6:30 am, October 7, 2024
What started as an experiment with AI has now got very real as last week we opened the doors to our very own used car dealership.
If you’re been following my YouTube series you’ll have seen I’ve been operating the Clever Car Collection – my AI-assisted used car dealership – from home up until now.
This week, though, we took the big step of moving into a site. I’ve grandly referred to it as my used car dealership, but that could be stretching the imagination just a little…
However, it still felt pretty special taking the keys to the unit, nonetheless.
Since launching the project at the start of the year, I’ve managed to sell 45 cars from home. While it was nice not having to commute anywhere for work, the logistical nightmare of storing the cars I had in stock meant I spent most of my days walking from one storage location to the next. Cars were never in the right place when I wanted them and always needed cleaning.
A few weeks back I also took the step of inviting a good friend of mine, Joe Wallington, to join me in the business. He gladly accepted which meant we needed to take things to the next level and find a location.
I’d been keeping an eye out for sites that might work, but as things were sort of working ok at home I hadn’t really pushed it.
Within a week of Joe joining, though, we’d found somewhere. We’ve taken on a workshop-style unit at a local business centre. It prides itself on easy in and out contracts, includes everything apart from electric in the price and has been pretty understanding about the cars we’ll have in the car park.
This week we’ve been busy setting up the unit – something that AI couldn’t really help with. Luckily I’d kept most of my office equipment from when Car Dealer had an office that Covid eventually killed off.
We transported all that to the Clever Car Collection HQ and within a few hours it started to look presentable.
In this week’s video diary (top), you can see we managed to get it set up pretty swiftly – especially as we had a deadline as a customer wanted to come and see a car we had in stock that evening at 6.30pm.
We worked rapidly to get pictures on the wall – including the Car Dealer logo created by artist Popbangcolour using remote control cars – and managed it with barely enough time to clean the Astra.
Needless to say we got a call 15 minutes after the customer was due to arrive to say he wouldn’t be turning up… oh well, at least we still had the dealership set up.
It’s been a joy having everything together in one place and so much more efficient. We’ve managed to get cars prepped, photographed and videoed for our adverts far quicker than we ever managed before.
It’s also been nice being able to store some of the cleaned cars inside so they’re ready for viewings. I was wasting so much time re-cleaning cars ahead of customer viewings.
All in, it’s been a crazy week. We’ve sold three cars (and taken a reservation on a fourth) and bought four. All while managing the move.
For those people wondering where AI has helped in all this, well, unfortunately it’s still nowhere near as handy as I thought it would be when I started this new business.
In fact I tried ot use it to help me design a sign for the new dealership in this episode and it wasn’t exactly very good.
AI helps here and there but I am yet to find the major breakthrough with it that saves me much needed time. The search continues…
We chatted about the move and AI on this week’s Car Dealer Podcast in detail too. James Leese from Impel was our guest and it was fascinating to hear how ‘real’ dealers are using it to great effect.
Find it on all good Podcast platforms now or listen to it on Spotify above.
You can also follow the video series on YouTube on this dedicated playlist. Episodes are published weekly on Friday evenings at 8pm.
