But a little more than five months into the transition of Mercedes-Benz Brisbane from its former home in Fortitude Valley to the new landmark lifestyle dealership on the banks of Breakfast Creek, the management of the ambitious LSH Group Australia project say their biggest surprise was how smoothly everything is running.

The task was to move new car sales from the Fortitude Valley showroom into the Breakfast Creek dealership with AMG on the ground floor (eight cars), S-Class lounge on level two (six cars) and all other stock (38 cars) in the main showroom on level four.  All cars were moved into the various levels by car lifts and dual central spiral driveway.

They also needed to move used cars from Windsor into the former new car showroom in Fortitude Valley and move the service operations and technicians from Fortitude Valley into the 45 service bays in the new Breakfast Creek service department.

The managing director of LSH Auto Australia, John Good, told GoAutoNews Premium: “It was the smoothest transition I have seen in my entire 35 years in the business”.

Andrew Cutter, general manager property development and operations  Lei Shing Hong Group Australia, told GoAutoNews Premium: “The best surprise we got was how smoothly everything is running.

Main showroom on level four can hold 38 cars. Sales staff are in offices away from the showroom and called into the showroom to serve arriving clients

“Mercedes-Benz moved out of Fortitude Valley overnight.  They closed the business at 6 pm in Fortitude Valley and opened at Breakfast Creek at 7 am. That included moving all the IT, all the cars, all the technicians and all their tools.

“The workshop was full on the first day,” Mr Cutter said.

“Added to that a lot of the systems at Breakfast Creek with screens, iPads in service, no computers on the sales desks and so on are all very new.

“It was incredible that it was so smooth and that was down to everyone focused on what they needed to do. It says a lot about the transition plan we had.

“We had brought our people down from Fortitude Valley in the previous weeks for training. Everyone was brought down for an induction and certainly the managers and department heads spent many days here becoming familiar with the building and the systems.

“The sales staff had to get familiar with the change from having computers on their desks in the showroom and now they are in a back office with their computers and called to the floor when required,” Mr Cutter said.

All the sales staff came across from Fortitude Valley. At this stage, management is seeking to improve productivity with sales people managing the additional volume without having to increase staff levels.

One important change, introduced just after day one, was ear-mounted, two way radios for all the staff.

“We found we needed that level of communication because the building is so large across multiple levels. How do you find people?  That was something we had not thought of before the move,” Mr Cutter said.

The reception desk at the vehicle reception plaza on the second floor

“All the sales team are linked up and our sales manager Michael Low can talk to his team no matter where they are on level one or two or level four. We can alert the team on level four that someone is on the way up from the ground floor or from the arrivals hall and they should be met by a particular member of the sales team.

“So when the customers arrive they can make sure they are looked after. It is a lot more proactive that having a customer coming up to the fourth floor and having to go through the whole meeting process again.”

The managing director of LSH Auto Australia, John Good, said: “We have not done an official opening because we want the lifestyle centre to be completed when we do that, but we have done the transition from the previous facility and that first Thursday we were expecting the foot traffic to improve. 

“We had some events running inside but the foot traffic was tremendous. We had more than 1000 people through the building on the first Saturday and we sold more than 10 cars on that day.

“The same applied the next weekend so it was clear to us that this precinct had created a destination. So the message has certainly got out into the community.

“It has settled a little which you would expect but without having an official opening or really putting ourselves on the map there is still a lot of enquiry.

“So we have the lifestyle destination yet to come in. When it does we will be holding more events to build on that as well,” he said.

Mr Good said that people were driving in with exotic cars like Lamborghinis and McLarens.

“We were attracting people who would not normally have come into our building. They actually stayed within the whole complex for two to three hours. 

“It was very interesting for us to see the profile of the people coming in here is much younger. But they really stayed in the building and that is the key to what we want. Keep them in as long as we can so that they experience the whole lifestyle concept.

“So the sales traffic is more and what we are seeing is that the aftermarket side has increased as well. So we are focusing very strongly on that, too,” Mr Good said.

Service technicians moved themselves and their tools into the 45 service new bays overnight and dealt with record Repair Orders on their first day at Breakfast Creek

Service ROs are continuing to increase as time goes by and have reached record levels since the move.  They are doing around 70 ROs a day and heading for a daily target well above that.

Mr Good complimented his team on “the smoothest transition I have seen in my entire 35 years in the business”.

“The technicians packed up their tools at 5 pm in the workshop in Fortitude Valley, unpacked their tools into their specific workshop bays and started at 7 am the next day with the first cars coming in through the arrivals plaza with zero downtime.

“There was months of planning. They had all been here and seen their bays and knew what they had to do. It was the first transition I have ever seen where there was no downtime because the team was so motivated to come in and get to work in their new workshop. They couldn’t wait to get started,” Mr Good said.

Mercedes-Benz Brisbane offers a fast while-you-wait service which takes about an hour depending on what has to be done.  Time enough to explore a little bit of the building.

Service cars not in the workshop are washed and parked in the basement and are brought to their owners in the arrivals hall by valet drivers.

The cars stay in the one service bay for the entire service except for wheel alignment.

On the same floor are parts racks which are stocked from parts delivered in trucks via the vehicle elevator. 

Service parts are ordered by the technicians from a terminal in their bays and delivered to the bays using a picker and a runner with a trolley. Panels and other slow-moving large parts are kept off-site and ordered in on demand.

Four MAHA tyre and suspension testing machines are used on each car as they are booked in for service in the arrivals plaza on the second floor. These are generating tyre sales, wheel alignments and suspension work

MAHA machines in the arrivals plaza are generating tyre sales, alignment and suspension work and there is a small stock of fast-moving tyres on hand.

“The service team loves the MAHA machines and so do the customers because the technology is telling them something about the safety of their cars that they did not know,” Mr Cutter said.

He said the AMG lounge is getting a lot more traffic because it is now in a more prominent position at the ground floor street entrance to the dealership.

“The design of the building seems to attract people to explore – to see what is down there or over here.  People are inquisitive.”

The vehicle arrivals plaza up the spiral driveway on the second floor is grand and vast and customers are saying they are unexpectedly surprised by its size and convenience. It includes service reception concentrated on morning and night and valet customer parking during the day.

“This area is always busy and it gives the impression that something is always going on,” Mr Cutter said. “It is busy from seven to nine with service reception and against in the afternoon and it is busy with sales customers for the rest of the day.

“We are seeing positive trends in the five months and we are achieving the KPIs that we have set,” Mr Good said. “As we bed it down, we see a very positive springboard into the rest of the year.  Everything is trending up which is good in an environment that is really tough at the moment.

“We set some high benchmarks to achieve and we are tracking in the right direction and we are making conquest sales so we see there are opportunities out there for more growth.

“So we need to drive additional business and, as the complex develops further with more lifestyle attractions and lifestyle brands coming, in we have the opportunity to build on that. 

“The key to that is getting Shannon Kellam in here first,” Mr Good said.

The former new car showroom in Fortitude Valley is now used as the Mercedes-Benz Brisbane used car operation with all cars under cover. It is attracting increased numbers of used car buyers

The chief financial officer of  LSH Auto Australia, Aaron Cordy, said that another side of the new location is that it is producing more trades-ins “and we are keeping a higher proportion of them’.

“We are seeing an increasing number of non-Mercedes-Benz trades both from luxury competitors and some volume makers as well. We have used cars in the former new car area in Fortitude Valley now and with double the number of used cars in stock we have a bigger appetite for more used cars.

“We would like to have about 100 used cars in stock at any one time and right now we are at about 80. They are all-makes and, for our brand, they are certified.”

The former used car site at Windsor stocked between 60 and 70 cars.

Mr Good said: “We are also seeing more foot traffic coming in for the used cars now they are in the former new car showroom in Fortitude Valley and we see that as another area that has a lot more potential in the future as well.

“We will build up that used car side as a much stronger separate business. 

“People are really coming in (to the Fortitude Valley showroom) specifically to look at used cars and one of the advantages of being in the former new car operation is that we have a full undercover used car operation whereas previously in the Windsor operation was around 90 per cent outside.”

Meanwhile, LSH Auto has appointed a new dealer principal for Mercedes-Benz Brisbane.  He is Kenneth Got, who has moved across from Inchcape’s premium brand division in Sydney and will start work at the new Breakfast Creek dealership in January.

By John Mellor