The Gatherer Volume 6

Rob: Hi Shaun, great to have you hear in the Melbourne Wrays’ office. Tell us about the app CARDEALS2ME, where on earth did you get the idea? Shaun: Thanks Rob. Well, I’m 12 years ex-automotive industry, so I essentially grew up in dealer-land – understanding the basics of selling and going through the processes. I got to a point where I was at a management level, and held part-ownership of a franchise dealership, at which stage, I still felt a little bit lost and thought there had to be a better way – especially having seen so many people struggle with the ‘buying a car’ process. So, the idea and the concept evolved out of all my experience. The CARDEALS2ME app’s quite simple. Our little tool is essentially a matchmaker service – a customer downloads the app, they specify what they want to buy (ie a better used or new car) and then those details are pumped out to the relative dealers. The consumer completely is kept anonymous at this stage. The dealers will respond with their price for a vehicle that’s suitable for that person – and in their price range if it’s a used car. They’ll come back to the customer within the time frame of a few hours. The consumer then has those details and can either choose to act on, or ignore, the information for a period of 24 hours. If the customer chooses to verify their details, they get in touch with the dealer and get a great deal on a car. Rob: You’ve covered very quickly a couple of pivots that I know you’ve encountered along the way there. So, there’s the anonymous nature of it and there’s also the used-car element. I understand that it was new cars to begin with? Shaun: Yes, 100 percent. The concept has pivoted quite a lot. We only launched the product in Australia in February 2017 and in March for New Zealand – and we quickly learned that we had a lot more consumers than we ever dreamt we would have! I think the market was looking for an alternative to the typical classified system. Classifieds are fantastic for research and looking at pretty colours and so forth, whereas ours is a tool to literally get you the best deal on a particular day. I think dealers have responded well to our system and consumers like the anonymous nature of it.

Rob: So ‘beyond your wildest dreams’ is a quote? What were your wildest dreams? Shaun: I was hoping that my Mum would download it. Rob: And did she? Shaun: No, she hasn’t! So, I’ll have to call her after this and get her to download my app to make me successful. I think when you build something, you get nervous even though you know the product, you know the industry, and you know that there might be a need for it. You do as much market testing and surveys as possible prior to launch, but until it’s on the store and someone physically has to download it [you can’t be certain if it will be successful]. We had a couple of milestones early. It’s those initial downloads – for us it was initial quote requests, dealers responding, and then someone buying a car. I think we were lucky, we had a fairly big first sale – someone went to Mercedes-AMG and received a substantial discount. She was time poor, and a business owner, so she was fantastic for us. Rob: She was a great advocate? Shaun: 100 percent. You can’t pay for people to use the app. So, to have word of mouth in the kind of circles that that business owner moves in, certainly worked well for us. Rob: It takes a brave step to jump out of a business, or an industry, that you’ve been successful in for 12 years as well. How has the app disrupted the market? Disruption is a very fashionable term at the moment –tell me, how do you think it’s disrupted the market? And what kind of penetration have you gained? Shaun: Sure. Initially, I thought it was going to be quite disruptive to the market – especially when coming up with the concept. However, we evolved that thinking during the concept phase of the application. We really tried to engage the market, as opposed to disrupting car dealers. Our product tries to help them evolve and scale up their business. I think that’s where the benefit has been – so a dealer that’s remotely, or regionally, based can have the same traffic as a Sydney dealer. And, I think that is very powerful. Rob: You’ve come at it from a really unique position. You’re solving a problem for the client, but you’re

Our app isn’t text heavy and it’s certainly a global product fit. Obviously, the North American market is huge and that’s certainly an opportunity and pathway that we’re exploring. Rob: That’s very interesting that you mention North America last. On these podcasts typically I’ll say, ’So what are your global aspirations?’ And people respond, ‘Oh, the US!’ You’ve obviously planned this out strategically and you’ve got some clear thought processes of where you’re going. Shaun: The North American market is obviously the honey pot. They have a massive vehicle appetite. I think the last number I saw was 38 million vehicles sold annually in the North American market. Rob: Wow. Shaun: When you compare that to Australia, which has a little over a million new cars sold annually, there’s a massive, massive difference.The Asian markets are also quite large and worthy of focus but at this point in time we’re concentrating on those key markets that I’ve already mentioned. Rob: Right. Shaun: The North American market is exciting. However, I believe that we need to have deep pockets to hit that region really hard with marketing and to grow exponentially across that market. Rob: So, back to the London trip. We’ve already discussed that your product captures both the consumer side and the dealer side. You mentioned manufacturers – tell me a little bit more about that. Shaun: Strategically as the world automotive retail game changes, manufacturers are more and more inclined to try and control the process. So what we’re aiming to do is work to with manufacturers to give them the ability to hit consumers as well. I think that it’s an important relationship that we’re looking to forge going forward in all markets that we play in. Ideally, the dealership landscape is enormous – and, what we do that’s different to a lot of other automotive retail-based systems is, we don’t try to recreate the infrastructure. We’re utilising structures that already exist, being the dealers, and we’ll modify and play as that evolves.

actually approaching the problem from the side of the car dealer as well. You’re hitting both sides of the fence. Shaun: I think that was important. Consumers have always disliked the car dealership process. That’s certainly no secret and an issue globally. Let’s face it, the car industry hasn’t changed that much in the way they do things for many, many years. So, as much as those sales processes need a shake up, I think all dealers are trying to look after customers better. They are trying to get rid of the stain that they’ve been tainted with for so long. But, from the consumer side of things, I think the experience is still kind of agricultural and not fluid. Rob: You mentioned an important word there, global. You obviously have global ambitions. Tell me a little bit about those and the markets that you see yourself moving into. Shaun: Certainly. So, we recently got back from what was essentially a study tour to London for London Tech Week with the Victorian Government. That was amazing. It is a much bigger market and that certainly opened up our eyes – some of the discussions we had over there were sensational, very positive. We met with dealers and some manufacturers, and were able to ask for their input on questions like whether our product was suitable for their market which was beyond the research that we had already ascertained ourselves. We found that there’s a big hunger in their market for a product like ours. So the UK is certainly a market that we’re looking at, as well as other parts of Europe and Shaun: Yes, South Africa jumps out at us for several reasons. They’re fluent in English, which is obviously helpful, but the dealership landscape is similar to ours too. They’re an emerging market for that middle class who are struggling to buy cars, which means that more people will be hitting that market. So, if we give them an option that isn’t a classified, like we did in Australia and also New Zealand, we’re hoping to see similar traction to what we already have here. Brazil is another market that we’re looking at. Rob: There’d be a language challenge there, though? Shaun: Yes, the good thing is that BMW is BMW in mostly all languages. South Africa. Rob: Really?

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