Small dealerships lack the clout and capital to compete
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October 31, 2016 01:00 AM

Small dealerships lack the clout and capital to compete

Jamie LaReau
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    CORRIE GAMEL
    Martin Gubbels, owner, Big Sky Ford-Lincoln, Torrington, Wyo.: "I can't afford to grow. I have a sign that sits on my desk that I point out to customers that reads: 'I started with nothing and I have most of it left.' That sums up the problems of being a small-store dealer."
    Sizing up costs

    Here are some estimates of the disparity between what small dealers pay vendors, compared with prices for larger groups. Estimates are based on interviews with dealers and other industry sources.
     Small dealership, groupBigger Dealership group
    Health insurance*$375-$900/mo.$494/mo.
    Uniforms*$200/mo.$65/mo.
    Dealer management systems**$3,500-$6,000/mo.$1,200-$5,100/mo.
    Commercial garage insurance**$1,800/mo.$1,400/mo.***
    *Per employee **Per store
    ***Could vary depending on location and history of damages

    Dealers Jim Tino Jr. and Martin Gubbels could not be more different or have more in common.

    Tino, 53, is a city slicker. His family owned two dealerships selling Chevrolet and Subaru about 30 minutes from midtown Manhattan in Union, N.J. They sold nearly 3,000 new and used cars a year.

    Gubbels, 50, owns Big Sky Ford-Lincoln in Torrington, Wyo., near the Nebraska state line. Torrington's population is about 6,500 people with just as many livestock, he says. The store's sales peaked at about 400 vehicles a year.

    Yet the two men have battled similar business challenges. Despite being profitable, the Tinos sold the stores to a larger group in August. Gubbels' dealership is for sale now.

    "I can't afford to grow," Gubbels said. "I have a sign that sits on my desk that I point out to customers that reads: "I started with nothing and I have most of it left.' That sums up the problems of being a small-store dealer."

    Regardless of geography, market size or franchise, many dealers with a single point or a small group find they must either become bigger or sell to a bigger group. The retail business model now favors big groups, they say, which can more easily hit factory sales targets, afford dealership improvements and achieve cost benefits. Experts say the dealerships that do survive as small businesses will be in niche markets where community ties anchor them.

    Even the owners of midsize groups recognize the trend. Carbone Automotive Group ranks No. 94 on Automotive News' list of the Top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S. with 10,936 new-vehicle retail sales last year. Yet in September, it was sold to Lithia Motors Inc. so the business would survive.

    "Ten years down the road, we don't want to be the 13-point dealership group feeling that pain from the larger groups the way the smaller ones are now," said Enessa Carbone, who was CEO of the Utica, N.Y., group. She is now a Lithia platform vice president. "That seems to be the trend of the future."

    Here are the six areas in which small dealers say it is increasingly difficult to compete with larger groups:

     

    Factory relations

    Product allocations and store upgrades

    Some smaller dealers say their voices get drowned out by bigger dealers that have the manufacturers' ear. The small players struggle to get inventory and can't discount new cars to hit stair-step incentive programs for bonus cash the way bigger players can.

    "While the factories aren't supposed to treat dealers differently, they do," said buy-sell adviser and former dealer Stuart Lasser. "They favor dealers that are bigger and more successful and move the metal."

    Lasser: Bigger dealers favored

    Lasser owns Lasser Advisory Services in Morristown, N.J. He said single-point or small-group dealers, even those with strong franchises, struggle to compete unless they are in a niche or rural market. Lasser represented five selling dealers in transactions this year through mid-September. Each had three or fewer stores. He said three of them chose to sell because of bigger rivals financially outmuscling them, combined with the factory showing little interest in their plight. Other buy-sell advisers echo those observations.

    "The biggest complaint I hear is that smaller dealers are not getting the inventory from the manufacturers," said buy-sell adviser George Chaconas of Performance Brokerage Services in Tampa, Fla. "They're squeezing them out." 

    Chaconas said some manufacturers also pressure smaller dealers to spend millions to upgrade their dealerships. Many of those dealers cannot afford to do so, he said. 

    Former Florida Nissan dealer Mike Bakich said that in the early 2000s "the heat was on" from the factory to update his store. So he spent $4 million and rebuilt it, he said. Over the years, Nissan would press him to do minor upgrades regularly to the tune of a few thousand dollars each time. He could afford it, he said, but he understands that many dealers his size "just don't have the funds or capital to do it." 

    There are also programs aimed at reconfiguring the dealer body, which might hurt smaller dealers. 

    Consider Cadillac's retail program, Project Pinnacle. It would divide Cadillac's 925 dealers into five tiers based on projected annual sales and assign each tier a level of standards and incentives for hitting targets. Stores in the lowest tier would carry no inventory. 

    They would sell new vehicles through a "virtual showroom" and provide service. Critics say the program would disproportionately aid large stores in desirable locations at the expense of smaller retailers, which could go out of business. 

    Cadillac has said that stores representing 98.7 percent of the brand's retail volume have enrolled in Project Pinnacle, with most of those that didn't being small stores. Cadillac did not disclose the number of stores rejecting the deal.

     

    Discounted deals

    The high price to play the incentive game

    Smaller dealers can make profits, but they say they need a level playing field to do so. That playing field is anything but level when bigger dealership groups can afford to move metal the way the manufacturer wants to achieve market-share gains, smaller dealers say.

    Jim Tino Jr.'s family sold two stores to a larger group.

    "The manufacturers are dictating more and more how you're going to retail vehicles and what you're going to need to do to make a profit in their retail model," Tino said.

    Bakich, 82, agrees. He had been a Nissan dealer in central Florida for 46 years with two sons in the business. But he and his sons agreed it was increasingly difficult to compete with big dealerships in nearby Orlando. So in May, he sold his store, Lake Nissan in Leesburg, Fla., to a 10-store dealership group.

    "The big stores are the volume dealers," Bakich said. "The larger dealers can start out the month discounting vehicles to meet stair-step incentives. I can't do that. It wouldn't be affordable in the long run. I couldn't stay in the game much longer."

    Gubbels faced the same problem.

    "I can't take a loss on my first four cars to get to my stair-step to survive." A bigger group, he said, can "play the economies of scale and shift inventory around."

    Several manufacturers were asked to comment on these issues, and most did not respond. An exception was Nissan North America. Spokeswoman Kristina Adamski wrote in an email: "Nissan enjoys mutually beneficial relationships with a diverse dealer body that includes both small, independent dealers and large, public groups."

    She declined to comment on dealer programs or the "performance of individual dealerships."

     

    Cost advantages

    DMS, health care and other vendor discounts

    CORRIE GAMEL

    Gubbels: "A bigger group can play the economies of scale."

    Bigger groups get better pricing from vendors, period, dealers said.

    That gives the big players more operating cash to run the business, allowing for the hiring of more talent, cutting deals on car sales and competitive pricing for service work -- all necessary for a dealership to thrive.

    A state dealership association executive, who works closely with dealer management system, or DMS, vendors, said most offer a 10 to 15 percent discount in monthly costs for multistore groups. That is substantial considering that a typical DMS provider charges $3,500 to $6,000 a month per store, the executive said.

    Even Carbone noticed pricing disadvantages compared with the largest groups.

    "I thought we had an aggressive expense structure," Carbone said. "We worked very hard in our shared services and had some competitive contracts with vendors."

    Then she saw Lithia's agreements. She said its costs were "amazingly" lower than Carbone's.

    Big Sky's Gubbels said he switched his DMS provider to one that saved him $5,000 a month. Yet he still pays $3,500 a month for the service. He knows dealership groups with at least 10 stores that pay $1,200 a month per store because of economies of scale.

    Gubbels' cost for uniforms for 11 employees runs him about $200 a month per employee, he said. A group with 150 employees wearing uniforms would pay about $65 a month per employee, Gubbels said.

    Another big expense for dealers is commercial garage insurance, which covers almost every aspect of the dealership, including employees. Gubbels pays $1,800 a month for it, whereas a group with 10 stores might pay $1,400 a month per store, he said. The rates depend on state regulations and an individual store's history of damage. In Tino's case, in the New York metro market, commercial garage insurance ran a whopping $100,000 a year, he said.

    Then there are the high prices of health care costs, which can devastate small dealers.

    Gubbels said he pays an average of $375 per employee a month. In Tino's case, despite joining a co-op to keep that cost down, he paid on average $700 per nonunion employee a month.

    Gubbels said a 10-dealership group might see a 30 to 35 percent savings per employee due to economies of scale.

    Bakich's Lake Nissan's health care costs were rising, yet the buying group dramatically cut those costs. Bakich said to insure a married employee with children cost him about $900 a month. His buyer's cost for the same plan was $494 a month.

    David, left, and Fred Ayers sold their Chevrolet store to a large group in January. "Some of the pressures of the business were more than the return was," David said.

     

    Talent grab

    Size matters in offering career growth

    A smaller dealership in a small market does have some advantages. In some cases, it can attract managers who want a rural, family-oriented community.

    But there is the flip side.

    "Sometimes you find the perfect person, you get to the interview phase and they fly out to look at your dealership," Gubbels said. "I have had people not even get out of the airport before they say, "No. I thought you were a lot bigger. I'm sorry.'"

    Compounding that, many small dealership groups cannot afford to staff a human resources department to help recruit, train and retain top talent. Without strong HR, it's a challenge to foster a culture that attracts women and minorities, Carbone said.

    Smaller groups also struggle to have a centralized office to comply with federal and state regulations.

    That task falls to the dealer, adding tremendous stress.

    Just ask dealer David Ayers, 58. He and his brother, Fred Ayers, 61, owned Ayers Chevrolet in Dover, N.J., since 1986. They sold the dealership, about 40 miles west of Manhattan, in January to a large group, Ayers said. It's now Nielsen Chevrolet. Ayers said selling the dealership that his grandfather bought in 1958 has been a huge relief.

    "There are a lot of regulatory issues to keep up on," Ayers said. "The whole notion of liability should something go wrong out there was a little overwhelming at times, so some of the pressures of the business were more than the return was."

    The bigger players also have bigger advertising departments and budgets, said buy-sell adviser Chaconas. They can use technology and social media more efficiently to tap new customers, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

    "We can't do it at the same volume," Gubbels said. "Bob the farmer orders his vehicle; we take it to his farm, do the trade, sign the paperwork and take the trade back into town. We do it as a courtesy. The big dealer groups do it to sell more cars."

     

    Big benefits

    Some challenges, too

    Lithia's CEO Bryan DeBoer said size does have advantages, especially when looking to form partnerships such as the recent one with Carbone. He touts Lithia's ability to gain cost advantages with vendors, get better interest rates with banks and share best practices among its 152 stores.

    DeBoer: People can grow.

    "The other thing is the ability for people to grow. That's the greatest leverage point you can get," DeBoer said. 

    That's because the secret to success is the people who work at a dealership. It is where bigger groups can trump smaller ones by keeping workers, thus saving on training costs and fostering strong morale, leading to stellar customer service, he said. 

    But not all big groups see the consolidation of smaller stores into bigger ones as better. 

    Open Road Auto Group in Bridgewater, N.J., bought the Tinos' Chevrolet store and Subaru store. Open Road sells about 30,000 new and used vehicles a year and will own 18 dealerships as of Nov. 1, said President Michael Morais. He said it is not any easier to hit factory stair-step programs by manipulating inventory or offsetting a loss at one store with profits from another even when the group is large. 

    "Each store has to stand on their own," Morais said. "We're not going to go after market share and say we'll use some of Honda's profits to pump up Mazda."

     

    'Bigger is safer'

    Diversified brand portfolio vs. 'hometown feeling'

    But Morais agrees with DeBoer's assessment of the benefits of being bigger.

    Plus, he said: "Bigger is safer."

    "It's a diversified portfolio, and while every brand is doing well right now, when the market constrains, there'll be brands that do well and brands that don't," he said.

    Open Road's Morais: "I spend more money to keep the process consistent."

    Still, he questions whether manufacturers prefer large groups because "you lose that hometown feeling, that customer-first mentality."

    "I don't know which is better for the automobile business," Morais said. "There are benefits to cost-sharing, but I spend more money to keep the process consistent."

    Tino knows for sure which one is better for the customer.

    "We had customers who bought from us for 30 years," Tino said. "They knew our names, and we knew theirs. I run into those customers all the time. They stop me and say, "Oh, God! Why'd you do it?'"

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