By Alysha Webb, Editor and Publisher
Family-owned dealerships changing hands again loom large in this week’s issue, but on two very different scales. The theme of familiarity and reputation as a force behind the choice of buyers also returns. Now that I read reports on buy sells every day — and regularly talk to parties involved in dealership buy sell deals — I see these are common themes.
Family-owned dealerships are being sold often because of a lack of a successor. Sometimes the buyer is one of the large publicly-owned groups, as we see in the sale of Barrier Motors to AutoNation. Owner Jimmy Barrier is retiring and he wanted to ensure his employees had job security, he told Automotive News.
We talk to Mark Johnson again in this week’s issue. I know, you saw him last week as well. But Barrier Motors is in his backyard, and he has worked with AutoNation. So his insights carry extra weight in this deal. He figures the deal reflects AutoNation’s good reputation with the manufacturers, among other things.
Sometimes the buyer is another family-owned business, as is the case with the Mazda store that Russ Darrow Group recently acquired in Milwaukee. That makes me wonder if the dealership business is getting less family-owned or simply more consolidated. I remember Carter Myers telling me that he figures it is hard to be small in today’s auto retail world. Not hard to be family-owned, just hard to be small.
The importance of knowing your neighbors – as in your fellow dealership owners – was also emphasized again this week in my talk with Mike Darrow. He said one reason John Amato sold the Mazda franchise to Russ Darrow Group was that the two families had known each other for years in what Darrow referred to as “Smallwaukee.”
The entire dealership world is small, actually. So being a good neighbor to all your fellow dealers, competitors and non-competitors, seems like a good idea if you hope to expand. Oh, and being on good terms with the factories!
Enjoy!