How we built a business out of recession — chapter 10 — to the bat phone

The story of CitNOW*

Courtesy of Car Dealer

This is the 10th chapter about CitNOW, the company started from a kitchen table in Winnersh, Berkshire. If you’d like to read from the beginning, here’s a link to chpt 1. Each chapter is a 5-minute read, it’s an early draft of a book.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Have you ever walked into a car showroom during the working week? I’ve walked into hundreds. They all have one thing in common, they’re empty. The occasional noise to interrupt pins dropping is the staff who work there. It becomes much less mausoleum-like when aftersales receptions are also located in the same environment. The truth is most of us reserve the physical act of buying a car for the weekend.

It was no different for Jason and his sales team at Jaguar Warrington. There would typically be three salespeople dotted around the showroom desks and Jason in his office. Much of the weekly activity was progress chasing sales and getting ready for the weekend with potential customers booked for test drives.