a clever marketing ploy to women

An innovative tyre retailer is selling handbags recycled from inner tubes.

Is shopping for car tyres a female friendly experience? Not in my experience. Essential car safety items of course but surely much of a muchness regardless of the detail… and not as enjoyable as shopping for fashion or beauty essentials items.

A creative tyre retailer in the US is trying to change female perceptions here by courting the female purse with a range of tyres, wheels and other services and accessories alongside a range of stylish female friendly (and distinctly more appealing) credit card holders, wallets, travel bags and unisex briefcases. All made from recycled inner tubes from spent farm tyres in Ohio, Virginia and Georgia.

You can imagine the conversation… “Please fit the tyres I need and now that’s out of the way <yawn> I’d like to try on your handbags…”

The female friendly tyre retailer is called Waukegan Tire in Illinois and they’re selling them at prices ranging from $24 to close to $400. A company called Passchal produce them.

The bit I like is using handbags to market to women AND be seen for their “green” initiatives as a source of competitive advantage. Very clever.

FOXY Steph

Members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club get advice about tyre maintenance, information about their choice of car tyres and special foxy offers. But no handbags yet ;-(.

Female car drivers don’t DIY car maintenance as often as men according to research by Autoquake.com.

Which could be because the research is carried out by men (only having a laugh guys…), women are more honest in our survey responses (although this does us no credit), because our foxy feller does all this for us or because we are members of FOXY Lady Drivers Club and get free seasonal car checks and associated services carried out by female friendly garage professionals. Sounds plausible to me.

And because women are FOXY by nature of course, as in female, feisty and fussy that is.

Here’s the survey detail if you’re interested.

• More than one-in-ten female drivers (12%) never check their car’s oil level whereas just under 8% of men admit to this
• Twice as many women (14%) as men (7%) admit to never checking their tyre pressures while almost one-in-five say they never check the tread-depth. (If true, there’s no excuse here girls – join the Club and we’ll explain why this is really serious and how to stay safer in future)
• Women drivers are also more likely than men to pay someone else to carry out basic maintenance for them
• Just over 14% of women pay to have coolant levels checked compared with 5% of men
• A staggering 9% of women pay someone else to check their washer fluid level compared to 3% of men

And apparently drivers in Northern Ireland are more diligent about all this than we in the South East.

Moi? FOXY, female, feisty and fussy, living in the South East? I get my husband to do my car maintenance for me but I wouldn’t dream of paying him. Not sure if there was a survey category for that!

FOXY Steph

More than 5 million motorists are driving dangerous cars says Britannia Rescue (2010)

A recent survey carried out by Delticom AG, Europe’s leading Internet tyre dealer, found that women drivers in Germany were appreciating the time and money savings that internet searching for tyre deals brings.

Which might be another way of saying that they are being foxy (as in smart) by doing their car, garage services and tyre buying online in advance because they are fearful of being ripped off, patronised or sold something they don’t want to buy in an intimidating garage environment?

Basically, men and women give the same arguments for online tyre purchase.

buying tyres online saves women drivers time and money

But women appreciate the comfort of ordering from home more than men.

• 96 percent of women rate it as an advantage, compared to 89 percent of men.
• Women are also the bigger bargain hunters amongst tyre buyers.
• For 95 percent of women drivers the low price is an important argument for online purchasing.

In the UK of course, women drivers can check out the credentials of a female friendly garage that has signed the FOXY Promise© to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t want to buy’.

FOXY Steph

Find out about other motoring offers to help women cut the cost of motoring at FOXY Lady Drivers Club

According to a recent survey carried out by Sainsbury’s Finance, increased insurance and motoring taxes have added 11% to the cost of motoring since 2007; just imagine what could this could have been without a recession…

Thanks to a Club member based in West Sussex sharing some foxy feedback, we now have a useful comparison of tyre prices to help women drivers when shopping in the Worthing/Littlehampton area, including service levels and fitting arrangements.

To begin with the member knew the specific tyre to buy, all these introductions were made via the members area of FOXY Lady Drivers Club website and whilst Black Circles was the cheapest deal by a small margin, it is clear that National Tyres and Autocare in Worthing would have matched this and the choice would then have been down to one of personal convenience ie where to drive to have these fitted.

“Here’s the result of my comparisons for the supply/fit of four tyres – Yokohama S306 205/55 R16 91V. All prices include VAT.

1) Micheldever – based in Winchester. Although they do a mobile service, they won’t come to Worthing.

2) www.etyres.co.uk – £298.80

3) National Tyres (Worthing).

Spoke to Danny and with the FOXY  discount the price would be £275. He then offered to price match any figure I got; fitting is in the centre of Worthing.

4) www.blackcircles.co.uk (via the Foxy members affiliate link)

Using the FOXY discount code the total price would be £246.04 and fitted in Littlehampton (by  Littlehampton Tyres)

5) I then phoned ‘Corbetts Tyre & Exhaust’ a local business in Rustington

He didn’t have that specific tyre on his pricelist, so called me back in 10 mins with a price. Total price would be £260 – very close to the normal blackcircles price.

Finally I called Littlehampton Tyres direct and quoted the price I was going to get via Black Circles, with them doing the fitting. But they couldn’t do the price for cheaper so I’ll be placing my order via Black Circles soon – and fitting will be in Littlehampton.”

Needless to say we like to keep on top of prices and to be sure that FOXY Lady members get a fair deal so it’s good to have this feedback to post in our ‘members only’ forum.

If anyone knows better than this in terms of price deals (all things being equal) please let us know. We are not called FOXY for nothing and like to live up to the meaning of the word as in being shrewd, canny and astute; clearly you can negotiate on tyre prices so women drivers need to know where and how to go about this to get better motoring deals in future.

It’s good to share local shopping experiences with other women drivers too as clearly female friendly service levels are often equally as important as the price (within reason…)..

FOXY Steph