Giti Tire needs some boom-shaka-laka to reach Chester County residents

The Giti Tire logo and colors are impossible to miss at the Richburg Interstate 77 interchange.

The company flag often flies at the Gateway Conference Center, and its name flashes on the center’s electronic billboard.

Welcoming messages for the tire company are on business marquees along S.C. 9, and the company itself has a large sign on the highway, about where its first U.S. plant will be.

Giti officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking Thursday on a $560 million manufacturing plant that could employ as many as 1,700 workers and make 30,000 tires a day.

The Giti name and logo were on everything, whether it moved or not. The gold shovels sported the yellow-and-black company logo. Each hardhat was emblazoned with “Giti.” Banners lined the dirt road to the site. Even the cake served at a follow-up luncheon featured a Giti logo that rose from its center.

The cake was in the shape of Chester County. Giti’s elephant logo loomed large over the county.

But you won’t find a tire with the brand name “Giti” in Chester County, in the state, in the United States or even internationally.

What you will find in Chester, York and Lancaster counties are hundreds of imported tires made at Giti plants in China. They carry the brand names Primewell, sold at Firestone Complete Auto Care stores, Dextero, sold at Walmart Auto Care Centers, and GT Radial, sold at Discount Tire stores and independent retailers.

Making the connection between Giti and its brands is just one of the challenges the company faces as it moves forward with its Richburg plant.

The first challenge, however, is getting people to say the company’s name correctly, Giti officials said. It’s G-T, “like the two letters,” said David Shelton, director of marketing for passenger and light truck tires for Giti Tire USA in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

The name comes from Gajah Tunggal, the family company that started making bicycle tires in Indonesia in 1951. The company made its first automotive tires in 1981 and in 1993 opened its first plant in China.

The second challenge, Giti officials say, is convincing people that it’s not a Chinese tire company – even though most of the tires it imports are made at Chinese plants.

“We are a global manufacturer, not a Chinese manufacturer,” said Armand Allaire, executive vice president for sales and marketing in North America. The company is based in Singapore, but is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Giti sells tires in more than 100 countries, including a snow tire sold in Finland.

Still, changing the perception of being a Chinese-made tire will be difficult. Tires exported from China have a reputation of being cheap and unreliable.

Allaire and Shelton maintain that’s not the case with Giti.

“We want to exceed our customers’ expectations,” Shelton said.

Giti tries to do that by offering the best value at a mid-range price. While people look at a tire’s durability, its noise level, or its ride or comfort level, price is the usually the biggest factor in purchasing a tire.

Opening a U.S. tire plant should help Giti change perceptions.

“Made in America” will be part of the company’s marketing plan once the Richburg plant is operating, Shelton said. It also will be a point of pride for Shelton, who was born in Texas.

“The move to America is a big two thumbs up,” Shelton said. “It’s a powerful tool.”

A domestic plant also could help Giti break into the lucrative original equipment market for automakers based in the South. Just about every major U.S. and international auto maker has plants within a relatively short drive from Richburg.

The Richburg plant is expected to cut Giti’s delivery time to U.S. customers by 60 days, company officials said. To make sure delivery of the plant’s tires is as speedy as possible, a small “intermodal” facility – where trailers of tires could be transferred between train cars and diesel trucks – might be built.

And in an effort to reach those in the heart of NASCAR country, Giti Executive Chairman Enki Tan stressed in his remarks Thursday his company’s history of making racing tires. Giti has made tires to race in the desert, on ice, for drifting races, and for Formula race cars in China.

But it was the E-RUNNER, an all-electric car driven by Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima, that he was most proud of. The car won the electric division of the 2013 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb on Giti-made tires.

One suspects, however, that if Giti Tire really wants to make a local connection, it needs to do nothing more than turn out some dirt-track racing tires in Richburg. It wouldn’t have to ship them far – just up the road to the Lancaster Speedway for some good, old-fashioned, boom-shaka-laka, pedal-to-the-metal racing.

That would really make a great local impression.

This story was originally published February 15, 2015 at 5:42 PM with the headline "Giti Tire needs some boom-shaka-laka to reach Chester County residents."