UCN
Used Car News
7/5/2021
Dealer Groups Adjust to Pandemic Changes By Jeffrey Bellant
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Improvements in digital tools and merchandising online were vital to national dealer groups in battling through the pandemic market, according to a recent panel at the Conference of Automotive Remarketing. “Some buyers had to learn a completely new way of buying or selling their cars,” said Susie Heins of Cox Automotive, who moderated the discussion. Peter Hermes, who heads up inventory and retail strategy and analytics for DriveTime, said the people in place mattered most in adjusting to a more digital-centered approach. “A key was having a flexible team, first and foremost,” he said. DriveTime had to move into a more flexible buying environment so that people could buy remotely when they normally would buy inlane. Chad Leavitt, chief accounting officer, Findlay Automotive Group based in Las Vegas, said that on March 18, 2020, the Nevada governor shut down Nevada dealerships completely. “We were out of business, basically,” he said. “Luckily, about 15 months, prior, we had invested in some digital retailing to do a complete online environment. “We just rallied the troops immediately.” The message
was, “this is how we do business and it’s what we always wanted to do.” Challenges came in the form of “how do we appraise a car, when is the bottom going to fall, how do we make the right decisions.” Carvana, however, may have been the dealership most prepared for the digital environment. Jeff Miller, who leads strategic partnerships for Carvana,
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said the company had already taken a digital-first strategy across retail and wholesale. But it didn’t mean there weren’t challenges. Thousands of workers had to be sent home and the company had to maintain culture over Zoom, he said. “We have a lot of young folks at the company who really enjoy being with each other,” he said. Data and analytics have been crucial on the remarketing side, Hermes said. It’s about understanding customers, how they search, how they view and their creditworthiness. Looking at the data aspects of a vehicle in terms of history and values is part of it. Carvana’s regular practice is hiring data analysts, data engineers and predictive modelers, so the company was ahead of the process. “Having a national scale is beneficial to us because we can move cars around and we may be able to find cars cheaper in one area and, because we own our own logistics, we can then move them around,” Miller said. Leavitt said Findlay has always been a new-car dealer first, but it’s made efforts to understand the used-car market better. As a result, they’ve bought into the whole idea of “velocity,” improving the turn of inventory and boosting gross profit. Miller said having pricing systems in place and monitoring it every day is critical. Imaging is also important. Miller said it was beneficial to have 360-degree photos on its website early on, but it continues to invest in this area. “We, honestly, stalked Carvana’s website and started to figure out how to make our pictures much more like (theirs),” he said.
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6/28/21 1:02 PM