Scott Allen, head of dealer at Dealer Auction, told GoAutoNews Premium that in the first two years of operations in Australia the company had signed up some of the nation’s biggest-name dealers. 

He said that the online wholesaling platform in Australia has notched up the following achievements:

• $21m in vehicle sales since launch
• 106.8 per cent achieved above reserve price
• More than 190,000 bids placed
• 89.7 per cent of vehicles sold in three days or less
• $1.8m incremental revenue achieved by dealers
• Hundreds of vehicles offered every month
  

  Scott Allen

Mr Allen said that the first two years had been challenging with dealers short of cars to sell due to the chip shortage tending to hang on to their traded stock. 

Mr Allen was general manager of Dealer Auction in the UK where it was launched more than 12 years ago.

Prior to that he had spent 10 years as a dealer principal within a dealership group in the UK which was an early adopter of the Dealer Auction system. He came to Australia to launch the Dealer Auction platform here.

Mr Allen told GoAutoNews Premium that Dealer Auction “is a proven way of disposing of traded cars”.

He said the platform has the potential to displace the current ad hoc system where handfuls of wholesale traders hover around used-car managers in franchise dealerships picking off unwanted vehicles before selling them on to other dealers.

“In practice, this current outdated system is very time-consuming and denies dealers of profits that are, in fact, available from traded vehicles,” he said.

Only franchise dealers cars are listed on the platform and wholesale buyers have to be vetted and approved by Dealer Auction to register on the system.  

A key advantage of the system is claimed to be the vastly greater number of wholesale buyers who are exposed to the traded cars being disposed of by dealers and the increased price competition that can generate.

One customer of Dealer Auction, Mark Woelders, managing director of Brisbane-based Motorama, says that Dealer Auction allows his dealerships to get their wholesale cars through a lot more quickly.

“So whether we want to tender one car or 100 cars we can get that turn happening which is way more efficient.   

“It has really provided us with a technology platform that allows us to talk to a wider wholesale market so we can really maximise our revenue,” Mr Woelders said.

Don Gully, dealer principal of East Coast Fiat in Brisbane’s Acacia Ridge said that Dealer Auction offers efficiency that allows the company to dispose of its trades quickly.

“It is quick and there are less people involved. The platform is easy to use and we can see what’s going on. I tried a lot of other avenues to sell our trades before and Dealer Auction has been the most successful,” he said.

Some dealers report that Dealer Auction can free up at least three hours of staff time in the dealership each day.

Traded cars are new profit centre

Interview: Scott Allen

By John Mellor