“Our motto is really simple: It’s the simple way to sell your car. So we try to make this as quick as possible, as easy as possible, and create a relationship with a customer who may not want to go to a dealer,” Lawson said.
Forming great relationships with customers has been paramount to the center’s success.
“Probably 20 percent of all our purchases right now are referrals from people we’ve already bought from,” Lawson noted.
The center has purchased everything from 2020 Ram pickups with low mileage to early 2000 BMW Z4 convertibles and will even purchase vehicles with $1 million price tags, Lawson said. Commercial vehicles such as work vans and service body trucks also have been popular purchases.
“We literally look at any car. It doesn’t matter the make, model, year, miles, condition,” Lawson said.
“In this day and age, listen, there’s a shortage. You can’t turn away units. You don’t want to turn away units. We fight for them. I mean, we really want these cars.”
The purchased vehicles are then shipped to the store that is best equipped to sell them. And given the current state of dealer inventories across the U.S., the group’s buying center has given its stores an extra cushion.
“A BizCar retail sale is one of the highest average gross profit transactions at our franchise stores,” Aschenbach said. “And that’s because we’re buying things you wouldn’t find at the auction, and if you did find them at the auction, you’re going to pay over retail right now for that vehicle.”
The group sold 3,586 new and used vehicles in 2020 and 3,000 combined so far in 2021. A few of its stores have a zero-day supply of new vehicles, Aschenbach said, with its lowest days supply of used vehicles hovering around 30.
BizCar, on average, buys around 20 vehicles a month.
