___________________________________________________________________________________________ Southern Tire Mart
maintaining a strong entrepreneurial spirit across the organization.
“ We’ re not a company that spends a lot of time promoting ourselves. Our focus has always been on serving customers, selling tires and doing the job well. We’ re quiet operators by nature, but we deliver customer service on a very large scale.
“ That same philosophy extends to the communities where we operate. While our locations are actively involved in local initiatives across the country, the Duff family has also made significant contributions to education, particularly in Mississippi, where the company was founded and remains headquartered today. Even as the business has grown into a national organization, the headquarters remains in Columbia, Mississippi, the brothers’ hometown, reflecting their commitment to the community that helped shape the company.”
At the local level, teams are deeply engaged in the communities they serve, whether that’ s sponsoring youth sports teams, participating in local events or supporting charitable initiatives.“ The tire business,” Tom continues,“ is ultimately a people business built on relationships, and we’ ve always tried to stay true to our roots. No matter how large we’ ve become, we’ ve never forgotten that our success comes from our people, our customers and the communities that support us.”
While Southern Tire Mart continues to pursue growth opportunities across North America, its long-term success is rooted less in financial targets and more in commitment to its people and customers.
“ Of course we want to grow,” Tom says,“ and we’ re always looking for opportunities to expand into new markets so we can better support our customers, but the philosophy of the business has always been very simple: if you take care of your people, take care of your customers and do the right thing, good things will happen.” tlimagazine. com 59