(speaking foreign language)
- Companies that surface around
the wheel, tire and suspension industry
usually revolve around a few specific countries:
the United States of America, Japan,
the United States of America, and Germany.
But we're gonna take it back to a different country,
a country of Chanel and the Tour de France
and eating cow udders.
Today we're gonna be talking about
the wonderful country and the host of
one of the largest tire manufacturers
in the world, Michelin Tires.
Michelin was founded back in 1832 by two people:
Andre and Edouard, but these two brothers
actually weren't even planning on getting
involved into the Michelin tire name,
and it wasn't called Michelin until
probably around six decades later.
It wasn't until 1889 when Andrew and Edouard
overtook the brand and renamed it Michelin.
(speaking foreign language)
The company was based out of Clermont-Ferrand, France,
and back in the day, just to give you perspective
in the late '80s, 1880s, because that needs clarification,
the Eiffel Tower wasn't actually even built yet;
it only had the first two pieces of it.
That's how old the Michelin company really is.
They began the business by making bicycle tires,
and other pneumatic tires, but really
what set Michelin up into what they are
known for today was simply because they were
never really planning on getting into
the automotive tire business, but
what ended up happening is they had
somebody come over to their factory,
an individual that we will call him Roger,
because I don't know any other French names.
And while Roger needed to have his tire replaced
on his bicycle, the two brothers
ended up wanting to get the tire replaced
so they went at it at their own factory,
and it took them over three hours to replace this tire.
What ended up happening, well, they
let the glue sit and they had to peel it off,
and rip it back on, the next morning
they went to test out this tire that
they had finally replace for the bicycle,
and it turns out it didn't last
nothing more than a few short hundred meters.
But the two brothers are so convinced
that the future rode on some form of rubber detachable tire
that they went into develop the first retractable,
mountable, detachable tire that you could put on a bicycle.
They were so convinced that they entered
into the 1895 Paris-Bordeaux Bicycle race,
and guess what? They didn't win.
But there was a little bit of a build up
that made you feel pretty good.
But for the most part, people were
interested at how in the hell this company
managed to get a hold of a demountable tire.
And from there the two brothers realized,
and the team that they had behind them,
that they could probably do something
with that technology.
There wasn't necessarily competition
of an already existing market of car tires.
There was rubber tire manufacturing
and that was already pretty limited in France,
but what there really wasn't at all
was like a car industry, like,
there's no competition because it didn't exist.
So they began to grow the company name through word of mouth
because they wanted to get involved in everything possible,
and they wanted to convince people
that rubber tires and the way that they were making them
was the future, and they were
going to do that with the introduction
of this little known technology
that was kind of buzzing around back in the day,
the automobile.
So what did the company do to combat the curve
of people not thinking the automobile was the take-off,
because, well, it was too expensive,
it wasn't reliable, it was difficult to manage,
the things were glorified carriages,
there was nothing that anybody would want at all
out of an automobile. They were just junk,
They were swa-ha, they were just garbage.
Well, what they decided to do
is that Michelin is like, "Hey, we're going
to make some road maps." 35,000 of them to be exact.
And they produced them and tried to get them,
everybody, all over France, to convince
people that road maps were the future
so that people could travel to
places that they couldn't before.
In fact, they were a red-binding road map
that is still considered probably
one of the founding reasons that
Michelin is where it is to this day.
Michelin had to figure out a way
to convince people that this was needed.
So could you imagine making a road map
for a country that really didn't have any need for it,
and making 35,000 copies and expecting it to go well.
It's not like you're going to be going through the road,
on whatever the car was called at the time,
like, "(speaking foreign language)
This one has air-conditioning."
Even though essentially that's what it was.
The entire road map pedigree, the whole purpose of it,
was to convince people to travel.
And this is where it gets fun,
you know Michelin's fluffy dude?
Yeah, that actually came from a trade show
back in 1898, when Michelin was partaking in
one of their bicycle trade shows where they
mounted a bunch of bicycle tires in the shape of a man.
Ultimately, what that became is their mascot,
and even though the 21st century one is cute and cuddly,
the 19th century one wasn't so much,
in fact, it looked like a bad rendition
of some sort of X-Men character.
His name is Bibendum. Yes, Bibendum.
From there, Michelin began to get more involved
in everybody's traveling journeys.
In 1908, they made an itinerary office in France
where people could share their car journeys,
and that they could share them with other
people that were looking to be involved
in traveling across the country.
It was clear that Michelin was planning on just
getting involved with everything
that had to be associated with driving,
much more than just supplying rubber tires.
And this is where it starts to really work for Michelin,
because everybody just knew Michelin
as the company that did that.
They got so involved that some people almost
mistook Michelin as some sort of government entity,
because they were just involved in a lot of different stuff
that the government really wasn't doing.
But literally most of Michelin's
history is about the road maps.
It's like it was so fundamentally crucial
to Michelin's success that most of their history
is founded around that and the fact that
they were one of the first companies to introduce
road markers in France, and they were one of
the only ones allowed to do so.
Michelin began to grow and got more involve in everything
because they could, and we're going to list off
a couple historical markers that just made Michelin
even a bigger company.
In 1914, they got involved in the war efforts
where Michelin had to switch their assembly lines
to take care of airplanes and make rubber tires for that,
which is a pretty cool fact.
In 1931, they became the first company
to make road markers and signs.
By 1935, they partner with Citroen
that held on for nearly four decades.
In 1937, they made a truck tire with a steel casing,
and can you guess it? They were
the first ones to do that too.
And then finally in 1946, they truly made history.
They made history in the sense that every single tire
pretty much out there right now is using this technology,
and this is what really put Michelin on the map.
In 1946, and as long as we don't include the invention
back in 1915, Michelin was the
first company to truly coin the radial tire.
In case you've been living under a rock,
the radial tire is a tire that just allows for more
flexibility, greater fuel efficiency,
and is pretty much just considered
just the way to make a tire these days.
And that tire design essentially took over the market share
in the late '60s until it either snuffed out competition
that didn't believe in the radial tire,
or it took over companies like Uniroyal,
which by the way, is right next to my home town.
In fact, it's actually in my home town.
Shout-out to Eau Claire, what up?
By 1968, Michelin had grown into North America,
and from there they just didn't stop.
And once they hit the international play,
Michelin got involved in motor sport,
and they were one of the first radial tires
to get involved in Formula One and
win with the Ferrari racing team.
At this point, Michelin was really into everything.
Whether it was motorcycle, bicycle tires,
truck tires, commercial tires,
passenger tires, airplane tires, train tires,
because Michelin made a train-looking
car-thing that had tires on it.
I mean, Michelin was really doing
everything they possibly could to stay on top of the market.
By the 21st century, they became the second largest
tire manufacturer in the world just
coming in inches behind number one.
They've owned other companies that you could take,
such as BFGoodrich, Clever, Tiger,
Riken, Uniroyal, Kormoron, and probably a few other.
Boasting over a hundred and ninety million
manufacture tires, 16.5 million
products sold, and over 170 countries
that Michelin does business in,
Michelin is just one of those companies that is,
well, relatively speaking, absolutely f-- massive.
I mean, they have 114, 000 people working for them.
They do 22 billion in net sales,
number one in innovation in the tire industry.
They're pretty much all over the place
when it comes to tires, and when you
look at their actual tires, they're not that bad.
Michelin doesn't have a huge, I would say, "market"
in the after-market community,
nothing like Nitto or Toyo, but that doesn't necessarily
mean that this company is a slouch by any means.
Michelin is still one of those companies that I don't
think is going to go away any time soon,
and their history of the company is massive,
and it volves around road maps for like six decades.
I'm done reading about road maps.
So if you're interested in Michelin tires,
or wheels, tires, suspension, anything like that related,
we have paint on the website too.
Check out fitmentindustries.com,
we appreciate if you want to go out
there and take a look at it, and of course,
don't forget to subscribe.
We hope you guys enjoyed this episode
of Michelin tire history, let us know
in the comments what you would like us to cover next,
and of course, we'll pick a lucky random winner down below
if you can convince us what the coolest car in the world is.
We'll send you out a gear pack.
My name's Alex from Fitment Industries,
and we'll see you later. Peace.