Snow Tyres: Let it snow ! Let it snow ! Let it Snow !

For the first time I have invested in a pair of new snow wellies for my Beetle.  I'd just seen my red bug fail its MOT due to insufficient tyre tread.  Expecting a 90 min wait I'd killed time looking around all the warm public places in our village and nursed a large pot of tea for an hour in our coffee shop.  I had even purchased a couple of car magazines, surely being disloyal and looking at new cars was going to tempt fate and see an expensive failure result.  Luckily for me, this was not the case. VW's are gooood. 

 

When asked if I wanted to wait another 40 minutes for a new pair of tyres for more than £200, I declined due to extreme frustration around a wasted afternoon and no desire to wait a single minute longer.  I figured I could try out the specialist tyre place that is literally down the end of our road.  Whilst it doesn't look much different (historic images from the 1920s or whenever cameras were in their infancy anyways). 

It resembles the kind of one person garage that each village will have had in days gone by.  You'll know the kind of place I mean, located on the road to be able to offer in person petrol sales delivery and with a building just big enough to hold one or two vehicles inside, jacked up with their engine parts being tinkered with by grease monkeys in blue overalls.

It wasn't about the pricing - I figured tyres are tyres and this seemed entirely reasonable, surely it wasn't worth shopping around.  But pig headed as ever, I was going to use the local specialist because the other time I'd used them I had driven straight in, been the only customer and got an amazing service for a puncture at a tiny cost. 

Just like the case study I'd learnt during my MBA studies: Japanese car industry break through in Europe - offer a fully loaded product at a great price and you will find customers in their millions.  You really can have a mould breaking better product and lower price - the idea that low price equates to low quality and high quality requires a high price is a concept I often look to challenge.

 

Continental Tyres promotional video clip with a powerful emotional appeal

Of course, this time (having given up due to a queue on a previous attempt) I had to queue.  As it happens, this was just enough time to negotiate a price and discover that winter tyres would be much cheaper than I suspected.  We have had a bit of a frost, but worse winter weather is expected.  As I write Frankfurt and Berlin airports are closed due to heavy snow.  On the campus Royal Holloway MBA we have worked closely with Contiential Tyres over five years on a live business consultancy and some of the wisdom shared by Guy Frobisher from their marketing team had landed.  Winter tyres =  a great idea. 

I was intrigued at how such a fast service could be delivered, when I had been quoted 40 minutes for this work at a generalist motor mechanics.  Putting my MBA operations management knowledge into action I sought to analyse the systems being used.  I noted clear role specialisation, yet some very effective team communication.  With six bays and the ability to blitz a four wheel change with four mechanics, the wheels are off your car before you can walk into the customer waiting areas.  Within 20 minutes my tyre change and credit card payment was completed.  If the store room for new tyres were co-located with the main workshop space (a very tight footprint the legacy of a historic business, carefully organised to offer maximum working bays) I am sure a couple of minutes could be taken off the change time. 

Good pricing, fast service, happy customers, no wonder they don't have to worry too much about marketing, Word of Mouth is going to be very powerful. 

Thorpe Park: The Royal Holloway MBA business engagement

For a second succssive year, The Royal Holloway MBA group of 34 temporarily left their leafy campus setting and hectic schedule of classes to visit the nearby "Thrills Capital" of the UK.  MBAs, drawn from all over the world, are particularly keen to visit organisations first hand to get a stronger appreciation of how business in the UK works.

Thanks to the generous partnership of Thorpe Park management team, MBA students were able to hear about the challenges of a quite remarkable business, which not only faces the typical challenges of a leisure business, a particularly wet summer, the 2012 Olympics, and competing for share of spend in a slow growing economic context, but one that also includes a  special ecological considerations, operating as it does in a site surrounded by a wetlands wildlife sanctuary. 


Thorpe Park is one of 93 attractions that form the Merlin Group, a global operator that currently lies second only to Disney.  In close proximity to other Merlin Group attractions (Legoland and Chessington) the Thorpe Park mission is carefully targetted at the mercurial 16-24 age group.  The Royal Holloway MBA group were given five real business questions to respond to after having been given the chance to visit the park 'behind the scenes' and fire questions at a panel of Thorpe Parks senior management.

Having worked together in groups to address the set questions the Thorpe Park management team will be hosted on the Royal Holloway campus to hear what the students recommend.  It is hoped the fresh and challenging perspectives, pitched using newly acquired analysis and presentation skills, will provide some genuinely helpfull insights for the Thorpe Park management team.