November 18, 2016, 01:06 / Auto

Autoholding "Maximum" began selling cars online

It is difficult to impose additional services online that provide dealers with profits, experts warn Dmitry Gorshenin

General Director of Maximum Vadim Arustamyan expects to sell online up to 50 cars per month / L. Vereshchagina

St. Petersburg automobile holding Maximum is launching a full service for selling cars online. Investments in the Carmart project amounted to about $1 million, of which 40 million rubles. went towards salaries for programmers and other staff, and a special tow truck was also purchased, the general director of Maximum and Carmart Vadim Arustamyan said yesterday.

According to him, the buyer will not need to come to the dealership: payment is made by bank transfer, cars are delivered within a week, depending on the set of additional equipment. Within St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, delivery is free. Both new and used cars will be available. The partners of the project are PJSC Sberbank and JSC AB Rossiya; the selection of banks and negotiations with their representatives took from six months to a year, the development of the entire project took a year and a half, says Arustamyan. The company pays the acquiring commission itself; Arustamyan does not name its amount, specifying that it is “one of the best in the industry.”

On the website, the car will be on average 2% cheaper than at the dealership; savings are possible due to a reduction in personnel costs, and when the project develops in the future, due to the absence of capital construction costs, notes Arustamyan. The site’s system calculates the purchase price, taking into account the choice of additional equipment, certain insurance and credit programs, as a result, the price of the car may be lower than the manufacturer’s price, he says.

Payment by card

Since the beginning of the year, North-West Bank of Sberbank has increased its Internet acquiring turnover by 1.7 times, amounting to more than 2 billion rubles, the press service reported.

“The project is not planned to pay off, the goal is to occupy the market,” says Arustamyan. Operating return without taking into account investments will be ensured by selling about 30 cars per month, he clarified. By the end of 2017, the company plans to sell 30–50 cars monthly via the Internet, and in five years - about 30% of the total volume. The first purchase at Carmart took place during the beta version of the site, says a company representative.

In the first half of 2016, Maximum sold 2,233 new cars, which is 23% more than in the same period last year. Maximum’s portfolio includes Hyundai , Ford, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Honda, Uaz and SsangYong, all of them are available online, except for the last two, they are planned to be added to the site in the near future, says Arustamyan. At the start of the project, the database included 500 new cars and 250 used ones.

Carmart predicts that the e-commerce market will grow by 20% this year, and in 10-20 years almost half of all cars will be sold online. In the first 10 months of 2016, 1.147 million cars were sold in Russia, which is 13.3% less than in the same period last year, according to AEB.

A similar project for selling cars online was launched by the Moscow group of companies Favorit Motors. The Avilon dealer already sells 3-4 used cars per quarter with full online payment by bank card and promises to connect new cars to the system by the end of the year. Moreover, after paying for the car, the buyer comes to the car center with a card, inspects the car, signs an agreement and picks up the car himself. Alfa Bank and Sberbank are participating in the project, which charge an acquiring commission of 1–1.5%, one of Avilon’s partners told Vedomosti in October.

Group of Companies Rolf will begin taking prepayments for cars online in December, says Sergei Solonchenko, director of strategic development of the group. The company began accepting payments and prepayments for cars by card at dealership centers in August 2015; over the year, the acquiring share amounted to 20% of retail sales. According to him, the main problems for Russian online car sales are in the mentality of clients: “Purchasing high-tech goods traditionally requires the presence of a client. This also applies to choosing and testing a car and its options.” Rolf doubts that there are many customers on the market who are able to buy a car without visiting a dealership.

Only the mass segment can be sold via the Internet; for the premium segment, presence is important - to select the necessary options, understand the configuration, choose the type of leather, agrees Igor Sedov, director of development and sales at Axel Group. There is a category of people who would prefer to buy even premium cars online, but there are very few of them, he believes.

The determining role in the choice is played by service and price: if it is lower than that of premium segment dealers, then the buyer will choose to purchase online, says Mikhail Chaplygin, general director of Auto-Dealer-SPb. According to him, Carmart is limited in the choice of brands of new cars: of those currently presented, only Hyundai Genesis is premium.

On the Internet, it is more difficult to sell additional services that provide the main profit, explains a top manager of one of the car dealers: “At the moment of buying a car at a dealership, a person is in a euphoric state, he will not refuse additional services, and if he regrets it, then later.” Convincing people to purchase additional insurance or equipment on the website is much more difficult, he clarifies.

At Terra Auto, it is possible to pre-select and order a car online, but the transaction can only be legally completed at the car dealership. The dealer is considering the possibility of developing car sales via the Internet, this will attract an additional pool of customers who are adherents of digital technologies, said Natalya Eroshenko, head of the marketing department of Terra Auto Group of Companies. In dealer centers of the network, about 40% of service transactions are paid through acquiring, bank commission is about 1.33% - car dealerships cover acquiring costs, says Eroshenko.

The Wagner group is further developing the format for online sales, but they do not take a commission, said Mikhail Podushko, director of marketing and CRM of the Wagner group: “The client can order a car in his personal account and pay for it in the bank according to the invoice issued.”

Gradually, costs along the entire chain of car creation will be reduced, right up to the construction of showrooms; any savings for the manufacturer will be used, says Ivan Bonchev, managing partner of EURussia Partner.