Why did you start MotorView?
We started MotorView for many reasons. First and foremost, we are passionate about the industry. Between the 3 founders, we have both made and lost money in the trade. We’ve seen it from all angles, from taking thousands out of one car to having to close the doors because we couldn’t make a pitch pay. We want to help dealers make more money, pay less fees and take back a bit of control. The corporations are slowly seizing control of the supply of used car stock, they have had the fleet stuff locked up for forever but between We Buy Any Car, MotorWay and the others they now control most of the stuff coming direct from the public.
How can MotorView help?
MotorView can help in a few ways. We have two core products, MotorView Listings and MotorView Trade Network. Both are included with every subscription, with no additional fees of any type. Listings is an aggregator of privately listed vehicles from various sources. However, there’s a key difference. We check each vehicle against current retail prices, so we only list cars that seem to have a profit margin. More and more dealers are trying to buy private, the prices down the auction and elsewhere are just too crazy. So many dealers are searching manually, the beauty of our Listings is that it works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and will send you email alerts for the sort of stock you are after.
Trade Network allows all subscribers to buy and sell trade stock to each other with no transaction fees. We are working hard to get as many cars as possible on there. Dealers can also offer up potential part exchanges and
non-physical cars for underwriting, to get trade bids and not miss out on deals because they don’t want the swapper.
What makes Motorview different?
Our business model is based on one simple idea. If we work every day, with the interests of our dealers at the forefront of our mind our business will continue to grow. As soon as we take it for granted, or get lazy, or get greedy then it won’t. Car dealers are not stupid, they are shrewd and switched-on people. You wouldn’t last long in the job if you weren’t. We want genuine dealers, any dealers that behave unprofessionally are banned from our platform. We operate a two-strike rule: secondstrike and you are gone. In some cases, it may only take one . We don’t want those type of dealers, we are not a site to dispose of problem cars. Plenty of others will
allow you to do that.
Where do you see MotorView going?
We will take it as far as we possibly can. The more dealers in our network, the stronger it becomes. This in turn will attract more dealers and we will go from strength to strength. We have short-term goals and long-term dreams. In the short term, we want to build our network and allow dealers to buy and sell with confidence. Long term we want to implement a MotorWay-type feature, but without the hundreds of pounds fees per car
that dealers are charged. We would always include everything in our subscription. We have loads of other ideas, but we don’t have multi-million pound corporate backing. We need to generate the revenue to reinvest.
What do you think the main problems for dealers are?
It’s a challenging time for sure. I like to separate these problems into industry specific, and broader macro-economic factors. The industry specific we can try to do something about, the macro-economic factors are outside of our control. The current macro-economic factors are having a particularly negative effect. Covid meant the shutdown of car production around the world; there are simply fewer cars around, which pushes up prices and affects stock levels. Even now, the semi conductor and other supply chain issues are reducing available stock levels. Industry specific issues are persistent and growing. The cost of opening the doors keeps getting higher and higher. Advertising costs are ridiculous, fees to buy cars are outrageous and the corporate juggernauts are pounding many dealers into bankruptcy. We want to reduce the reliance on those juggernauts wherever possible. Every deal that can be done outside of them makes a difference.
Who is behind MotorView?
MotorView is the result of the grit, determination and ambition of 3 people. Chris, Mark and Peter. We all have a background in the trade to one degree or another. For Peter, it’s a lifetime of experience. For Chris, he has worked in IT for Volkswagen and other car dealers. We are self-funded, there is no corporate backing here. That makes it difficult, we don’t have the marketing budget and resources of the big hitters. But we don’t have to answer to anyone either, and we can keep our prices low – very low. No shareholders or investors to appease.
Visit MotorView at https://motorview.co.uk
