11:30 am, September 17, 2024
After nine months of operating my (tiny) used car sales business I’ve decided to take the plunge and set up my own site.
To keep overheads low, up until now I’ve been working from home, but as the business has grown and the number of used cars I have in stock has risen, so too have the challenges.
I’ve been trying to keep around five to seven cars in stock but with room at home for, at best, three, this has meant borrowing some space from my local workshop.
They’ve got a huge compound and are working on my cars anyway, so the team there have been very understanding, but it’s more the logistical challenges it has presented.
I spend much of my days walking between car storage locations as invariably the car a customer wants to see is never in the right place.
The decision to move into a unit comes at the same time as finding some help. A good friend of mine, Joe Wallington-Lardi, has offered to join the business to help spread the load.
That meant a location for us to work from was even more important. I couldn’t really expect him to deal with test drives and viewings at my house and it was getting a bit much juggling things – including two kids under two – from home.
We decided to investigate options at shared office spaces nearby. The thought process was simple: We only really need a small office and somewhere to store all the cars in one place and these shared offices often have a surplus of parking.
And that was certainly the case when we came across Basepoint in Gosport. I wasn’t aware that on top of the normal offices, the site even had some small workshop style units that would make ideal small showrooms. We looked at two and settled on the slightly larger one we saw.
The unit is large enough to fit three cars in – possibly four at a push – and will reduce the amount of car cleaning we have to do at present.
The real kicker, though, was the fact the landlords said we could utilise as much of the car park as we wanted. It’s got plenty of space and they were happy for us to have ‘unlimited’ spaces.
The unit is small enough not to qualify for business rates and includes heating, internet and access to a variety of shared services. The only thing we pay extra for is the electric.
We move into the new unit on October 1 and I’m looking forward to taking the next step in the business. If you’ve watched any of my video diaries, or listened to our podcast, you’ll know I’ve found the journey quite stressful.
I have a huge amount of respect for those operating in the motor trade and now even more admiration for those people who have grown their businesses in the used car trade.
It’s tough, really tough, and especially so when you’re battling it on your own – that really can be incredibly stressful.
In the video at the top of this story you can see what the unit looks like and meet my new business partner.
While I’m merely scratching the surface of the used car trade with the Clever Car Collection, I have learned a huge amount about what it’s like operating in your world.
Am I enjoying it? Well, define ‘enjoy’. There are certainly some highs, but my word there are some lows too. What I am enjoying is working alongside a good friend and it has already helped ease some of the stresses and strains of operating a small used car business.
You might be wondering where AI has helped out in all this? Well, while I’ve been trying to utilise AI as much as possible throughout this journey, but I have quickly found it can’t do half the things I want it to.
I’ve used it to help deal with problem customer enquiries, it’s helped tell me what faults are common on certain cars and what to check over, and it’s even helped me prioritise which cars to sell first – but it’s nowhere near as useful as I thought it would be when I started.
Until AI is clever enough to log in to the multitude of different systems you need to have access to as a dealer and then help create all the documents needed for a handover, then I think I’ll be doing a lot of that manually for some time.
I’ve had some very interesting conversations lately, though, with a few companies at the forefront of implementing AI applications for dealers and I’m looking forward to trying out some over the coming months.
You can watch all of the AI Car Dealership Project series in this dedicated playlist on YouTube and hear me talk about it most weeks on the Car Dealer Podcast.
