Tyre pricing that updates itself.

Why line-by-line tyre pricing always drifts

A price list is a snapshot. Supplier costs move, promotions come and go, and exchange rates shift, so the moment you export a list and price it by hand you are working from history.

The visible symptom is margin that varies wildly across the range without anyone deciding it should. Some lines end up priced below cost after a supplier increase nobody noticed, and others sit well above the market and simply never sell.

The deeper problem is that nobody can audit it. When every price is an individual decision made months ago, there is no rule to check a price against, so errors are invisible until a customer or an accountant finds them.

Price by rule, not by line

A rule is a policy you can state in a sentence: this band of sizes carries this markup, with this floor, rounded this way. Rules are short enough to argue about and to change deliberately.

Most shops need only a handful. A common shape looks like this.

• A base markup by category, since premium, mid-range and budget rarely deserve the same percentage.
• A floor price per fitment, so no line can be sold below what the bay costs to run.
• A rounding rule, because prices ending in a sensible figure read as considered rather than calculated.
• A ceiling or a market check on high-volume sizes, where being noticeably above the local market costs you the booking.
• An override list for the handful of lines you genuinely want to price by hand.

Tyre pricing done this way is auditable: a price is either the rule applied correctly or a deliberate exception, and you can tell which. The point of the override list is that it exists and is short. If it has two hundred entries you are back to pricing by line with extra steps.

Start from a maintained catalogue

Rules only work if the thing they are applied to is accurate. Most pricing pain is actually catalogue pain: sizes that do not match the fitment, load and speed ratings missing, the same tyre listed twice under different names.

Starting from a catalogue that is maintained for you removes the largest hidden cost in the whole exercise. Your job becomes deciding the rule rather than reconciling a supplier CSV against what is actually on the shelf.

It also makes the storefront honest. A customer who searches by registration should see the sizes that genuinely fit their car, with the ratings the manufacturer requires, and that is only possible when the catalogue underneath is right.

Fitted price beats a headline price

Customers compare what they will actually pay. A low tyre price with fitting, balancing, valve and disposal added at the end reads as a trap, and it converts worse than a slightly higher fitted price shown up front.

It is also easier to run. One number to quote, one number on the invoice, no conversation at the counter about what was and was not included.

Where you have genuinely different costs, price them as different products rather than as extras. A mobile fit carries travel and time a bay job does not, so it deserves its own price rather than a surcharge bolted on at checkout.

Review the rule, not the range

The reason to price by rule is that maintenance becomes tractable. Instead of reviewing several thousand prices you review five rules, on a schedule, and the range follows.

A sensible rhythm is to check the floor whenever your costs change, check the market on your top-selling sizes monthly, and revisit the markup bands once or twice a year.

What to watch for is a band where you are winning every quote, which usually means you are leaving money on the table, and a band where you are winning none, which usually means the floor or the markup is wrong rather than the market.

Where an agent helps, and where it does not

An AI agent is good at the mechanical part: mapping a supplier list onto the catalogue, applying your rule, flagging the lines that fall outside it, and doing that again the next time the list changes.

It is not the right thing to hand your pricing policy to. The rule is a commercial decision about where you want to be in your market, and that is yours. Give the agent the rule and let it do the repetitive work of applying it consistently.

The practical test of whether it is working: you should be able to change one number in a rule and see the whole range update, with a list of the exceptions that need a human. If that is not what happens, you are still pricing by line.