BCA’s direct to consumer sales site Cinch has launched with more used cars on sale than Cazoo as it opens its virtual doors today.
Cinch is offering customers used cars up to seven years old and can deliver them to their homes at no extra cost.
It also offers a 14-day money back guarantee on the vehicles it prepares in house.
The website is now live and offers 4,149 cars for sale with a slick, well presented user interface that’s easy to search and use.
Cazoo currently has 3,098 cars for sale.
Cinch’s stock levels would have placed it at number 13 in the most stocked used car dealer list for September, one ahead of Big Motoring World.
Avril Palmer-Baunack, executive chairman for BCA and Cinch, told The Sunday Times: ‘The digitisation for auto has really accelerated in the past six months.
‘The market has to modernise.’
The paper also reported that Cinch is hunting for a chief executive for the new proposition.
Cinch staff are on hand from 8am-8pm seven days a week on the website and customers can text or WhatsApp staff to chat about the cars.
Cinch can either deliver vehicles to customer homes or deliver them via an approved car dealer. All stock is under seven years old and 70,000 miles.
Part exchanges are also facilitated and cars are promised to be delivered in a Covid secure way.
As well as the direct to consumer sales that Cinch will offer, the company is also offering dealers access to the cars it has prepared for sale.
Dealers can partner with BCA and offer the same cars for sale on its websites that Cinch is selling as a ‘virtual showroom extension’.
There are already cars for sale from dealers on the Cinch website as part of the partnership.
BCA says this will allow dealers to meet the needs of their customers without the ‘overheads associated with holding, preparing and presenting stock’.
Stuart Pearson, BCA’s COO, said: ‘This new and innovative Retail Ready service from BCA will provide our trade customers with increased selling opportunities and allow them to drive improved efficiencies within their businesses.
‘The new BCA Retail Ready channel will act as a virtual extension to the customer’s showroom, with a huge portfolio of the best quality, retail prepared vehicles available for instant wholesale purchase.’
BCA also owns We Buy Any Car and was previously a member of the FTSE 250 before private equity firm TDR Capital bought the company private for £1.9bn.
In a statement sent to Car Dealer, BCA said: ‘The new digital platform has been designed in response to feedback and service needs from both Cinch’s consumers and BCA’s dealer customers.
‘The cinch platform helps its dealer partners increase their offering to consumers without additional investments in infrastructure, stockholding and marketing.’
Jason Cranswick, retail director for Cinch, said in the statement: ‘We have worked in partnership with our dealer customers to develop a direct-to-consumer (D2C) eCommerce platform that meets both consumers and their dealers’ needs and will deliver flexibility and increased profit opportunities in an increasingly digitised post-Covid19 market.’
Cazoo launched late last year and has so far claimed to have sold £100m worth of used cars.
It changed its online only sales model this year when it bought Imperial Car Supermarkets and set about changing the dealers in ‘customer hand over centres’.
The direct to consumer homes market is likely to become very competitive soon as Big Motoring World’s Peter Waddell’s Carzam proposition gears up for launch too.
Story originally published 07:09 on October 19; updated at 13.41
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