Because of the nature of our site and the fact that keeping the identities of those involved secret is of paramount importance, I am prohibited from revealing the actual business involved in this piece. Suffice to say that over the course of many years this has been a bullet proof car business, which has been used to profitably selling massive volumes of used cars for many years. That is until the last few tough months.
Back in the not too distant past this was an operation that would typically sell 80 used cars a month for a large profit per unit, however because of the inability of its managers and directors to change with the unprecedented times this giant is reduced to having its run rate drop to below one sale per day.
In conversation with my former colleague I wondered how this once mighty business had fallen so spectacularly. His simple reply was;
‘We can’t buy anymore cars because we can’t sell what we have in stock!’
The message has to be keep turning the stock, take care of your customers, don’t sit with ageing cars on your stock list and take advantage of newer cheaper stock which will inevitably arrive.
In short don’t sit still and try to keep active in the market place, as today’s small loss could turn out to be next week’s big catastrophe and until the market bottoms out the wheels quite literally have to keep turning.
If a once very profitable dealer such as this will not wake up and smell the coffee them I fear there may be many more casualties on the horizon!
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