Providing the online car shopper with strong photos and a positive digital experience. A seven-day return policy, a 100-day warranty built into the price of the car and the option for an extended warranty.

These are all things Carvana has found helpful in calming nerves and increasing confidence in the online car buyer.

But don’t underestimate the power of a recommendation from a friend or family member, which Carvana founder and chief executive officer Ernie Garcia has found to be the most important avenue to soothing fears of making such a large purchase online.

Garcia was named EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2016 in the Mountain Desert region in the consumer technology category in late June. He talked with Auto Remarketing about the online car retailer’s approach a few days later.

“I think there’s just no substitute for hearing from a family member that you bought from Carvana and (it was a) great experience, it was easy and the car was in great shape,” Garcia said in a phone interview this month. “I think the more that that happens, the faster we’re going to continue to grow.”

Carvana has already been expanding at a brisk pace.

Its latest move was in late June, adding a physical location in its 14th market: Richmond, Va.

This was the online car retailer’s first location in Virginia, expanding its footprint that already included a wide swath of the South farther up the East Coast. 

Earlier this year, Carvana entered four Florida markets in a little over a month (March 8 to April 12).

With the addition of Richmond, it now provides “as-soon-as next-day delivery” to the following markets:

— Atlanta

— Austin, Texas

— Birmingham, Ala.

— Charlotte, N.C.

— Dallas

— Houston

— Jacksonville, Fla.

— Orlando

— Miami

— Nashville, Tenn.

— Raleigh, N.C.

— Richmond, Va.

— San Antonio

— Tampa

More vending machines?

Carvana started in Atlanta, finding it to be a good fit operationally and product-wise.

“Once we started there, we’re trying to make sure that all of our inventory is available to all of our customers anywhere. And so when you want to make all your inventory available everywhere, it makes a lot of sense to grow contiguously from where you start,” Garcia said. “We’re kind of growing out. We’re emanating from the Southeast and we’ll continue to do that.” 

(He declined to say where the company is going next.)

One of Carvana’s more talked-about moves happened in Nashville, Tenn., where in November the company launched what Garcia described in a news release as the “world’s first robotic Vending Machine for cars.”

The facility includes a five-story glass tower than can hold up to 20 vehicles and three delivery bays. The automated delivery system can move cars from the tower to the bays.

“Carvana created the original car Vending Machine concept in Atlanta in 2013, and we’ve spent the last two years taking this experience to a whole new level. Our new Vending Machine is a state-of-the-art, multi-story structure that delivers our customers’ cars by merely inserting a custom coin,” Garcia said in the November announcement. “Carvana’s mission is to create a better way to buy a car, and this new Vending Machine will be a one-of-a-kind experience that mirrors just how simple and easy we’ve made it to buy a car online.”

We asked Garcia in July: What has been the consumer reaction thus far?

“We’ve been very pleased with the consumer reaction to the vending machine,” he said. “I don’t want to give you too many statistics there, but I’ll say that we’ve been pleased and we’ve been pleased enough to where … you’re going to see more of the popping up in the not-too-distant future.”

The F&I side

Auto Remarketing also talked F&I with Garcia.

Within the service contract/warranty space, Carvana offers customers a 100-day warranty, included in the price of the car, and has an extended warranty available, as well.

“So far that’s the only F&I product that we offer. I think it’s important to us that we make sure that all of the F&I products that we’re offering the customers, we feel good about being value-add products,” Garcia said. “We want to make sure from a brand perspective we’re only selling things to our customers that we would want a family member to buy if we were selling it to them.”

He added: “But we’re always exploring other options there, to figure out if there’s something that could make sense economically and makes sense for our customers.”