Roadshow Tires

About Roadshow Tires

Maybe motor oil was in his blood. True or not, Adrian Salgado, successful franchise owner of a dozen custom wheel and tire shops in the Marietta, Georgia area, has been thinking about cars his whole life. He’s worked in the automotive business since his early teens. “I started looking at car magazines and figuring out ways to modify cars when I was really young,” says Salgado. “By the time I was 14 or 15, I was fixing my friends’ cars—doing their brakes, playing with the spoilers and that kind of thing. I’ve always been a car enthusiast, and from early on I’ve had a dream to run a car business.”

What started as Salgado and his brother-in-law simply having fun helping their friends turned into a healthy business once they started selling used tires. Selling tires, in turn, led to opening a store and doing more services like alignments, brakes, and minor repairs. Then, the two brothers-in-law opened more stores and got into selling wheels and other, newer things for cars.

“It’s been a whole process,” says Salgado. “It took us five to eight years to make our dream a reality. I suppose success has come because we never settle. We’re always asking ourselves, what else can we do? How can we learn more about suspension systems to make these wheels and tires better, or this car better, or this business better?”

Business Needs

Eight or so years in, Roadshow Tires was running on four cylinders and Salgado was feeling good about his growing business. At the same time, Salgado didn’t want to coast on cruise control. He knew he needed to stay sharp and look for ways to improve the business. Not being a big ‘technology guy,’ Salgado says he wasn’t really looking for improvements in that area, but he did realize he needed better financing options for his customers.

“All our customers were paying by cash or credit,” he says. “If they couldn’t afford it, they’d leave the store and say they’d come back, but you’d never see them again. They were probably looking for an alternative payment method, which we didn’t have. We probably missed out on a lot of business.”

Acima Solution

One day a sales rep from Acima, Matt Livingston, walked into Roadshow Tires to introduce a new, easy way to finance. Salgado says his first response was “Our business is doing fine—thanks, but no thanks.” But before he left, Livingston asked if he could at least show how easy it was to fill out an application, and how quickly he could collect money from a sale. “He also mentioned how it was helping other businesses in the area,” says Salgado, “and how it could do the same for Roadshow. That’s what really caught my attention.”

When Livingston showed off the app, including the immediate approval process and how the vendor would get paid within 24 to 48 hours, Salgado was further impressed. “Not knowing technology very well, I figured it would be kind of complicated,” he says. “But when I saw it, I realized this was not hard at all. It was very easy. I told him, ‘Let’s give it a try.’”

Soon after, Salgado and Roadshow Tires were using Acima, and people responded. He showed it to his partners, and eventually and it was rolled out into all four stores Salgado manages.

“At that moment I made the decision, I felt I could learn something new,” he says. “For a lot of business owners, I think it’s difficult because you don’t know how good something is until you try it. For me, it made a difference when Matt said, ‘This is what your competition is using.’ I stopped and thought, ‘You know, if it’s good enough for them we should probably give it a shot and try out this technology.’ In hindsight, I’m so glad we did.”

The Results

By using Acima, Roadshow Tires has an opportunity to do more business with current and new customers due to more options for them—not only in products but how to pay for those products. “When you get a customer in and can only do 50 percent of the work they need, due to lack of funds, that’s an issue,” Salgado says. “Acima helps us do 100 percent of the customer service work, as we now have multiple options for how they can pay. It’s helping our revenue and helping bring customers back in.”

In turn, Roadshow Tires’ customers have helped spread the word and basically done the company’s advertising for them. “We can’t spend on marketing like some of the big dealers do, but we do have the word-of-mouth thing on our side. They’re telling their friends and relatives. It works out even better. That’s how we compete against the big guys.”

Acima’s top-rated customer service has also been a big benefit, says Salgado. “When I have a question or an issue for my rep I get an immediate call back or a text, then a call within minutes. And whenever I call the company number, I experience that same customer service.”

“We bring up Acima to anybody who needs to do any type of service on their car, or any type of product,” he says. “Not only to the people who can’t afford it, but also to the people who can afford it. Sometimes they want to use it as well. We make it clear to everybody that payment should be made in 90 days, same as cash. I think it’s worked out well. In all but one case, we’ve had no complaints. It’s been fantastic.”

And the net result? Roadshow Tires has received 30 percent more business. “We even have a whole new store that wouldn’t have survived without Acima,” Salgado says. “That store had been struggling, but we changed our approach. As soon as people walked in, we told them about the finance options. Probably 80 percent of our sales in that store were finance deals. And we wouldn’t have done that without Acima.”

Today Salgado and his brother-in-law are still partners, and the business is still growing. “We’re in ten cities now,” he says. “But I never really moved away from my roots here in Marietta. Not only did I not move away, but Roadshow is my dream shop. My dream was to have a shop that could have the full capabilities like one of the big guys. We’re not as big as them, but as far as customer service goes, we’re not too far behind!”

In the end, Salgado and his auto shops will keep on running. After all, it’s in his blood.