12:01 pm, June 30, 2021
With demand and prices at record levels, getting hold of used car stock – let alone good quality cars – is one of the biggest headaches currently facing car dealers.
Carwow, with its well-known new car buying platform and 5.7m subscribers-strong YouTube channel, knows this all too well which is why the firm has recently snapped up Wizzle.
Founded in 2012 by Sebastien Duval, Wizzle is a used car platform where consumers can dispose of their cars hassle-free, and dealers get quick access to a solid supply of stock.
Earlier this month, Carwow bought the platform and now ‘Wizzle from Carwow’ is ready to supercharge how dealers buy used car stock.
It gives dealers the opportunity to buy used cars directly from Carwow’s 12.5m users – 79 per cent of which have a used car to sell.
‘We’ve been helping new car buyers buy their next new car for the past six years, but now we want to help with used cars as well,’ Carwow’s chief operating officer, John Veichmanis, told Car Dealer Live.
‘So many of our consumers have a car to sell,’ he said. ‘We want to take the Wizzle technology, all the know how that Seb and his team have built up over the last nine years, and apply that to our our traffic advantage that we have in the UK.
‘That should form a brilliant source of used cars for our partners directly. So we connect dealer and customer together and give both of those parties choice about who they sell and buy cars from.’
Wizzle platform already has 2,000 dealers and sells 1,500 a cars a month through its platform, and it relies on a simple but highly effective process.
A customer answers a set of questions about their car’s general condition and upload six to eight photos. Dealers around the UK can then view the listing before deciding whether to make an offer to buy it.
‘We send customers through our guided appraisal tool, which will ask him all different parts about the car,’ explains Wizzle founder Duval.
‘We can then form a grade and description to the car, and ultimately, all that information, once overlaid with trade valuation data and historical data allows us to put it in front of the dealer to make an informed decision about the price of the vehicle.’
In 95 per cent of deals, the customer accepts the price offered by the dealer at the point of collection.
‘So dealers get all of that information through photography,’ says Duval, ‘and there’s no need to chip on the price.’
In a wide ranging interview, Veichmanis and Duval chat about:
- How online auctions can revitalise the supply chain
- How Wizzle from Carwow compares to other online platforms
- How Wizzle began in 2012
- How do dealers already using Carwow use Wizzle from Carwow
Click the video at the top of the story to watch the full interview
