9:00 am, November 19, 2024
Jaguar has confirmed its dealer network in the UK will shrink to around just 20 outlets as it switches focus from high volume luxury car maker to an EV-only specialist.
Speaking at the launch of the Jaguar ‘reimagining’ – where executives unveiled an upper and lower case logo and new brand identities – boss Rawdon Glover acknowledged its dealer network would shrink drastically.
‘We will have a significantly reduced footprint in the UK,’ he said.
Asked if it will be closer to the rumoured 20 Jaguar showrooms reported to be left remaining, Glover added: ‘It will not be far off that number which is a lot [fewer] than when I was running the national sales company.
‘We have chosen to have these points on the basis of geographically, those were the most – if we looked at the customer base that we were going after – where the most wealth was.
‘If you look at that from a demographic point of view, it takes you to a fairly logical sort of map in terms of the number of locations that you need.’
Glover said there will be a ‘next generation of Arch’ for its remaining car dealers which will see them transformed to cope with the ‘House of Brands’ from JLR which now includes Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar.
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Glover said this would be a ‘relatively modest’ investment for its partners and would be more about how the brands are ‘portrayed inside’.
He said the smaller network will be made up of partners that ‘are in the right location’ and ‘culturally aligned’ to the car maker.
‘We think they’re going to be excited about the Jaguar prospects, and we think they’re going to be able to give an elevated level of service,’ he said.
‘So that’s why we’ve chosen the partners. We could have said, right, we’ll just use one partner. But actually, you know, our biggest partner is Sytner, for example, and Sytner don’t have national coverage.
‘The most important thing is we need to have national coverage so that basically led us to choose a selection from our existing retailer network.’
Jaguar will also run a brand store in London, which will be similar in look and feel to high luxury boutique fashion stores.
Glover added: ‘We will have a brand store in London, which will effectively occupy the centre of London, and then we will have a store in the north and the south of London.’
