Time to get my hands dirty

There is an expression in English to get your hands dirty – which means to get engaged in something personally rather than just to watch others from the sidelines.  When you’re in advisory roles, there is always some degree of frustration that you’re not hands on, able to execute rather than advise.  Clearly there are risks associated with that – as an adviser, if things don’t work out you can claim that there was nothing wrong with the advice, it was a failure in execution.  If you’re directly responsible for the execution, there’s nowhere to hide.

My blogs are always inspired by something that I have seen or experienced in the previous days, and this one is no different, though perhaps on a rather bigger scale personally than the repositioning of Jaguar or the changes in the European Top 50 dealer ranking that I’ve commented on recently.  As we communicated to ICDP members earlier this week, I have taken on an additional role as the Managing Director of a new dealership in the UK – Auto West London.  That might sound like not such a big deal, but this is not the typical new dealership.

I’m honoured to have been invited by Çetaş Otomotiv, the largest Turkish dealer group, to head up their entry into the UK market.  The ambition in the mid-term is to grow from a single dealership to a small group with an initial focus on south-east England.  We have the advantage of a supportive investor who has a realistic understanding of the challenges and an OEM partner in Omoda Jaecoo that is highly motivated for us to succeed.

The challenges include the location of our first site – Chiswick, West London, normally a ‘no go’ area for private dealer investors due to the high operating costs in large metro areas.  The site is sales only, requiring a separate aftersales facility.  As a new dealer brand with a new OEM, we have no established customer base or parc to leverage which will put a heavy emphasis on digital marketing to create awareness.

Challenges also bring opportunities however.  With no legacy, we can build an ‘A’ team of people with the skills and attitudes that we need to support omni-channel retailing.  The IT infrastructure will be developed to support a digitally driven dealer rather than a physical dealership with a digital infrastructure.  We can look at facilities at a granular level – what is the right scale and location of each facility to meet a specific set of needs rather than having a ‘cookie-cutter’ approach of traditional dealer facilities, each offering sales and service.  This is not a case of being different for the sake of being different.  The evidence is that traditional dealerships are not sustainable in metro areas, that the role of dealerships changes in an increasingly digital customer journey and that new entrant brands take time to establish themselves despite impressive products and competitive pricing.

From an ICDP perspective, I could theorise with my colleagues for months or years to think through new concepts that might address these and similar challenges.  I could share them with our research programme members and hope that one or two picked up on the ideas and put them into practice.  Or I can seize the opportunity to get my hands dirty and find the solutions that work for our investor, our OEM partners, our staff and our customers.  It’s going to mean some long hours, probably some trial and error, but I’m determined to make it work.

I’m sure that the fortunes of Auto West London will feature again in the blog over the coming months, and perhaps also in some ICDP research, but the acid test will be whether the business is a success within the constraints that we have set for it.  It’s going to be a fun ride, and as we’re hiring, get in touch if you’d like to be part of that!