The Archetype of Abundance: Is Continental's Tire Strategy a Blessing or a Burden?

The new Continental Archetype tire was released a few days ago ahead of this year’s edition of the Tour de France. I was lucky enough to get hands-on with this tire a few weeks ago, and it feels like a real step forward in tire technology. I have never felt a tire that was so thin and flexible throughout, and I'm sure that it is among the fastest-rolling tires in the peloton. This tire got me thinking about how many road tires Continental offers, and it is a lot, possibly too many. I am going to give a brief overview of Continental’s catalog, what my experience is selling tires in a retail environment, and a possible explanation of why it may be a good thing that Continental offers so many tires.

Only looking at Continental performance road tires, I counted 16 different models. This even excludes tubular and gravel/town/hybrid options. The offerings range from entry models to race-day tires. Furthermore, some are optimized for speed, and some are optimized for durability. Even accounting for all of these different metrics, it seems like 16 models is probably a little excessive; especially considering that most of the models are offered in a number of widths and diameters, only furthering the complications.

From my experience selling tires in a retail environment, there are really only three types of road tires that I recommend. There is the customer who wants a good value tire, a customer who wants the fastest tire, and the customer who wants a tire that lasts a long time and doesn’t give them flats. In the Continental range, I recommend the Ultra Sport to the value-focused customer, the GP 5000 to the performance-focused customer, and the Gatorskin to the customer who wants the tougher tire. I think there is little good in trying to stock more options than that. Going down the path of trying to split the difference between the pros and cons of the Gator Hardshell and the Gatorskin is almost always fruitless. Ultimately, in a brick-and-mortar setting, it can be hard to keep all the tires in stock in all the different sizes, and it is better to have good availability of the main models in all the common sizes. In the end, in my experience, it is much more likely to miss a sale because of not having the right size, rather than not having the exactly right model.

So why does Continental keep so many tires in their catalog? Wouldn't it be better to simplify and just keep a few popular models that account for the majority of the sales? It might be better if Continental were to trim down their models. Nonetheless, here is my best guess as to why they like to keep such a diverse catalog: With online shopping being so common, products have never been cross-shopped as much as they are now, and Continental wants to make sure that they have a competitive product for every specific consumer. Ultimately, cyclists like to do research on products, and no matter what they are looking for, Continental is trying to provide a tire that is just right for them. Continental is likely excited that this is the way that consumers are shopping. This is due to the fact that Continental is one of the largest tire manufacturers, so they are better equipped to provide lots of models than more niche manufacturers. So, if they think cyclists want lots of different models, they are saying, “Oh, we can give you models!”

It is possible that I am overthinking the whole situation, and maybe Continental has so many different products just simply because they like to engineer and design tires; this might actually be likely because they are German after all.