USED CAR NEWS
Used Car News 11/20/2023
BHPH Dealer Sells Business After 33 Years
IN THIS ISSUE: • Tax Season • Fighting Fraud • Black Book Numbers By Jeffrey Bellant
Rush - Dated Material
Texas buy-here, pay-here dealer Keith Hagler has spent a lifetime closing deals through his dealership Taylor Auto Credit. A year ago, he closed one of the biggest deals of his career – selling his business to national buy-here, pay-here chain America’s Car-Mart. For Hagler, it was the right time and right partner for Taylor Auto Credit, the business he started in 1990 in Taylor, Texas. Hagler said he’d been contemplating an exit from the car business when he met Jeff Williams, who was then CEO of America’s CarMart. He has since stepped into the role of CEO emeritus. In 2022, Hagler was attending the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association’s annual convention in Las Vegas. Hagler served for years in NIADA, including a stint as president of the association in 2013-2014.
At the 2022 event, Hagler met with Illinois dealer Steve Taylor and Williams. “I knew Steve from my 20 group and when I met with them, I saw Steve was wearing a Car-Mart shirt and asked him, ‘what’s that?’ “He said, ‘That’s who acquired my business.’” Hagler, 67, had been contemplating selling his dealership but was looking for the right company. He and his wife, Marcia, have two daughters, but neither was interested in taking over the family business. Hagler joked that his daughters spent years in the back seat of his car listening as he and Marcia fretted over the latest challenge in their business. Exit plans always seem to be a blind spot for dealers. Hagler told the story of a conference years ago put on by the Texas IADA. “We met to have a session about exit strategies and it lasted about
five minutes because nobody had one,” Hagler said. So, a year ago, Hagler and his wife had been looking at where they were in life and the state of the BHPH market and its challenges. “The cost of money was increasing and the cost of inventory was increasing and there’s a lack of availability of parts – everything was changing so drastically,” he said. “We were both deciding that it was time to move on and do something different besides the car business that we’ve loved so well and that we’ve been in forever.” After running into Williams at NIADA, the Car-Mart exec offered to come down and visit Hagler at his Texas store. “He came out, sat down with us and saw our operation, met Marcia and the family,” Hagler said, “I guess he liked what he saw with the business. We started having conversations from there.” Prior to America’s Car-Mart, Ha-
gler met with another buyer, but he didn’t feel good about it. He had a better feeling when meeting with Williams, the way he talked about the business and his vision. “I’ve learned since the acquisition that the ‘Car-Mart Way’ is so much like the way we operated our business,” Hagler said. “From the way the acquisition went, the way they’ve treated my employees – everything they’ve done, I couldn’t have asked for anything better.” Hagler said he wanted to feel good about this life-changing decision. “I’m being honest when I say I can’t think of a negative thing,” he said. “They’ve done everything they said they were going to do.” It was important for him that his employees – several of them had been with Hagler for 25 years – were treated right. His employees “felt like the sky was falling” when they heard Hagler’s plans. But no Continued on page 6
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