest wheel brand in the country,” Chahine reports.
“The wheel business is our main differentiator, compared to other businesses – and that’s the strength of our wheel alloy innovation business.
“When we entered the online space – which was also about five years ago, we were the first ones to package up a set of wheels and tyres, and offer them online to a customer – we actually ship the wheels with the tyres fitted and balanced, supplied ready to bolt straight onto the vehicle.”
Ozzy Tyres offers around 300 current styles of wheels, as well as different colours and finishes, and over 1,000 different tyres. “It’s about giving the customer options and to suit all budgets. We have the largest range of wheels in the country and we give customers the varieties,” Chahine explains.
“Being innovative and releasing the latest designs, finishes and colours gives us the edge over the others because we’re innovating: we’re offering new products – we’re pretty much setting the trends.”
In the past 12 months, this exciting innovation has seen Ozzy Tyres venture into manufacturing its own tyres. “We have a tyre called Monsta – which is a 4×4 or a 4-wheel drive product, and it’s doing exceptionally well.” This tyre has the comfort of a road tyre, which is quiet on the road but performs off-road – “it’s actually never been done before,” Chahine says.
The company is selling it to three other countries: New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand as well as meeting increasing demand from other Australian tyre retailers.
Getting social
The Ozzy Tyres catalogue has a print run in excess of 100,000 catalogues that are sent to all tyre retailers. As a wheel supplier, Ozzy Tyres has contracts with large retailers such as Bob Jane and Beaurepairs which has over 400 stores.
Retail makes up 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the business and much of the marketing is through social media.
“We have over 230,000 followers and use social media a lot,” Chahine says.
Another drawcard is delivery nationwide to all retail as well as wholesale customers.
Assisting in this business success recently has been zipMoney, “because it offers interest-free finance to the consumer so you can make monthly payments [up to 21 months’ interest free],” Chahine says.
“We’ve done over $1 million worth in sales in the past five months, just [through] Zip. We were zipMoney’s largest customer within the first 20 days that we had the product. We just pushed it hard through social media, and our advertising; again, it’s just offering the customer payment options and freeing up his cash flow.”
Ozzy Tyres knows the market well and has the power to determine its direction. “We are a company that takes prides in the products and services we have to offer. The competitors are always looking at what we are doing so they can imitate us – whether it be a product or marketing style. By the time they have copied us we have already evolved to another style. Catch us if you can!” Chahine says.
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Paul starkey
Got sent odd wheel with the set ordered
Tyers unbalance,
3 months later still trying to gat the right wheel