Established four years ago, Philip Ireland Tyre Repair is an up and coming business in its industry. Irish Tractor spoke to the man himself about his company which has risen to become the leading supplier of BKT Agrimax tyres in Co Kilkenny & the surrounding areas.
It may have been a tricky time to set up your own business but looking back on it now, Philip Ireland certainly had no second thoughts about setting up shop in 2011. In fact, it was the right time for him and his family, with his wife Ann Marie and brother Andrew coming on board with him, as the new business venture began to take off with the customers impressed by the service they were getting.
Four years on and Philip Ireland Tyre Repair is now the number one supplier for BKT Agrimax Tyres in Co Kilkenny & surrounding areas so you could certainly say that things are looking good for them down in the hurling stronghold.
“We’re based here in Danesfort in Co Kilkenny,” explained Philip, whose company specialises in the repairs and selling of agricultural and tractor tyres.
“We’re established since 2011 and I’m the owner here. I’ve my brother working with me and my wife Ann-Marie also works with me on the admin side of things”.
So what exactly do they do at Philip Ireland Tyre Repair? Well, apart from the obvious, they are big into providing their customers, whom mainly work in the agricultural sector, with prompt and reliable service.
“We sell any tyre really,” said Philip. “Mainly BKT Agrimax tyres and rims and we would be selling a lot of jeep & truck tyres, along with tractor tyres and tyres for other agricultural machinery. With regards to private vehicles, the tyres that we sell there would mainly be for jeeps. We don’t sell as much for cars.”
The market for car tyres isn’t what it was in a lot of ways and Philip was certainly wise to that when he set up his business. His background beforehand had been in the haulage trade, where he learned a thing or two about the industry he now finds himself in.
“I used to work for a haulage company in Kilkenny and I got let go,” he said. “It was obviously a difficult time for business in this country, but I decided to go out on my own then and things have been going well so far, thankfully. It’s getting stronger and stronger and there’s been a big turnaround in the last 12 months particularly.
“We started in 2011, so it would have been right in the middle of the downturn but I guess you could see a bit of an upside in that people weren’t buying new. That’s still the case and we’re happy to repair or supply them with the kind of tyre they need.”
With so much reliance on the agricultural industry, a busy trend develops in the summer time for Philip and his team. The two service vehicles After a pulsating eighty plus minutes of hurling, the Minor Hurling sides of Mayo and Tyrone remained deadlocked and the destination of the Adrian Freeman Memorial Cup still remains in the balance.are constantly on the road in order to keep customers on schedule and satisfied.
“I suppose you could say that summer would be a busy time of year for us,” Philip enthused. “A lot of our customers are general farmers and agricultural contractors and they depend on us for repairs, so we’re fairly busy at the moment around here.”
When you read down the list of customers that have come on board (and stayed) with Philip Ireland Tyres Repairs you tend to notice a common word throughout the names – ‘Agri’.
Despite some dreadful weather this past summer, agricultural contractors & general farmers all throughout Ireland still had to get their silage & grain cut and they’re no different in and around Kilkenny. More work for them means more work for Philip and his team in the long run, and he has had no complaints from some of the names below since they decided he’d be the man to look after the rubber on their machinery.
Noel Delaney Agri, Mattie Walton Agri, Kennedy Agri, Barry & Eoin Hoyne Agri, JJ Burke Agri, Brendan and John Hughes Agri, Liam and Pat Hennessy Agri, Maher Agri Services, Eamon Cottrell Agri, TFM Comerfords, Patsy Maher Plant Hire, Horizon Plant hire, Folkstown Feeds, Hoyne Transport, W Byrne Transport and Eamon Maher Bus Hire to name but a few, have either been with Philip since he started out on his own or recognised the quality of repair service and tyre he provides. Either way, it makes for good reading for the company in the short space of just under four years.
The unofficial motto for Philip, who buys the majority of his tyres from Agrigear & Midland Tyres, is: “Any tyre you need, we’ll sell it”. That’s a very positive attitude indeed, and there’s no doubt that you need that kind of approach nowadays if you want to succeed in business.
All in all, the signs are very positive and Philip is upbeat about the future, no matter what the demand is.
“Our opening hours are from Monday to Saturday, like everyone else. But, to be honest, we are really open 24 hours because we’re on call all the time whenever our customers need us.”
Philip Ireland Tyre Repair
Kilkenny
Tel: 086 8249804
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 9, October 2015
