Only 6 Vendors to rule them all!

[kcar]

Bigger companies like ADP/RR keep buying out smaller companies and ruining them.. Leaving dealers with limited advancements. Not happy that they are able to do this, but when they keep buying out every start up, who's to stop them? There's a reason why most dealership websites start around $500+, if you think about it the hosting only costs $20.+ Larger companies like these can influence the pricing game.

 

[yagoparamo]

Bigger companies move a little slower but most usually provide a more stable product. Larger companies also have problems smaller companies don't have. When you have 100 customers and a few employees you don't have to worry about massive server infrastructures, security, performance, testing, support documentation, training employees, customer issues, etc. You also don't worry about what your legal department thinks because you don't have one... When you get to 1000+ customers and have a lot of employees, it is a whole different ball game. VinSolutions is starting to have resources and manpower I could only dream of years ago. AutoTrader has provided resources where we needed it and stayed out of the way where we didn't need help.

Matt,

So--there are soe advantages to being big and some advantages to being small.

That being said, and also with respect and as a general statement (so no phun intended):

"AutoTrader has provided resources where we needed it and stayed out of the way where we didn't need help."

Wait until the honeymoon is over the the investors look at the p&l statement for the quarter.

 

[mattwatson81]

Bigger companies like ADP/RR keep buying out smaller companies and ruining them.. Leaving dealers with limited advancements. Not happy that they are able to do this, but when they keep buying out every start up, who's to stop them? There's a reason why most dealership websites start around $500+, if you think about it the hosting only costs $20.+ Larger companies like these can influence the pricing game.

Sure you can pay $20 a month to host HTML pages somewhere. But that doesn't cover the costs to build the complicated software that runs it, pay a designer to design how it looks, or cover the cost to answer the phone when dealers call all the time to make changes to the site. It can cost thousands just to design how a site looks and get it live.

 

[Chris Cachor]

Bigger companies like ADP/RR keep buying out smaller companies and ruining them.. Leaving dealers with limited advancements. Not happy that they are able to do this, but when they keep buying out every start up, who's to stop them? There's a reason why most dealership websites start around $500+, if you think about it the hosting only costs $20.+ Larger companies like these can influence the pricing game.

You forgot about vehicle color matching, inventory fees, and rebate data fees. Plus, just the individual service costs involved. There's not a whole lot of profit @ $500 unless the thing goes untouched!

 

[kcar]

Sure you can pay $20 a month to host HTML pages somewhere. But that doesn't cover the costs to build the complicated software that runs it, pay a designer to design how it looks, or cover the cost to answer the phone when dealers call all the time to make changes to the site. It can cost thousands just to design how a site looks and get it live.

It's not that hard to develop the inventory software, it's not as complicated as they make it out to be. Invest $2-4K or even less if you know someone/oversea it, and you're looking at a $1K for a complete setup. If you have someone working at the dealership who can do this then you're golden as well. Everything and anything can be sent overseas for design/code, and done for next to nothing. Updates on websites are super easy with code. Save $24K a year min. No dealer will need $20K in updates over one year. Also you're not looking at this long term, in 10 years that $240,000 the dealership will have saved. That's enough money to design the site as many times as you want and do as many updates as you need. You can even have it built on a CMS to the same thing other companies offer for making changes. It's super easy to change, and you can have it setup for every part of the website. Similar to DDC's editor.

 

[joe.pistell]

I formally retract my thoughts that kcar worked for a vendor. All I see below is a noob and a keyboard.

It's not that hard to develop the inventory software, it's not as complicated as they make it out to be. Invest $2-4K or even less if you know someone/oversea it, and you're looking at a $1K for a complete setup. If you have someone working at the dealership who can do this then you're golden as well. Everything and anything can be sent overseas for design/code, and done for next to nothing. Updates on websites are super easy with code. Save $24K a year min. No dealer will need $20K in updates over one year. Also you're not looking at this long term, in 10 years that $240,000 the dealership will have saved. That's enough money to design the site as many times as you want and do as many updates as you need. You can even have it built on a CMS to the same thing other companies offer for making changes. It's super easy to change, and you can have it setup for every part of the website. Similar to DDC's editor.

Show us your work kcar.

 

[ggarvin]

Interesting thoughts... I agree with Yago that small entrepreneurs create innovation and do so quickly with their full heart involvement. The trouble is that it is almost never built to scale and can't be by it's very definition. So those will continue to be aggregated and brought into to the fold of these larger companies. But there is a change. Think about what Reynolds has done with acquisitions over the past decades... they have acquired, absorbed and lost the identity, technology and eventually customers of these businesses. That isn't happening today with the acquisitions that are happening. Remarkably people have learned and are more purposeful about putting the pieces together. What Matt says is true, the infrastructures and things like "disaster recovery" are real - they make innovation go more slowly - but I can assure you that if a major disaster hit, Dominion (like other large providers) is prepared for it and will be up and running. That can't be said for some of the smaller companies because, like the legal questions, they just don't have the time or interest in dealing with that.

 

[yagoparamo]

Interesting thoughts... I agree with Yago that small entrepreneurs create innovation and do so quickly with their full heart involvement. The trouble is that it is almost never built to scale and can't be by it's very definition. So those will continue to be aggregated and brought into to the fold of these larger companies. But there is a change. Think about what Reynolds has done with acquisitions over the past decades... they have acquired, absorbed and lost the identity, technology and eventually customers of these businesses. That isn't happening today with the acquisitions that are happening. Remarkably people have learned and are more purposeful about putting the pieces together. What Matt says is true, the infrastructures and things like "disaster recovery" are real - they make innovation go more slowly - but I can assure you that if a major disaster hit, Dominion (like other large providers) is prepared for it and will be up and running. That can't be said for some of the smaller companies because, like the legal questions, they just don't have the time or interest in dealing with that.

Interesting thing about Dominion is that you guys have kept your offerings separate for the most part and I think that will serve you well in the long term.

I disagree with the Trader push for 1 solution, specially with their Vin Solutions product.