Carzam – the online used car dealer – is gearing up for launch within days.
Posting on his LinkedIn page boss Peter Waddell – the CEO of Big Motoring World – said that December 3 was the anticipated date for the site’s launch.
The much-anticipated used car sales website has been months in the planning. A previously planned launch in late October was postponed due to the national lockdown.
Carzam will sell used cars purely online and deliver them to customers’ homes across the country.
It will launch with more than 2,000 cars on the website, prepared at the group’s dedicated preparation centre in Peterborough. Car Dealer visited that site earlier this year in a video you can watch above.
With the country set to re-enter a tiered approach to lockdown measures on December 2, Waddell is hopeful the site will launch next week.
Waddell said: ‘We are ready. The cars are prepared and being loaded onto the website as we speak. We’re just days away from launch.
‘We are waiting for a final few things to fall into place but I have every confidence the site will be up and running in the early part of December. We’re aiming for next week.’
Waddell has joined forces with John Bailey, former President of Cox Automotive International.
The firm has also hired a number of automotive industry heavyweights including former CarShop director Kirk O’Callaghan as its CEO.
Waddell added: ‘We’re simply crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s on the final aspects of the plan.
‘We’ve got a fantastic website that will sell good quality cars at competitive prices. The senior management team has fantastic experience at all levels of the motor trade – from wholesale to used car retailing.
‘We have some brilliant technology behind the new website and are looking forward to pulling the virtual covers off it as soon as we can in early December subject to no major changes to the UK lockdown or tier rules.’
Investor John Bailey and Waddell have pumped millions into the new website’s launch.
Bailey said: ‘We are car people with extensive automotive industry experience. We have combined that expertise, with my wholesale background for sourcing cars, to Peter and Kirk’s expertise retailing used cars at volume, to create a used car sales website that will accelerate change in this industry.
‘We have bought and sold cars as a team for a long time and can see the future is in digital car retailing. That’s why we are launching this site now and we have huge plans for the future.’
Bailey added that the firm would not be investing ‘in promoting a brand’ in its early stages but instead would be ‘concentrating on buying and selling good quality used cars’.
Waddell said that the preparation levels of the cars for sale on the Carzam website will be incredibly high.
He added: ‘I am confident customers will be delighted the cars they buy from us look and feel like new. A used car is a new car to the buyer and with our quality preparation standards it will feel that way.’
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