Firestone

"Sears Roebuck, the largest American retail and mail order chain (eight hundred and fifty stores and a catalog distributed in eighty million copies), offered Michelin in 1965 to sell its tires, because it refused, it explained, “to have cheap tires like its competitors and instead wants to consider the clientele.” Sears set only one condition: the Michelin car and truck tires it would distribute not only by mail order but also in its shopping centers must bear the group’s brand in this field: “Allstate.” To conclude the deal, Andy Bush, the buyer responsible for tires at Sears, came to Clermont-Ferrand. Before giving his agreement, François Michelin requested a fifteen-day reflection period. The company had never, unlike many of its competitors—especially American ones—accepted selling tires under a brand other than its own. Ultimately François Michelin accepted. America is well worth a mass. Sears is the third American business in the replacement tire market (after Goodyear and Firestone). It sells about ten percent of all tires purchased by American motorists. And one in four families has an open account with Sears."

"François Michelin also knows that he still has much to do to consolidate the foundations of his own house. Everywhere in nearly all the markets that Bibendum has conquered through sheer effort, Bridgestone, the new Japanese tire giant, threatens to establish itself. The Japanese brand supplies half of the Japanese automobile production, which became the world’s largest in 1980 and 1981. In the United States, it quickly delivered to Michelin’s customers at a time when Michelin was out of stock. It plans to purchase the Firestone plant in Nashville, Tennessee, and increase its production capacity to 3,000 truck tires per day in 1983. In Europe, it is laying the groundwork, making contacts, and beginning to supply Scandinavia, Great Britain, and West Germany. It, too, is eyeing Formula 1. The result: a wild growth, as fast or faster than the French group over the past five years, with revenues of three billion dollars in 1980 (nearly seventy percent of which was from tires) achieved with only thirty-one thousand employees, gross self-financing margins of twenty-five percent, and a net profit nearly twice that of Michelin in 1980. Bridgestone, in recent years, has also surpassed General Tire, Uniroyal, BF Goodrich, Continental, Dunlop, and Pirelli to occupy the fourth place worldwide. A formidable challenger."

"In the early twenties, it was also necessary to break free from British brokers who control international rubber prices and let them rise vertiginously. Michelin became planters[23](private://read/01jkqdqdgs7t399cyecbezrhj0/#ftn_fn23). Like Ford at the same time in Brazil or Firestone in Liberia. Especially since the bosses in Clermont fear that American tire companies will seek at all costs to secure a global monopoly on natural rubber to ensure the safety of their supplies."