Dent Wizard International has added another role for chief operating officer Addison Thomas: company president.
Thomas, who will remain COO, will take on that role effective Jan. 1.
He has been COO since 2018, and previously served as vice president of operations and regional vice president for the West.
“I continue to be humbled, honored and privileged to serve as Dent Wizard’s COO and now president,” Thomas said in a news release.
“While my goal will be to continue to advance our strategy as a growth company, I will be focused on two key areas in support of our strategy: I want to continue to increase our value proposition to our customers so we are a true partner supporting their goals; and I want to continue to make Dent Wizard a great place for a career, providing unique and rewarding opportunities for our team members to grow and maximize their potential,” he said.
Dent Wizard chief executive officer Mike Black said: “I am excited about the experience, skill, and passion Addison brings to this position. His combination of strategic approach, creative problem solving, and analytical thought processes have been invaluable. As COO he’s helped Dent Wizard achieve our growth goals and deliver our value proposition to customers. And more impressively he’s stayed the course on these objectives while navigating through the COVID-altered environment.”
Even (and perhaps especially) in an increasingly digital landscape, the physical space owned by brick-and-mortar auto auctions can be advantageous.
That was apparent with a recent move by Manheim Central Florida, which transformed one of its unused spaces into a mechanic facility for retail reconditioning.
The now 8,500-square-foot recon space was formerly a multipurpose facility once used for night sales. Here’s how the transformation came to be, according to a Manheim release:
Back in late 2018, Manheim Orlando was out of space for retail reconditioning and approached Manheim Central Florida, which is approximately 20 miles away.
Central Florida then took that aforementioned multipurpose space and added 10 mechanic lifts, giving both auctions additional capacity for recon.
Catherine Woodall is Manheim's assistant vice president of reconditioning operations for the Orlando Market Center, which includes both auctions. In a news release, Woodall said: “This is an excellent example of how Manheim’s Market Centers structure delivers greater opportunities and efficiencies for clients when nearby auctions work cooperatively to share support functions.”
The facility reconditioned a record 1,200 vehicles in July, amid rebound consumer demand, which meant dealers had to get used cars retail-ready.
Manheim has since “fully transformed” the facility, which now has 18 lifts, a recon office and a parts room.
“Going all-digital in the early months of COVID-19 gave us an opportunity to rethink how we were using our additional lane space in the night sale building,” Woodall said. “We decided that once our auction re-opened for in-person sales, we would move the night sale to the main building and expand the existing mechanic shop to accommodate additional work.”
The need for such a facility was perhaps crucial in an area like Florida, where acquisition demand is high.
“Florida is a very appealing market for acquiring inventory because vehicles here tend to have lower mileage and are well maintained, so they typically have lower reconditioning costs when compared to other market,” Woodall said.
“Additionally, the clients we service are starting to expand their footprints, whether it’s traditional brick and mortar stores or digital retailing platforms, increasing their needs for frontline ready vehicles,” she said.
“And finally, Orlando is the largest rental car market in the world, and Manheim Central Florida’s location less than 10 miles from Orlando International Airport makes us an attractive option to service rentals.”
Editor's Note: This is a special preview, available only to CMG Premium subscribers, of Auto Remarketing's "Beyond the Transaction" special supplementary issue.
Many companies have seen significant changes in how they operate because of the pandemic, and Cox Automotive Mobility is no exception. The company’s associate vice president of product Jim Heffner said consumers coming in for servicing at the locations of the company’s dealership partners are increasingly asking for the service department to sanitize and disinfect their vehicles.
Scot Wingo is also seeing that trend. Sanitizing and disinfecting are big parts of the work for Wingo’s company, Spiffy, an on-demand car care, technology and services company. But Wingo, the company’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said disinfecting has been especially important since the pandemic. More customers have become sensitive about the quality of the vehicle, he said.
Before the pandemic, if a customer’s vehicle was not clean, he or she would think, “OK, the car is a little dirty.”
“Now, people kind of equate, well, the car is dirty, maybe it’s kind of germy,” Wingo said. “The overall fear of the pandemic has heightened awareness around cleanliness.”
But a greater focus on cleanliness is just one of several trends that the vehicle reconditioning slice of the auto industry has seen since the pandemic began.
Technological advances
One of those trends is that the level of complexity in vehicles has ramped up over the past few years, and Cox Automotive Mobility has seen various factors that are driving complexity around the idea of understanding what the car is communicating, Heffner said.
He mentioned technology such as advanced driver-assistance systems and talked about how data is currently generated as well as how the data is communicated from the car to a field technician on what its current state is.
“Think sensors, cameras, actuators, the computational units that send all that data to a middleware system or an operating system, for them to push that information out, both to the OEMs and to the technicians that are the workforces on the ground to let them know, ‘Hey, cosmetically you can see that there’s damage that’s been done,’ but now, the car can also tell you there’s things that not necessarily can even be seen that there might be some underlying issues that might need to be addressed,” Heffner said.
He has seen heavy reliance on condition reports as another trend that has taken place as people could no longer examine a vehicle physically in-lane.
Condition reports give buyers an overall view of how the vehicle is doing structurally, mechanically, and electrically, Heffner said.
“The more data you can provide them and the more information and transparency you can provide on just what the state of that vehicle is, has become all the more vital in how they make their purchasing decisions,” he said. Sellers want to disclose as much information as possible, and that along with pressures related to lack of inventory are amplifying the need for available comprehensive information.
Additional technology has hit the market recently to help dealers with the recon process. Used vehicle reconditioning software company ReconVelocity in February released VelocityEngage. a digital sales presentation tool.
ReconVelocity owner Hugh Hathcock said the tool serves as a digital portfolio.
“We give the consumer the original window sticker, we give them all the service records, and we give them the recon records,” Hathcock said. “We show all the things that a consumer needs to see in one place.” He said the company in less than two months added about 300 dealers as users by bundling VelocityEngage and the ReconVelocity software together as one tool.
Consumers almost prefer that disinfectant smell
For Spiffy, odor elimination in vehicles has become a hot topic among customers.
“They’re OK if it smells like a disinfectant,” Wingo said. “In fact, that’s almost preferred right now. I think that actually builds confidence to have a disinfectant-type smell there.”
Adding to the odor issue: the legalization of cannabis in several states.
“That is a huge odor problem for both our used-car customers and our rental car customers, especially,” Wingo said.
Wingo said he has had to travel in vehicles smelling of tobacco or cannabis.
“Now we’re hearing a lot of customers are refusing to take vehicles because of odors, and we’re hearing cannabis,” he said.
Vaping has also caused vehicle odor issues. Wingo said many of the vaping technologies feature exotic smells such as raspberry and blueberry.
“And for used cars, pet odors are a thing, so there’s a lot of focus on odor elimination right now as well,” Wingo said, noting that Spiffy uses various odor-elimination products.
“And it’s actually harder than it seems, because these odors can permeate the vehicle, they can get into the fabrics, they can get into the cabin air filter, [and] a lot of time they do get into the HVAC system,” he said. Spiffy is currently developing proprietary technology that might involve running a device in the vehicle for about 30 minutes for 99% odor removal.
“We’re working on that, because it’s such a big issue for our customers,” Wingo said.
Electrification of fleets
Cox Automotive Mobility is seeing that its OEM partners and fleet management companies are showing strong interest toward electrification of their fleets.
“The level of working on an internal combustion engine and an electrified vehicle or a battery-elect vehicle, [they are] similar in some ways,” Heffner said. “But when you talk about propulsion systems themselves, there are a lot of things that are vastly different.”
The company’s technicians have gone through extensive training to ensure they are prepared to handle battery-electric vehicles, he said.
“We certainly believe in the ACES future or autonomous connected electrically shared, and also our partners that are in those things, whether they’re delivering people or goods,” Heffner said.
He went on to say, “There’s no doubt that they are bringing to bear, if you will, the idea of beginning to migrate their fleets over. It’s a slow process, but we’re already starting to see a lot of indications that there is movement in that direction.”
Another trend he mentioned is that new form OEMs such as Motional and Electric Last Mile are entering the market and asking Cox Automotive Mobility for help in servicing those vehicles.
Heffner said it all goes back to understanding what the car is communicating.
“Our clients are wanting us to help them in interpreting that information on what the vehicle is telling us, whether it’s internal combustion or electric vehicles, what’s being presented to them,” he said. “And then what repairs really need to be sought after and cared for so that you’re meeting the standards of either those OEMs or fleet operators and management companies.”
Reconditioning software company Rapid Recon announced workflow transparency for dealers’ new-car operations, which it says is identical to its reconditioning workflow software and processes for its used-car system.
For both systems, inventory is auto-imported and tracked throughout the workflow processes, which the company says makes a dealer’s new inventory completely transparent.
Working with the dealer’s new-car team, Rapid Recon creates a customized, stand-alone New-Car Workflow that mirrors their existing process.
With that flexibility, everyone involved in new car preparation and sales can access new-vehicle tracking from In Transit to Sold within Rapid Recon.
Rapid Recon said dealers expect accountability and transparency from their Rapid Recon used car workflow. That can now be reflected in their new-car workflows, according to the company.
Staff can now access new-car workflow from desktop, laptop, tablet, iPhone, Android or any device, which provides complete real-time mobility to the team.
The system helps make checking in vehicles off the transport truck more straightforward, and Rapid Recon records real-time arrival times. If an in-transit claim is made against the manufacturer, the user can add supporting details such as photos and notes to the vehicle record in Rapid Recon and send to the warranty clerk for submission.
All the information is stored permanently in the Rapid Recon vehicle record.
Rapid Recon said new-car workflow details are accessible in real-time from almost anywhere. That provides real-time vehicle progress updates to your sales personnel. The company describes the new car workflow as an important tool for your BDC.
Dealership general managers and their fixed and variable operation managers can see a benefit when using Rapid Recon to drive inventory turn, increase labor hours and parts revenue. With Rapid Recon, the sales team gains in-their-hand, on-the-go mobile inventory intelligence, which the company said can help them build value in the deal from their first contact with the prospect.
More than 20,000 monthly users across more than 2,400 auto dealerships currently use Rapid Recon workflow software.
New-Car Workflow from Rapid Recon is available for $249 a month with a current Rapid Recon core product subscription.
Digital and next-generation merchandising company Xcite Automotive has launched a dealer-centered service that it says can streamline the reconditioning and merchandising process of preparing vehicle inventory for sale.
The service is called ReconLogic, and it can help get vehicles “retail-ready” in five days or fewer. Xcite describes that as a much faster turnaround than the 12 to 14 days many dealers experience today.
Two locations are now fully operational, serving Chicago-market dealers.
Xcite says dealers should respond to consumers’ desire to research and buy their cars online as the COVID pandemic drives even greater online vehicle shopping.
Because of that, dealers must provide up-to-date inventory in real time, Xcite said. ReconLogic speeds up that process.
It does so by eliminating the inefficiencies of using several vendors to pick up vehicles, detail them, and have them professionally photographed. The one-source and one-invoice service reduces the time, cost, and hassle of managing multiple vendors, according to the company.
ReconLogic’s seven-step process includes quality control checks to transport vehicles from the dealer’s lot to a ReconLogic Center. There, the vehicle receives a full interior and exterior detail before being transferred into an automated photo studio for an exterior and interior photo shoot.
The shoot includes the interactive 360 Spin, which Xcite says is important in today's competitive automotive marketing climate. Vehicles are ultimately transported back to the dealer lot fully reconditioned and merchandised — in five days or fewer.
To provide the service to dealers, ReconLogic has developed Lotgistics, a proprietary software system that tracks inventory throughout the reconditioning process. That helps more efficiently update dealers on their vehicles’ status.
The company also provides estimates by text when vehicles arrive at the centers needing more extensive wheel repair, paintless dent repair, window tinting, bumper repair, or paint touch-up.
A video shows the entire process from start to finish.
"In today’s faster-paced and competitive automotive climate, the industry has been charged with decreasing workflows and eliminating bottlenecks that help them more easily and efficiently prepare vehicles for market — both for in-person and online sales,” Xcite Automotive partner and chief executive officer Phil Penton said in a news release.
Penton continued, "We developed ReconLogic to do just that — to help dealers increase their speed to market and reduce costs. ReconLogic understands the impact that the reconditioning process can have on dealers’ financial performance, and we responded to that by creating a one-stop-shop to handle all their reconditioning and merchandising needs in one place. Our focus is on how to help our dealers get their inventory lot ready more quickly without the loss of quality."
Xcite Automotive plans to expand the ReconLogic centers into major U.S. markets in 2021.
A company providing a solution primarily to just independent dealerships in Utah received a funding injection to broaden its customer base nationwide and with franchised stores, too.
Carketa, the Utah-based developer of the Carketa Recon Software as a Service app and the Carketa Condition Report announced on Thursday that it closed a $1.375 million seed round financing led by Crosslink Capital with additional funding from Hack VC.
Carketa reiterated that its mission is to help independent and franchised dealers sell more vehicles faster online.
Carketa was founded last year and primarily marketed to Utah-based independent dealers.
“With this funding Carketa is expanding sales to independent and franchised dealers nationwide” Carketa chief executive officer Brady Thurgood said in a news release.
Carketa was formed to improve the reconditioning process to simply sell more vehicles per month. The company explained the Carketa Recon is dynamically reconfigurable to match any dealers current process and is tightly coupled with the Carketa Condition Report, a 200-point inspection system detailing a vehicle’s current condition.
With Carketa Recon, a dealer can upload inventory from a dealer management system (DMS), manage cars from the auction to the customer with active inventory management and vehicle valuations.
And with Carketa Connect, dealers and customers can track the vehicle through the recon process, often selling the unit before it’s on the front line.
Carketa co-founder Jason Berry also owns Action Auto, one of Utah’s fastest-growing independent dealerships.
“Carketa has helped my dealership set record-setting sales months even through COVID-19,” Berry said
Crosslink Capital is based in San Francisco with a focus on investments in digital media, internet services, financial technology, and business services. Parter Jim Feuille explained why the firm decided to fund Carketa.
“We’re excited to lead the seed round for Carketa,” Feuille said. “We have been impressed by what the team accomplished in a short period of time and look forward to supporting their vision to produce better car dealer solutions as car sales move on-line.”
Carketa also said it is expanding its sales team across the country and into Canada, too.
“We’re excited about what the next 12 to 18 months holds for Carketa,” Thurgood said. “Online car selling is a significant change in auto retailing. We are fortunate to be in a position to help dealers deliver a more efficient car selling experience. Research shows 90% of car buyers do their research online.”
For more details, go to Carketa.com.
If a piece of inventory arrives at your store on Monday, Rapid Recon wants that vehicle standing tall on the front line by Friday — if not sooner.
The workflow management solution for vehicle reconditioning designed to help franchised, independent and buy-here, pay-here dealers, announced on Monday that dealerships in every U.S. state now can use this software system to increase inventory turns and accelerate used vehicle speed to sale.
The company said it is now completing its 50th-state installation with Yellowstone Motors, a four-franchise dealership, in Powell, Wyo. Rapid Recon also serves and supports dealership reconditioning installations in eight of 10 Canadian provinces, and in Puerto Rico, Guam, South Africa and Australia.
Rapid Recon highlighted 2,000 dealers and more than 20,000 users leverage its data and precise work item control to reduce dealers’ time to prepare used vehicle for resale to three to five days. The industry norm is 10 to 20 days or longer, according to the company.
By giving dealers a precise advantage for getting vehicles professionally sales ready more quickly, Rapid Recon software can help franchised, independent and BHPH dealers increase inventory turn and per-vehicle profit.
Rapid Recon explained that its tool is designed from the ground-up to help dealers know it, find, and sell it — a reconditioning rhythm that meant to ensure a higher lead conversion rate through the sales and BDC departments.
Founded in 2010, Rapid Recon has now managed more than 13 million vehicles through its system, ensuring its customers have the data and recon team experts to deliver benchmarking and best practices for continual vehicle reconditioning improvement by design.
For more details, go to www.rapidrecon.com.
Carvana is building a $25 million vehicle inspection and reconditioning facility near Richmond, Va., the Virginia governor’s office announced Thursday.
This is the second inspection and recon facility announced in the last four months involving Carvana, which recently began a similar project near Charlotte, N.C.
It is estimated the Richmond-area recon facility will generate 400 new jobs. The facility, which will be located in Chesterfield County, will be used for inspecting and reconditioning vehicles, as well as taking 360-degree photographs of the cars.
This is designed to give consumers a “detailed, high-definition virtual tour of every vehicle,” the Virginia's governor’s office said in a news release.
“Carvana is a fast-growing national company, and we are proud that it has chosen to locate and create new jobs in Chesterfield County,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in the release. “This is an exciting win for the region and for the Commonwealth.”
Carvana director of logistics Benjamin Morens said in the release: “Carvana has been growing extremely rapidly over the last several years, and we are working to bring The New Way to Buy a Car to even more customers all the time.
“As part of our efforts to scale the business, we’re looking forward to working with Chesterfield County and the state of Virginia to open a vehicle inspection and reconditioning center, and becoming a member of the community,” he said.
In the company’s recent quarterly earnings call and letter to shareholders, Carvana leadership discussed just how important these recon and inspection facilities, also known as IRCs, are to its growth goals.
Carvana currently has seven inspection and reconditioning facilities open. They are located in Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Cleveland and Nashville, Tenn.
Just before Labor Day, Carvana said it will locate a new inspection and reconditioning facility in Cabarrus County, N.C. that would add annual recon/inspection capacity of about 67,000 vehicles. The existing capacity for the seven centers is an estimated 350,000 units.
Chairman and chief executive Ernie Garcia III said during the earnings call that before completing such facilities in Indianapolis and Cleveland, Carvana had no Midwest inspection centers. “So many markets in the Midwest suddenly got cars a lot closer to them, and the offering got better,” Garcia said.
“Those markets had broader selection, and they had faster delivery times. What we saw there was a 20% reduction in average miles traveled by all cars that were sold in those 10 markets that were nearest those bases. And we also saw sales more than double in those markets and grow over twice as fast as we would have otherwise expected,” Garcia said.
In the letter to shareholders, Garcia and chief financial officer Mark Jenkins said, “Continuing the march toward our long-term goal of selling 2 million+ vehicles per year requires a multi-year expansion plan. This means ensuring that our entire operational chain can expand quickly enough to fulfill the strong and growing demand for our offering.
“In particular, we are building a pipeline of potential IRC sites, which are the longest lead-time component of our model. Our real estate, reconditioning, logistics, wholesale, and purchasing teams have aligned to build out an institutional process for identifying and developing sites that are optimized for supporting our customers and logistics network.”
They later added: “IRCs deliver economies of scale that are a powerful force in our model. In particular, new IRCs create benefits in sales volumes and logistics expenses in surrounding markets.”
Correspondents Jim Leman and Daryl Lubinsky contributed to this report.
Reconditioning quickly can become complicated depending on the magnitude of servicing a vehicle might need and how much a dealer wants to spend on getting that unit out to the front line.
Mobile Tech RX rolled out special offers for its solution on Wednesday aimed at creating a dashboard so reconditioning technicians can make decisions more efficiently.
Mobile Tech RX explained its analytics product can capture the data generated from daily operations in dent, detail, interior, glass, paint and wheel repair to provide a holistic view of their businesses. It’s all designed to help dealerships make smarter decisions with Mobile Tech RX Analytics.
According to a global data and analytics survey conducted by PwC, highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to report significant improvement in decision-making. Data-driven decisions can drive optimization, operational efficiency and strategic growth.
Mobile Tech RX’s app has helped technicians who formerly operated their businesses with pen and paper go digital. The company said this switch from paper to mobile software has transformed the auto reconditioning industry and made it more streamlined, professional, and efficient. Today the industry passes another significant milestone as it gains the ability to capture and analyze important data.
“It’s the most valuable tool I’ve seen on the market,” said Matt Moore, Owner of EZ Dent in Athens, Ga., and a PDR technician with more than 15 years of industry experience. “This tool is allowing me to trim the fat on things that aren’t working and to double down on the things that are working.”
Until Dec. 2, all Mobile Tech RX users can get a 15% discount on the first year of Analytics using code Analytics15.
• Current Mobile Tech RX users can upgrade their subscriptions to the growing business plan from the Mobile Tech RX admin portal. Click the "Black Friday Promo" button on the Subscription page of the admin portal to activate the discount.
• New users can sign up for a free 30-day trial and use code Analytics15 in the pop up box after sign up. The 12-month discount will be activated when a credit card is added.
Learn more about Mobile Tech RX Analytics by going to this website.
A reimagined inspection process, an all-new inspection platform, condition reports that automatically follow vehicles across locations and an “Approvals from Anywhere” tool are among Manheim’s latest additions to its inspection and condition reporting technologies.
Manheim developed the most recent advancements in partnership with vehicle inspection company Alliance Inspection Management and says the additions provide buyers with “greater peace of mind when doing business digitally.”
A next generation inspection platform is one of those additions, and Manheim says AiM is powering the platform, which now features all-new hardware and software. The company says it built that software from the ground up, which it says will provide a faster and more consistent inspection.
Methodically guiding inspectors around the vehicle, the tool uses standard descriptions for vehicle issues. That, according to Manheim, reduces subjectivity for damage description and severity.
Because the new inspection devices are also equipped with 4G connectivity, that provides more mobility for inspectors inside and outside the auction gates, according to Manheim.
Automated build data is another addition, and Manheim says that human error in the new platform drops significantly through enhanced build data obtained via OEM and Chrome integrations.
Manheim adds that this data brings in VIN-specific details about each vehicle. That ensures that information such as year/make/model, trim level, color, interior, standard equipment, packages and options are imported automatically.
That enhancement speeds up inspection completion, according to the company. It also increases vehicle description accuracy, which the company describes as an important element in determining vehicle value.
Condition reports that automatically “follow” the vehicle are another enhancement, and Manheim says consignors that move vehicles between Manheim locations will appreciate that addition. With the new technology, condition reports can automatically “follow” vehicles.
Previously, if a vehicle inspection took place at one location and then moved to another, a manual process was necessary to transfer the original condition report to the new location. Now, however, the vehicle is automatically recognized by its VIN. The second inspector can confirm or update the condition. Instead of starting over, repurposing this information will improve Manheim condition reports’ consistency and accuracy.
Approvals from anywhere are an additional enhancement, and Manheim says clients using its reconditioning services can now make quicker and more informed decisions through the ability to review estimates and approve repairs on any device through their Seller Dashboard. Before that enhancement, clients would approve repairs in person, Manheim said. The new enhancement, however, gives them anytime, anywhere access to their estimates, and they also see an “intuitive process” to approve desired repairs.
Manheim says that new functionality speeds up the approvals process, keeping clients’ vehicles moving on the lot.
“The future of vehicle information combines the best technologies with the most comprehensive data — two things Manheim is uniquely positioned to capitalize on,” Manheim senior vice president of assurance and reconditioning Fredrick Standfield said in a news release. “As we move quickly toward automating vehicle information capturing, we will employ emerging technologies leveraging AI and Intelligent Damage Detection, adding significant value for our clients.”
Standfield added, “The rise of digital buying demands more accurate and consistent condition information, as fewer and fewer consignors are physically kicking the tires of their potential purchases.
“Manheim is leading the industry with unmatched data intelligence and new technologies — lessening subjectivity and delivering more comprehensive and actionable insights before the purchase.”
