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Setting the Pace:
Jiffy Lube President Aims for Company
to Lead Industry into the Future

Rick Altizer has a plan. The president of Jiffy Lube International (JLI), the nation’s largest fast lube chain, said in an exclusive interview with National Oil & Lube News recently that he believes Jiffy Lube and its network of more than 2000 franchised facilities should lead the industry into the future.

“Jiffy Lube set the pace for the last 30 years, and we want the company to set the pace for the next 30 years,” he said.

With that in mind, Altizer has a plan, one that mirrors developments in the auto manufacturing industry in recent decades.

“Increased regulation combined with more competition on the OE side gradually led to improvements in technology and innovation by the OEMs,” Altizer said. “This in turn led to better OE quality, but also added more complexity in the aftermarket — and there is a lot of complexity in the industry right now.”

And it was that noticeable increase in OE quality that created such intensely competitive conditions in the aftermarket — especially the maintenance segment — which are as fierce as many industry observers can ever remember. However, just as competition in the OE segment led to better products through technology and innovation, Altizer said he believes the same thing will happen in the aftermarket: Namely that increased competition in the aftermarket will invariably lead to better technology and innovation that will improve quality throughout the aftermarket. This, in a nutshell, is his vision for Jiffy Lube, to provide better quality through improved technology and innovation.

“We have to leverage technology and innovation to compete for market share,” said Altizer, who spent four years at Midas and 14 at McDonald’s before arriving at JLI. “Ultimately, this will provide better quality service and products to aftermarket customers.”

Beyond that goal, Altizer sees trends that favor Jiffy Lube and the entire industry. True, there might be more competition than ever in an increasingly complex business, but there are also reasons for optimism.

“I still see upside in the industry because there are more customers and more vehicles entering the car park every year,” he said.

A New Look
In preparation for those pacesetting efforts in years to come, Jiffy Lube has recently undertaken a series of initiatives — some planned, others not — to re-establish the brand’s identity in the eyes of consumers.

The first project, which has been underway for several years now, involves re-branding all existing Jiffy Lubes with a new, more uniform design. Because Jiffy Lube grew rapidly in a number of “waves” beginning in the 1980s, the corporate identity was not as consistent as officials would have liked. So in 2007 Jiffy Lube created new, more modern logo, color scheme and signage that will, by the end of the year, adorn every one of the system’s facilities in the most comprehensive re-branding the Jiffy Lube system has seen in its three decades of existence.

But Jiffy Lube’s new “look” goes beyond mere logos. Since Altizer came aboard in August 2007, the company has also divested all of its company-owned stores (which numbered nearly 250 at the time.

“We sold our company-owned stores to some new franchisees but mainly to other existing successful Jiffy Lube franchisee entities,” Altizer said. “It’s been a fantastic change for us. I can’t think of a single downside so far.”

So why the change? Simple. Altizer said Jiffy Lube International’s single, core goal is “the profitable growth of the Jiffy Lube franchise system. Period.”

“Before, we would have one market manager working with five franchisees as well as a group of local 30 company-owned centers. It’s only natural that the market manager would often pay a little more attention to the company-owned centers,” Altizer said. “We were too focused on company operations, and it was clear that our franchisees could take better care of customers than (Jiffy Lube International) could. Now, we’re maniacally supportive of our franchisees. We have 144 people here who are all solely focused on our franchisees’ growth and profitability.”

Not only did JLI divest all its company-owned facilities, the company also exited all overseas markets to focus exclusively on its North American franchise model.

Such a drastic shakeup was not always easy, and the work is not over, either, as Altizer said efforts are still ongoing to improve the service JLI provides to its franchisee network.

“We’re going to give them the best tools in the franchise automotive space,” he said.