As part of our occasional look at Start Up businesses, we asked Anthony Gaffney, MD of autodirect.ie, to give us a diary of the build up and launch of his new company, and a website that offers the chance to buy cars from a virtual showroom at a knockdown price.
November 2009
Necessity is the mother of all invention. And never more so than in times of economic crises and market shake-ups. In November of last year, in the midst of depressing news reports and sad video clips of endless Dole queues, I started thinking. Reading the papers and listening to anecdotes told me it was next to impossible to gain finance for even the basic necessities of modern life: houses and cars.
Well I had learned enough about the property game to shudder at that thought, but the motor trade… there was real potential for creative thinking in this industry. What if we found a way to provide a lease-purchasing service, much like that which works well in the US? The lightbulbs were appearing above my head…
December 2009
I move quickly by nature, and immediately threw myself into this project. During my market research I discovered there would be a large amount of legal and government beauracracy involved in providing lease-purchase to customers. However the more I learned, the more I became convinced that this was an industry that needed serious shaking up in Ireland. For customers it was murky and difficult to navigate. For the dealers, it incurred massive overheads with state of the art “glass palaces” and expensive salespeople.
Over 3m internet users in Ireland search out holidays, clothes, even homes online. Why not move the dealership online? I now had the concept. I just needed the route to market. I tendered for an e-commerce solution, and one Ennis firm, Magico, stood out from the rest. I then met with leading SEO specialists ROI Media in London. On Christmas Eve, with inches of snow falling outside, we signed contracts. AutoDirect.ie was born.
January 2010
The idea is the easy part. The capital is a little bit harder, but made easy when the concept is promising. During my research I became aware of the fact that finance companies and fleeting companies found it very hard to retail their stock quickly and efficiently. They either waited months, if not years, to get high prices through the dealers, or sold the car for a huge discount through the auctions.
Plus, customers weren’t willing to pay the traditional forecourt prices of expensive shiny dealerships, but were worried about the buyer-beware culture of auctions. What I presented to investors was an alternative; customers enjoy low prices and guarantees of quality, while the de-fleeters move their stock quickly and efficiently. It was a win-win situation and thankfully, the private investors agreed. We were in business, now to prove to them they made the right decision.
February 2010
First things first. Find a roof to put over our heads and the bonnets of the cars. Between my brass neck and the plummeting property prices, we secured the perfect premises; 30,000 square feet in a place called Tougher’s Business Park, Newhall, between Newbridge and Naas in Co. Kildare. This was the ideal location: only twenty-five minutes from Dublin, while very manageable short trips from everywhere else, and a mere five minutes off the motorway.
Now to make it the AutoDirect.ie HQ. The noughties days of bringing in teams of workmen were gone, and quotes were sought and compiled for every nail and bolt required. They varied from the blatantly-recession-retardant to the too-cheap-to-be-legit, but eventually we got there, and for half the money had our signs, carpet, offices, phones, IT, even bumper stickers and insurance holders!
March 2010
Right, now to set us apart from the rest. If I buy a pair of boots online I want to see them from every angle, understand what they’re made of and see exactly how much I’m going to pay. Ideally I’d choose a car online, view it extensively through detailed photos, reserve it for a test-drive and then decide if I want to buy. I hated the unpredictable culture of bargaining in a car park over a used car I saw in the paper.
Magico were beavering away, creating the first draft of one of the most technologically advanced e-commerce sites in Ireland. I needed to provide them with first class copy and images. There was only one way to do this properly. We sourced the most highly-recommended providers in the UK and Ireland and had them create a bespoke car photography studio.
We then invested in concert-style lighting and the best photographic equipment available. When the first shot was taken, of a Land Rover, it was clear that every penny (and there were lots of them!) was well spent.
April 2010
By cutting out the expensive overheads and streamlining our business we knew we could offer customers exceptional value for money. But we weren’t interested in selling dodgy motors and hoping for the best. We wanted to give – and be able to stand by – a reassurance of quality. We went for the big guns to prove how serious we were – within no time the AA and Motorcheck.ie had come on board.
With the renowned AA 101 Point Autocheck and nationally-respected Motorcheck car history report, we could guarantee our cars would be of excellent quality and with a clean history. By adding complimentary key benefits from respected partners as part and parcel of the car-buying process, we were delivering more value for the customer and ensuring that our stock was of the highest calibre. Now to get that stock….
May 2010
Through various contacts in the rental, fleeting and finance industries we began to set up meetings, pitching our alternative route to market. We put together a competitive presentation outlining how, by adding value and ensuring the quality of a vehicle, we could deliver higher margins to those with large volumes of fleet to sell. It wasn’t long before word caught on and some key players were interested.
The obligatory question and answer sessions followed, and it taught me that you had to be on your toes and predict every query they might have – I was lucky, I had lived, eaten and breathed (yum, car fumes!) this project for the previous six months and believed in it wholeheartedly. It wasn’t long before they did too and the transporters began to arrive.
June 2010
We were getting close now to being launch-ready, with a cutting-edge end-to-end solution. We had the cars, the IT systems, the website, the key partners, the additional customer benefits, now we just had to make sure they worked together seamlessly. We began reviewing our pricing, to ensure we were competitive. Any old website can say they’re cheaper, but we wanted independent verification of that fact – there was only one company in Ireland who could help here, Motorcheck.ie.
They provide car valuations to various industries and update their valuations every month, based on live data from the Irish marketplace. We were coming in well, well below the average prices, sometimes even by 20%. It all worked – we could now source cars, photograph them, display them and sell them within twenty-four hours. We were on to something very, very special.
July 2010
The midnight oil wasn’t just burnt, it was incinerated as we prepared for a soft launch on 7 July 2010. We had photographed all the cars, tested the site endlessly, prepared the customer documentation, and we were ready. Due to the depressing anecdotes doing the rounds of the dealership forecourts, we expected to sell our first car in about six weeks. Then hopefully a couple more a week if we were luckier than the rest.
All good things come to those who wait, however, and we were prepared to bide our time. We set up our Facebook page, Twitter feed and LinkedIn profile in anticipation of going live, ready to show the world the new way to buy used cars in Ireland. On July 9 the site went fully live. What happened next took us all by very happy surprise.
The phones started hopping, the emails poured in, the coffee went intravenous, and we sold our first car within twenty-four hours, ten cars in our first two weeks, and at the time of print have nineteen reservations pending. We broke new ground, bucked the trend, and woke the motor trade up from their comfortable slumber.
And we’ve only just begun.
You can check out what’s on offer at www.autodirect.ie
