Canadian Tire: Tire Wall, Four Locations

Design Perennial Inc., Toronto

Fixtures Concord Metal Manufacturing Inc., Concord, ON, Canada

Retailer Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd., Toronto

Dimensions 44 feet by 15 feet

Materials Metal substrate

Merchandise featured Tires

The Challenge: Selling the Namesake Product
With 452 stores, Canadian Tire has one located within 15 minutes of 85 percent of Canadians, and 40 percent of Canadians visit the retailer every week. With that level of brand identity, it would seem there’s little room for improvement. But appearances can be deceiving. As company representatives explained to Perennial in a comprehensive briefing that included a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation from each department head, consumers were visiting stores frequently for patio furniture, sporting goods, bird seed, vacuums, everything under the sun, but not enough of them thought to purchase tires there.

“Ironically, Canadian Tire was well known for everything but tires,” said Joe Jackman. The company began as an automotive retailer and evolved into a chain of automotive, sports and leisure, and home products stores. It carries a wider selection of tires than any other retailer and offers its own brand of tires, but no one seemed to know about this diverse assortment.

Communicating that market dominance and helping shoppers make sense of the product offerings were objectives included in a redesign of the entire store undertaken by Perennial Inc. “A visual language was needed. Other stores basically say, ‘Here’s a lot of tires – you figure it out,’ but we wanted to offer more than that. We wanted to give the consumer information they need to make a decision. We wanted to make it easy for the customer to buy while they’re right there in the store,” Jackman said.

Canadian Tire officials provided great collaboration for the entire redesign project, he added. Perennial’s team elicited theoretical buy-in before creating visual concepts. “We gave a wordy description of project goals because we wanted to make sure we were all on the same page before coming up with a design.” Convincing the retail team of the necessity of this step was not easy, but it avoided misconceptions about what the design concepts were to accomplish.

The Solution: Bigger is Better
At double the size of its predecessor, the new Tire Wall dedicates more space to tire selection than any other in the industry. Its imposing size, clear brand statement, and great location at the front of the store, where it can be seen from anywhere in the store, clearly convey Canadian Tire’s dominance in the product category. In addition to the unmatched number of tire brands and applications available in the store, a tire catalog and brochures allow customers to order hundreds of other styles while helping to take the confusion out of the buying decision.

The organization of the display and the clear signage provide easy-to-assimilate information and facilitate the shopping experience. Categories delineated by color as well as words help customers quickly choose tires by vehicle and type.

The metal substrate fixture is easy to install. Movable towers make it adaptable to each store’s local demographics. For instance, in areas where residents drive more trucks than cars, the section for truck tires can be expanded to focus more on these products than on custom or standard tires.