12:26 pm, September 18, 2025
Frustration at how dealers move on part-exchanges is how one of the most respected trade-to-trade sites started, its co-founder has said.
Speaking on the Car Dealer Podcast, director of Really Easy Car Credit Steven Douglas explained his background in the motor trade, and how he came to partner with Redgate Lodge’s Scott Sibley to create Dealerway.
He told Podcasts host James Baggott and Jon Reay how he began in the trade over a decade ago, running every part of his small dealership himself.
What transformed his fortunes was a chance meeting with a finance rep offering loans for customers with poor credit.
‘I must admit, I’ve always been a little bit techie and a bit geeky,’ he told the pair. ‘I started learning Facebook ads well before anyone in the motor trade that I knew was doing that. We skyrocketed.’
That mix of finance-led deals and digital advertising grew his business from 20 cars a month to nearly 100.
But sourcing stock remained a constant struggle.
Buying cars through platforms like Motorway and Carwow often led to misdescribed vehicles, wasted journeys, and squeezed margins.
‘We’d send drivers 200 or 300 miles, only to find the car was nothing like described,’ Douglas recalled. ‘It’s a big cost to the business when that happens.’
Out of this frustration, Dealerway was born.
Douglas’s friend Scott Sibley had already created a Facebook group to move part-exchanges called ‘Part-Ex Gold’.
‘He started selling them very quickly, because he was describing them within an inch of their life,’ Douglas said.
Spotting the potential, the pair teamed up to build something bigger.
‘We thought there was never really a trustworthy platform that’s allowed dealers to talk to each other and buy and sell cars amongst one another — not one that’s been done properly anyway.’
Dealerway has since grown from that Facebook group to a platform with nearly 3,000 dealers. Its key differentiator is transparency.
‘A big part of it is the trust, the transparency in the review system,’ Douglas explained.
‘If you’re looking at two identical cars, but one dealer has 98 five-star reviews and the other has none, you know who you’re going to trust.’
For Douglas, Dealerway is about more than trading cars.
‘I built it for me, really — for what I would want as a dealer,’ he said. ‘Luckily, it seems to be paying off.’
You can watch the episode in full at the top of this story on YouTube or listen to it on Spotify via the embedded link above. The episode is available on all podcast platforms now.
