Dealer Tire, the Cleveland-based outfit that supplies millions of tires each year to more than 8,000 new-car dealers’ service departments, is moving beyond sales of replacement tires with its surprise acquisition of Dent Wizard.
Announced Monday, the deal — for an undisclosed sum — aims to create the leading aftersales dealer services platform in North America. Dent Wizard provides automotive reconditioning services and vehicle protection products and counts among its customers about 5,000 new-car dealerships.
Dent Wizard’s services include paintless dent removal, fixing hail-damaged vehicles, interior repairs, refinishing curbed mag wheels and key replacement. The company, headquartered in St. Louis, employs more than 2,300 technicians and operates in 97 of the country’s top 100 markets, Dealer Tire said in a statement.
Since Dealer Tire emerged in 1999 from family-owned Mueller Tire & Brake, a Cleveland chain of independent repair garages run by brothers Scott and Dean Mueller, the company has focused relentlessly on building its business to serve one primary sales channel: franchised new-car dealers.
The company has constructed more than three dozen warehouses around the country that stock millions of tires — so that new-car dealers don’t have to — that can be delivered almost immediately when a service writer at a new-car dealership places an order. Unlike other tire distributors, Dealer Tire’s own employees work in the service lanes of high-volume dealerships to help those stores increase tire sales.
“The combination of Dent Wizard’s reconditioning capabilities and Dealer Tire’s service lane presence offers greater opportunities to help car dealers increase their fixed operations sales and profits and to increase customer retention,” Scott Mueller, Dealer Tire CEO, said in a statement. “This acquisition aligns with our strategy of making it easy and profitable for dealers to sell more tires, more parts, services and accessories,” he added.
Dealer Tire expects the transaction to close this quarter and will leave in place Dent Wizard’s management team. The company plans to operate Dent Wizard as an independent entity. Both Dent Wizard and Dealer Tire are privately held companies and do not disclose their yearly sales.