An Adobe-driven digital transformation

Fountain Tire is a prominent tire dealer and automotive service provider serving businesses and private customers. The company operates under a unique 50:50 model, allowing local managers to own half of their store by partnering with Fountain Tire.

Founded in 1956 by Bill Fountain, the brand has spread from a double-bay garage in Wainwright, Alberta, across Canada. Today, it has more than 165 stores from British Columbia to Ontario, and it’s still growing.

Fountain Tire wanted to modernize their digital experience and create best-in-class websites across B2B and B2C channels.

To achieve their goals, they needed a modern CMS platform that would:

• Let customers make purchases and manage online accounts. Fountain Tire knew growth would come from customer self-service.

• Streamline content creation and management. Before our partnership, updating the site took several weeks and multiple IT approvals.

• Deliver vendor independence. Fountain Tire were planning to adopt a new CRM and marketing automation tool, but they didn’t want those choices to impact e-commerce operations.

• Provide an amazing customer experience. They wanted a website that sales teams and store owners couldn’t wait to show off.

The team was also eager to find a more cost-effective way to manage their websites, one that didn’t require agency support each time they wished to make an update.

We kicked off the project with discovery sessions to understand Fountain Tire’s vision. Clearly, they needed a solution that would give them the business and technical agility to deliver on their goals while powering an unmatched customer experience.

Legacy approaches to commerce development were not going to cut it, and a monolithic approach wasn’t right from an agility, cost or growth perspective.

Adobe’s Edge Delivery Services was ideal.

It uses a composable set of services to decouple front- and back-end sources, creating a headless environment where marketers can rapidly update content, create new pages and launch entire sites. Rolling out experiences across Fountain Tire’s business units would be a breeze.

Edge Delivery Services also produces incredibly fast websites that ace Google’s Core Web Vitals — just the customer experience Fountain Tire sought.

A rapid rollout

Valtech’s Edge Delivery Services experience and expertise let us deliver the first phase of the project, a B2B catalog site, in record time.

Working closely with the Adobe team helped us create a site with:

• Incredible speed and stability. SaaS Catalog and search APIs help the entire website run without a single call to Adobe Commerce.

• Exceptional front-end experiences. Adobe Edge Delivery Services powers all pages, including the home page, product listings, store locator and blog.

• Reusable block components. Edge Delivery Services functionality empowered the team to launch new microsites in weeks, not months.

Continuous strategic consultancy

Valtech continues to be a strategic partner for Fountain Tire throughout their growth journey. We are working closely with the team to maximize the impact of Edge Delivery Services and identify other tools that will help them achieve their goals.

During the project rollout, we held a three-day in-person workshop with the brand and customer experience teams to brainstorm future opportunities, embarked on a CRM platform analysis, and helped Fountain Tire hire new internal resources.

Right from the start, there was an established understanding and trust with Valtech. We did not feel like we were being sold to. It was a partnership, and at Fountain Tire, partnership is at the heart of our business.

— Stephanie Proseilo, Director of Brand and Customer Experience at Fountain Tire

In just three months, this collaboration delivered significant improvements in SEO, performance, scalability and customer experiences for the catalog website while streamlining operations and optimizing channels.

Fountain Tire now has a digital experience that delivers everything they were looking for:

• Super simple workflows. Thanks to the headless architecture, the Fountain Tire team can manage everything through Word and SharePoint — programs the team knows well.

• Streamlined content management. It’s never been faster or easier for the team to create new content or websites.

• Speed and stability. Knowing their platform is stable eliminates the need for internal change management committees when making small site changes.

• Cost control. Improved developer and content workflows cut time to value and let the team push out campaigns quickly.

There’s much more to do before we drive off into the sunset. Valtech and Fountain Tire are now working to implement transactional capabilities and roll out the same headless solution to the B2C site.