Waters appointed Tireweb USA's new GM

Tire industry veteran Sheila Waters has been appointed General Manager of Tireweb USA, charged with driving the company’s growth and innovation in the e-commerce space.

Waters has been with parent company E-Solutions Professionals (ESP) for the past seven years, having previously worked for Tandem Tire for around two decades.

Meanwhile, sister company Tireweb Marketing, which focuses on retail and custom ecommerce websites and marketing services, has also made significant managerial appointments. Rob Rupert has been appointed Chief Operating Officer, responsible for USA business, Matt Peters is Business Development Manager, responsible for sales of Tireweb Marketing products, and new recruits Jan Lewis and Bonnie Jones take up the roles of Customer Service Manager and Digital Marketing Manager.

Extensive experience has Waters well-placed

Waters extensive experience sets her in good stead with Tireweb USA, as ESP prides itself on the fact that nearly every employee and all its owners are ‘tire people’ who know the industry inside out.

“I’m very excited because the business is always growing and always trying to stay ahead of the trends,” Waters said. “We are a leader in the industry as far as bringing out new products (is concerned) and we take the lead.”

Waters said her new role meant managing all U.S.A. operations, including customer support, sales and management for Tireweb’s wholesale products. The main focus is companies that want to grow their business, whether by showing inventory on their retail website or showing larger inventory within their point of sale software from their supplier, using Tireweb’s Connection Center tool.

Tireweb USA supplies e-commerce applications for the tire industry aimed at helping tire distributors and tire manufacturers reduce costs and increase sales and profits. This is achieved by giving them quick, reliable and extensive access to information they need and packaged in a way that's attractive to dealers.

A suite of industry-changing products

Their products include B2B e-commerce application Tireweb, which is used by 20,000 tire dealers every single day. In the past 12 months, more than 20 million tires have been sold through Tireweb.

Tireweb powers Tirelibrary — the world’s largest database of tire information, featuring more than 150 makes, 6,000 patterns, and more than 25,000 product images. Tireweb’s Connection Center is a powerful tool allowing customers to integrate with third party suppliers and partners. By using Connection Center, data from these partners is made available to other parties or ESP products.

Wheelweb — a B2B online ordering system for wheels is the newest product, allowing a business’s customers to search their wheel inventory and view wheels from the same application on Tireweb.

What's in the pipeline?

Waters said currently the company was focusing on developing a program to automate national accounts for tire wholesalers to remove some of the extensive paperwork involved, and working on a new look for its highly successful Tirelibrary. Up next is Wheel Configure, a program enabling customers to search inventory, view wheels and the tires that will fit the wheel, and create an online demo to see what a retailer's wheels would look like on their vehicle.

“As I talk with clients, they tell us what they like and the company listens. This is where we get a lot of our ideas from actually — our clients,” she said. “It’s great getting out there and meeting all the clients rather than just talking to them on the phone. Relationships are very important so we are very focused on meeting face-to-face.”

Catch up with Waters and the team at SEMA

Part of that will be attending the SEMA Show in Las Vegas in November, where Waters intends to connect with as many current and new clients as the whirlwind four-day event allows.

The 2016 SEMA show is expected to draw more than 60,000 domestic and international buyers and showcase more than 2,500 new products from November 1 to 4. Sheila Waters will be at the Tireweb Marketing booth #42296 in the South Hall, with Tireweb Marketing’s Rob Rupert, Jingjing Qiu, Matt Peters, Richard Tran and Matthew Walker.

Tagged: Tireweb USA

Waters appointed Tireweb USA’s new GM