Chances are, before the last week, you hadn’t heard about The Appraisal Lane. That was on purpose.

Two years in the making, The Appraisal Lane (TAL), a real-time trade network and communication platform for used vehicles designed to conveniently fill the dealer-to-dealer niche with a mobile-friendly solution to provide quick cash offers on vehicles, has been working slowly to build not only its internal team, but also its clientele.

At its core, dealers and auctions can utilize TAL in three different ways:

• Submit vehicles for appraisal. Whether those are pending trade-ins, stubborn vehicles on the lot that are proving to be a tough sell, cars that didn’t sell on the auction block, or anything in between. Depending on the situation, TAL will respond with a cash offer within 10 to 15 minutes. Many times, those cash offers stem from outside buyers, which typically include dealer or auction partners.
• Buying cars. TAL has partnerships with many dealerships and a handful of auctions, some of which only utilize TAL services to buy inventory.
• White label customers. Dealerships or dealer groups seeking to utilize the TAL platform to power their own internal trade network can license a solution from TAL.

It all started with an idea between friends. Jeff Risner, Andrew Iorgulescu, Chris Tomchay and Scott Gales all co-founded TAL. If you think those names sound familiar, you’re probably right.

Risner, TAL’s president, and Tomchay, TAL’s chief operations officer, are college buddies who have worked together for going on 30 years. Together they currently co-own the Georgia-Carolina Auto Auction. Risner was also a founding associate at CarMax.

Iorgulescu, a co-founder of OPENLANE, has worked with the other TAL co-founders over the years and maintained a friendship that sprouted the idea for The Auction Lane.

“While Jeff was on the dealer advisory council at OPENLANE, Jeff used to come to me a lot at night and say, ‘Andrew, what we need to build is a ‘send check’ button for a dealer,’” Iorgulescu said. “And I would say, ‘I don’t know, Jeff.’”

But over time, Risner remained adamant and insistent that the idea — of offering an easy-to-access and quick, solid offer on cars — would be a concrete platform for a business.

So two years ago, the four got together and began working on the technology the system would be built on. In February and March of this year, TAL began testing the waters by putting beta dealers on the system, which ran through the summer. At that point, they launched the finished product as it is today.

As of right now, TAL’s buying and selling services are available in the Southeast and Texas, where the company’s founders rolled out initially due to their significant dealer, auction and transportation connections in the area. Iorgulescu also says that within the last week the company has launched operations in the Northeast and aims at hitting the Midwestern states next.

TAL’s white label solutions are available nationwide.

But there’s no timeline in place, however, for the company’s physical expansion. The company’s president made it clear that although its system is designed for international application it will take as long as it takes to build solid relationships with other companies and individuals in the business who TAL feels shares the same business ideals that they do.

“We’re trying to build a select group of folks,” Iorgulescu said. “It’s a community.”

“The response has been very positive from the dealer community,” Iorgulescu later continued. “We could be a lot bigger today, we could be signing up dealers left and right and center, but we’re very methodical about how we’re going to build this business because we’ve all done it before.”

Like many forms of technology today, words can only get you so far to take you toward an understanding of a system’s applications. To check out the full details of The Appraisal Lane or to get in contact with their team to request a demonstration, visit the TAL site here.

For more information about the company and more insight from the company’s team of industry veterans, stay tuned for future editions of Auto Remarketing where we will delve further.