Speaking to Car Dealer, Ineos regional director for the UK and Ireland Tom Johnson laid bare the firm’s plans to exit the agency sales model and restructure its network, admitting the brand had grown ‘too quickly’.
‘After two years of operation in the UK, we’ve moved from an agency model to a more traditional dealer wholesale model,’ he said.
‘We’re pleased with the performance we’ve achieved to date, but we had quite a wide network of partners across the UK and I think we probably grew a bit too quickly.
‘We’ve taken this opportunity to reshape and right-size the network under the dealer model, giving each of our partners an area of influence. But also, we are relinquishing a little bit of control to the dealer network.’
Asked if agency sales have been a failure, Johnson replied: ‘It’s not necessarily a case of whether it has worked or it hasn’t. We looked to establish the brand and bring it to the marketplace, and now we have taken the opportunity to pivot to what we think now best suits the UK.’
Explaining why the brand is making the switch, Johnson said: ‘Switching to a traditional wholesale model gives customers more choice, and will speed up the ordering process, part-exchange valuations, finance offers, aftersales and the trading process.
‘We really want to provide our dealer network with more tools in order to get on with what they do best, and improving customer service.’
Before the transformation Ineos had 26 sites through 19 dealers, but this will be comprehensively slashed to eight to ten dealers across 12 sites.
Johnson revealed this is the intended shape of the network in the future – it has to ‘onboard’ new dealers, primarily from the south east of England, first.
‘There’s a little bit of white space through this transition that I’m actively back-filling. I’m seeking additional partners, broadly in the volume areas around the south and south east [of England].
‘Meanwhile, we are also bolstering our aftersales provision across the network. Some of our customers have been impacted by the mutually agreed closures of some of the sites, but I am supporting them with collection and delivery of their vehicles to remove the inconvenience these closures may have in the short term.’
Used cars will be a major focus for Ineos moving forwards, explained Johnson.
‘We’re staring to see the cycle of customers coming off their initial finance offers, and we’re commencing our customer retention plans.
‘Used cars represent good volumes for us, and we have launched a used car online platform to allow the network to list their used vehicles. Used cars is a real growing point for us.’
Ineos currently has the Grenadier in station wagon and commercial variants, and has recently launched the Quartermaster pick-up.
Earlier plans to launch a smaller model all-electric model called the Fusilier have been shelved ‘indefinitely’, confirmed Johnson.
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