12:40 pm, August 19, 2013
VEHICLE design house A Kahn Design is planning to open four new showrooms, Car Dealer Magazine can exclusively reveal.
Bosses at the company, which creates bespoke vehicles, want the new showrooms, in London and Leeds, to ‘showcase what they do’ rather than sell cars.
Speaking to Car Dealer, the firm’s head of operations, Ally Kahani, said that while its new dealerships will be able to sell its bespoke cars, the main purpose of them will be to showcase the firm’s talents and the services available.
‘We want to display our products and exactly what we do to more people,’ Kahani told us. ‘We usually attend the major motor shows such as Frankfurt and Geneva, but then there’s London – where better to have our displays than where people go to play?
‘We design and build vehicles unique to a customer’s individuality. People have a love affair with their cars and it’s no longer a case of buying a car that just gets them from A to B – that’s what we stand for.
‘We haven’t just invested in these new dealerships to sell more cars, we have done this to open up our product range to more and more people.’
The group’s new ‘Boutique’, situated in Kings Road, Chelsea, London, will become a central component of the company’s global marketing operation, with a £25m investment in three new London sites in Chelsea Harbour and another dealership in Leeds.
The new outlets are set to open within the next 18 months, taking the staff headcount in the capital to more than 150.
The company’s turnover will increase from approximately £30m to £90m.
Group CEO Afzal Kahn (pictured right) said the new dealerships will help their large customer base in London to view Kahn Design products without having to drive north to the firm’s headquarters in Bradford.
Kahn said: ‘We already have a vast customer base in London, so it’s a project with outstanding potential. I am excited for our customers because they will be able to see on their doorstep, and at close quarters, our complete range of products without making the journey north.’
Exporting a substantial 70 per cent of all their vehicles, last year, customers from more than 40 countries purchased bespoke products from A Kahn Design – all of which were designed in the UK.
Kahani added: ‘Our business is responsible for approximately 400 people in the industry, and in the middle of the biggest recession since the 1930s, we are expanding and creating more jobs.
‘The opening of these new dealerships will create the minimum of 200 new jobs. The 80 people we already employ directly and the further 50 indirectly, will expand in the coming weeks due to an increase in demand.’
