Improving market effectiveness and increasing volume for a US fuel marketer

Mark Oil Company Inc has been in business for 116 years, they are a BP branded fuel marketer based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Operating since 1908, they’ve adapted their business over the years to keep in line with market changes. Today, they see themselves as real estate developers as well as a fuel marketer — as they continue to develop new-to-industry sites to add to their growing gas, convenience, and electric vehicle charger network.

President of Mark Oil Company, Bill Tome, has worked with Kalibrate for 25 years and relies on Kalibrate’s insight to help him successfully compete against its major competitors.

The challenge

Before working with Kalibrate, Mark Oil Company had five sites of their own, and conducted most of their business through petroleum marketing.

Initially we were a jobber supplying fuel to stores in the Greater Charlotte market. We could see that Charlotte was growing and had real potential, so we took the opportunity to expand our real estate footprint.

Kalibrate was brought in to help Bill and his team to analyze the potential of different sites locally and make quick decisions.

It was important for us to get to that real estate first – and to properly understand its potential.

Kalibrate’s network planning tool helped Bill to understand the market and where there was untapped potential to successfully grow his network. Bill is still moving forward with growth plans, but it’s not always about new site growth; he also uses data and analytics to assess current performance and optimize his existing sites.

 When you’re trying to grow in a highly competitive market, it is critical to have data that supports all the decisions you’re making. Kalibrate helps me look into the reasons why a site isn’t performing as expected so we can overcome it. Kalibrate has turned out to be very successful for us.

Today, Mark Oil Company owns 19 sites and the company is relatively small in comparison to their competition.

Our major competitors in Charlotte are Circle K, 7-11 and QuikTrip, three outstanding companies that we know well and respect. By using Kalibrate I’ve been able to identify specific places to serve a market. I can identify how well my competitors are performing, and implement tactics that increase my volumes to make sure we achieve the same — if not more — so I can maintain a competitive presence.

The results

Mark Oil company has grown from five owned sites to 19 in the years they’ve worked with Kalibrate. But growth in site count isn’t their main goal.

I focus on market effectiveness. It’s the number that shows how we’re performing in relation to our competitors. I know that I need to achieve a volume throughput of 2.5m gallons for each of my sites to remain competitive — and we’ve made the decision to close some sites that didn’t maintain these volumes to protect our resources and increase the effectiveness of the overall network.

 

Right now, we’re second in Charlotte for market effectiveness. And we’re using the insight we get from Kalibrate to help increase volumes and continue to improve our market effectiveness score. I’m not sure where we would be right now if we didn’t work with Kalibrate.

The future

Looking to the future, Bill has plans to increase volume and add new sites to his portfolio.

One of the challenges in the industry going forward is the capital required for investments in a changing industry. Making mistakes is an expensive business so managing risk is critical. Kalibrate gives me insight to plan for the future. As I’ve said for many years, if we don’t know where we are, how do we know where we need to be.

Mark Oil Company Inc have been able to stay in business because of their focus on change and their ability to adapt.

The company has morphed five times and we will continue to change. An example of this is our decision to embrace EV charging units which are installed in 14 of the 19 sites we own. We will continue to change and grow with Kalibrate there to help us move forward.