THE ENTREPRENEUR that set up Edinburgh-based online tyre retailer Blackcircles is tapping into the lucrative US market with new venture Tirescanner, which is expected to be fully operational by the start of next year.
Like Blackcircles, which Mr Welch sold to Michelin for £50 million in 2015, Tirescanner will be focused on the tyre retail market.
Unlike Blackcircles, which allows customers to buy tyres online before choosing a suitable location to have them fitted, Tirescanner will act as an aggregator that channels customers to tyre-fitting businesses in their local area.
Rather than selling the tyres itself, the company will earn a commission every time it secures a successful sale for one of its partner firms, with Mr Welch noting that the business will operate in a similar way to how Skyscanner does in the travel sector.
“It’s an aggregator like Skyscanner,” he said. “With them, you punch in your destination and get a list of results. We’ll provide customers with all the retail offers in their zip code.
“When I started Blackcircles the goal was to build a business that could compete with bricks and mortar tyre fitters.
“I spent some time in the States working as a consultant with a business like Blackcircles and I realised that the market for bricks and mortar stores is so large that customers can’t make head nor tail of who to go to.
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to work out how to consolidate all the information on those bricks and mortar stores into one place.
“I’m giving the retailers the opportunity to compete against the pure-play online businesses. It’s so difficult for them to do that on their own.”
While Tirescanner will focus specifically on the US market, Mr Welch said that part of the team that will work on the technology behind the website will be based in Scotland.
“We have six people working for us at the moment but that will need to get to about 600 pretty quickly,” Mr Welch said.
“This is not a logistics business like Blackcircles. This is very much a data and technology business so the focus will very much be on the user experience and response time, and onboarding of partners, rather than making sure we can ship tyres on time.
“It’s a bit of a change of focus for me.”
The business has been started with a $1 million investment from Mr Welch, who intends to continue funding it himself initially.
Sixty retailers and two tyre manufacturers are already signed up to the site, with the business focusing on building that list up on a state by state basis before considering whether to look for external finance.
On the US side, Mr Welch has begun looking for sales people to build up Tirescanner’s list of retail partners, with the business looking to focus on Florida initially before shifting its focus to other states across the US.
“I anticipate that by the end of January or start of February we’ll have a core team in place,” Mr Welch said.
“Their job will be bringing the retailers onto the platform. We’ll be looking at a state-by-state roll out but the speed of that will depend on our early success.
“Over the course of the next couple of weeks we’ll be soft-launching the site before a full launch at the start of next year.”
Since selling Blackcircles three years ago Mr Welch has been involved with a number of other business ventures, making investments into online fashion company Atterley and designer homeware business Houseology.
As well as putting up cash for the businesses, Mr Welch serves as a strategic adviser for Atterley and sits on the board of Glasgow-based Houseology, formerly known as Occa Home, as a non-executive director.
Earlier this year his investment business Full Circle Partners took a 10 per cent stake in Oxfordshire firm TP Knotweed Solutions, a company that specialises in tackling invasive plants.
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