6:02 pm, November 1, 2012
ELECTRONIC remarketing channel Dealer Auction has been bought by Manheim.
The trade-to-trade network – which won ‘Specialist Online Advertising Site’ at our Car Dealer Power Awards earlier this year – caters mostly in vehicles arising from franchised dealers.
Uniquely, it lets buyers and sellers ‘deal directly with each other’ rather than communicating through a middle man, and operates exclusively online.
Buying Dealer Auction for ‘an undisclosed multi-million-pound sum’, Manheim’s move comes just six months after their acquisition of Motors.co.uk from the Daily Mail.
Dealer Auction’s founders – Clive Colyer and Gavin Smith – will stay on to lead the business under its new ownership, remaining as joint managing directors, while Manheim’s chief executive John Bailey will take up the position of chairman of the board.
‘The industry is in a period of sustained change and our remarketing business is simply moving with the times,’ said Bailey, commenting on the take-over. ‘Inter-dealer wholesaling is an age-old practice and still thrives completely outside the traditional remarketing arena.
‘[Dealer Auction] sits very naturally alongside our main remarketing business which continues to remain as strong as ever, but we now provide our dealer buyers and sellers with even greater choice’.
Dealer Auction’s Clive Colyer was similarly pleased at the move. ‘Since we founded the business three years ago it has grown dramatically,’ he said.
‘However, we needed major scale and investment to fully exploit our true potential and, to now be part of Manheim, gives us just that’.
