CHRYSLER • JEEP • DODGE • RAM
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RIVERSHORE Bonnie and Gerry Pigeon admire the interior of the Hellcat. ALLEN DOUGLAS/ KTW
R I V E R S H O R E
Grand opening Rivershore Ram Chrysler Dodge Jeep welcomed Kamloops to its new 27,000-squarefoot facility June 19. The $6-million project was over three years in the making. Turning Chrysler’s revolution into local success Meet the owners Introducing the Express Lane Behind the bulldozing
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Left: Mark Poulson of DW Builders (left) with Dan Laporte. Above: Rivershore sales rep Ernie Ware (left) with Chrysler Canada’s regional dealers’ operations manager David Mason and district sales manager Brian Walsh. ALLEN DOUGLAS/KTW
Bob Devlin of Chrysler Canada with Rivershore owner Denis Lowe and facility architect Richard Hunter. ALLEN DOUGLAS/ KTW
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RIVERSHORE
Changing the philosophy Why Rivershore reinvented its method of selling cars and overhauled its facility
S
even years ago Rivershore Ram Chrysler Dodge Jeep started to completely reinvent its philosophy on sell-
ing cars. It has since tripled its volume and size. “Now, you’ll hear this from all dealerships, ‘We’re different, we’re different, we’re different.’ Most say that, but they don’t do much that is different,” said managing partner Dan Laporte. Five years ago the dealership killed its commission program for sales staff. Laporte believes a commission sales department encourages short-term success and unnecessary upselling. “They want to do things this month, make as much money as they can this month, finish this month and then start again next month,” he said. “We changed that.” “Denis (owner Lowe) and I take a long-term approach. When we started this seven years
ago, when I got here, we said, ‘This is where we were going,’ and we haven’t reached where we want to be, but we aren’t concerned about month to month. We are looking to year to year.” Chrysler went through a revolution when the 2008 recession hit the industry hard. It filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and Fiat took over in fall of that year. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne made a promise to dealerships at that time to provide them with quality products customers want to buy, Laporte said. “And he has hit a grand-slam home run,” he said. “He continues to flood our showroom with just great product.” At the first meeting in Orlando after Chrysler’s bankruptcy, Laporte said Marchionne also expressed his expectation the dealerships would do everything they could do to look after their customers and run facilities where they want to do business. Rivershore has a strict cus-
tomer relationship management plan, since 65 per cent of its business comes from current customers. Of the other 35 per cent, 10 to 15 per cent is business based on referrals. In addition, the larger the dealership grows, the more it is giving back to the community, Laporte said. The other development from that meeting was a realization the 8,000 square-foot dealership just wasn’t suited to the success of Rivershore. The facility was adequate for small cars and small jeeps, but it made it difficult to sell the halftons now stocked on the lot. “Business started taking off when we came out of the recession and it wasn’t long before we decided we should start looking for some other property,” said Lowe. They spent some time searching for adequate property, but were never able to find what they needed. So, the decision was made to expand the lot
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RIVERSHORE
DAVE EAGLES/KTW
Managing partner Dan Laporte has been with Rivershore since 2008.
slightly by purchasing another acre of land next door. Today, after a year of planning and 14 months of construction, a new 27,000-square-foot state-of-the art dealership houses Rivershore. It went from eight bays to 18, 30 employees to more than 50, one sales manager to three.
Laporte said the facility is much more customer-friendly. “Obviously, hiring Dan as a partner was a great move,” Lowe said. “He brought some new ideas and we put some great systems in place and operate a system that works really well and it’s been really successful.” For his part, Laporte said he’s
just most excited for the future. “We are just at the tip of the iceberg for now with this being complete. “When you put the whole package together — our product, our philosophy on sales, our customer focus — I think the future is just going to be great,” he said.
DAVE EAGLES/KTW The team in the parts centre (above) and Rivershore general sales manager Cody Skene.
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RIVERSHORE
Perfecting the business Rivershore’s owner has been selling cars for over 50 years in Kamloops and England
D
ALLEN DOUGLAS/KTW Rivershore Ram Chrysler Dodge Jeep owner Denis Lowe at the June 19 grand opening.
enis Lowe has always been good at selling cars. The owner of Rivershore Ram Chrysler Dodge Jeep has been in the business since 1963 and has watched the industry thrive, crumble and come back to life. Sitting in his office, he’s getting accustomed to his new furniture, brought in only the day before. His view from the new 27,000-square-foot dealership features just the peak of his house on the South Thompson River. From Ford to Hyundai to Chrysler, Denis knows the business inside and out. “It changes every day,” he said. “It’s just a little bit every day. If you went out of the business for five years and came back, you would see a
huge change, but when you’re here every day you don’t see the huge change.” Denis, his wife Hilary and their two children, Terry and Tracie, emigrated from England in 1975, arriving in Kamloops on Jan. 1. The kids were 10 and 12. The family spent just over a year in the city, where Denis worked for Dearborn Ford. “We just packed up our bags,” Hilary said. “We came from England and he didn’t have any idea about North American cars and was the top salesman in the first year.” In England, Denis started his career in the tire business, fitting tires and working on the bench. Soon enough he took over as the sales representative before moving on to a truck dealership and starting his career in the business of selling vehicles.
Hilary was at home, raising their children. “It was a big decision for us in those days, with a young family, going from a salary job to commission job. But, we did it and become successful at it, became pretty damn good at it,” Denis said. He moved up the ranks and eventually took over managing the dealership, but it wasn’t quite enough. “We were looking for something more to get ahead better and didn’t see a way to do it in England,” he said. “So, we came to Kamloops.” He worked for a year-and-ahalf in Kamloops before going to manage Lake City Ford in the Cariboo for three years. He was looking into a franchise of his own, which Ford Motor Company granted him in Penticton in 1980. The 1980s recession hit and Denis found the Ford dealership struggling without
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RIVERSHORE
Why am I in the car “business? Well, because
once I got into it and found out I was good at it, I stayed doing it. Why wouldn’t you? Why would you do something different?
”
time to establish. He closed it in 1983 and returned to Kamloops. He helped establish Kamloops Ford Lincoln in 1984 and
— DENIS LOWE
bought the Kamloops Hyundai franchise in 1985, which sat where South Thompson Motors is today. It was eventually moved and
Denis Lowe and wife Hilary in his new office at Rivershore Ram Chrysler Dodge Jeep.
later became Saturn of Kamloops, now Volkswagen. In 1987 Chrysler bought Jeep from American Motors and Denis applied for the franchise. He established the Jeep dealership, only a few hundred yards from today’s 27,000-square-foot
Rivershore facility until 1990, when he purchased the current property. The building remained there until it was replaced with a new facility. He progressed well with Jeep and in 1995 Chrysler awarded him the Plymouth franchise, bringing
in Chrysler cars and Dodge trucks. These days, the car business is something of a family affair. Terry owns and operates Volkswagen next door. Terry’s son Mike is 19 and headed back to college to pursue management — hopefully within the car
DAVE EAGLES/KTW
business, Denis said. Tracie’s 19-year-old daughter Ciara works in the express lane. “I love Kamloops,” Denis said. “Kamloops is just a great place. It’s a great place to bring up kids. “We lived in Dallas for 20 years and we didn’t even know where the keys were to
the house.” “It feels safe here,” Hilary said. She is best known for her gardening skills, though she denies it when anyone calls her a master gardener. She owned Roots to Shoots Nursery in Barnhartvale for eight years before selling it about five years ago so she and Denis could go south for the winter. In Penticton, she had a costume business. Today, she’s still in the garden. As for Denis, he’s still working. He’s proud of the operating system he and managing partner Dan Laporte have in place at Rivershore and is happy to have seen the business grow. “Why am I in the car business? Well, because once I got into it and found out I was good at it, I stayed doing it,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you? Why would you do something different?”
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RIVERSHORE Carli Fawcett & Ciara Wallis on the job in the express lane at Rivershore Ram Chrysler Dodge Jeep. DAVE EAGLES/ KTW
New service: Express lane dedicated to oil changes
C
ustomers no longer have to wait two hours if they want to have an oil change done at the dealership. Along with its expansion, Rivershore included a single bay, separate from the service department, dedicated to oil changes. The express oil-change service is one the dealerships have let go to places like Jiffy Lube and Great Canadian Oil Change, but now Rivershore can offer the same speedy service with factory-trained and approved skills. “It’s a great service,” said express lane
manager Lyle Russett. “It’s something that should have been done a long time ago.” “When a customer comes in and has to leave their vehicle for hours and hours just for an oil change — It’s silly. It really is.” There have been different concepts employed by dealerships to replicate the service but Russett — who has been in the industry since 1974 — said it’s never worked. “This is the only way it will actually work,” he said. “This being a dedicated bay just for oil changes and nothing else, it can’t lose, so to speak.” The team boasts a higher level of service to boot, since they have all the resources to
fully inspect and repair the vehicle on site and now the history behind their customers’ vehicles. They run a very hands-on service, Russett said. “There is a lot of frustration and a lot of issues that happens with cars that dealers will pick up doing regular maintenance,” said managing partner Dan Laporte. “We don’t want them just coming here when they have problems. We want them coming here when they just need regular maintenance so we can really look after their vehicle.” The oil-change bay has been open since early April and, although Russet said they
had a slow start — six cars a day — in June they saw up to 14 cars daily. Chrysler estimates the numbers to double every six months, but after seeing the traffic double in the first two months, Russett is satisfied it will only get better. The service is open to any make and model and no appointment is necessary. They advertise 30 minutes or less and are averaging 17 minutes, Laporte said. There’s a closed-circuit TV in the lounge where you can watch your vehicle being serviced. “It’s been an amazing success,” Laporte said. “We are having just a ton of fun with it.”
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RIVERSHORE
DAVE EAGLES/KTW
Behind the bulldozing DW Builders leads the way
W
hen Rivershore’s top dogs decided it was time to expand the dealership into a bigger, better place to buy cars, they said knew they didn’t have to go far. Owner Denis Lowe called DW Builders a loyal customer and, in addition to keeping everything local, didn’t bother shopping around. With over 34 years of experience, DW has led commercial construction projects at Volkswagen, A&W, Target, The Lampost and Arrow Transportation. “We come right out and say it: We are the best renovation team around,” said Doug Wittal, president of DW Bulders. “Commercial priced, it’s still a reno. You still have to pull everything together and that’s what DW Builders is extremely successful at and proud of, being able to pull everyone together and make it function.” In the 14 months of construction, not one business day was lost at Rivershore while the facility grew by 19,200 square feet. Wittal said it took control and
efficiency on the part of the contractor. “It’s a more complicated process than people know,” he said. First in line for construction in September 2013 were the new service bays and parts building. Once that phase was complete the sales staff moved into what is now the express oil change lane and the original building was bulldozed. The sales team moved into the lane in June of last year and into the new building in December. Only a couple slabs of the previous structure remain. During the renovation all new water lines and utilities had to be resourced. The logistics of lifts, oil lines and proper ventilation for gas fumes had to be meticulously planned by a group that included everyone from the ownership group to civil, technical and structural engineers. Allowing the business to operate during the $6-million overhaul took excessive communication, Wittal said, and the year-long planning process was a logistical challenge. But, the result is state of the art. “How does a project like this
work? It works totally with communication,” Wittal said. “We have our own schedules and we can’t just go ahead. We have to deal with them everyday to make sure we are trying not to impact them.” “We’d have a weekly meeting in our boardroom of trying to get all the consultants together,” he said. “Logistically, numerous meetings are required to get all the consultants on board. It’s always evolving.” They had to make sure the building always had power while bringing in new lines, provide portable washrooms for when water lines were down and make sure there was somewhat adequate parking for the dealerships’s fleet. Believe it or not, both Wittal and vice president Mark Poulson agreed the project wasn’t unlike a bathroom renovation project — just on a bigger scale. “You still have to get in be professional, be efficient,” Poulson said. “You still have to run their business and you have to make as little impact as possible.” The facility at 277 East Trans Canada Hwy. has been fully functioning since December.
ALLEN DOUGLAS/KTW David Mason from Chrysler Canada Regional Office, Doug Wittal of DW Builders and Dan Laporte, managing partner of Rivershore Ram Chrysler Dodge Jeep at the June 19 grand opening.
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