Round 2016, Avenue Volkswagen ran a radio commercial to drum up enterprise for its gross sales and repair departments.

Within the industrial, the dealership in Amarillo, Texas, supplied to assist customers purchase a automobile they noticed elsewhere or transport a automobile from out of city, proprietor John Luciano mentioned. A couple of individuals took the shop up on the supply.

Quickly, Luciano and some different dealership leaders realized that curiosity probably may grow to be one thing greater. The shop drew up a kind for patrons to fill out with make, mannequin, yr, mileage, trim and shade specs of a selected automobile they wished, Luciano mentioned. The fledgling program obtained a reputation — Automobile Catcher — and a mascot of types, a caricature of a canine holding a magnifying glass.

“Folks need the automotive and do not wish to must drive to Oklahoma Metropolis or Dallas or no matter. They’d fairly take care of us,” Luciano mentioned. “We cost them a flat payment to do it, and so they adore it. We do all of the work.”

This system has resulted in incremental month-to-month automobile gross sales for the shop and has helped the dealership get trade-in automobiles and retain prospects who weren’t capable of finding the precise automobile they wished on the Avenue Volkswagen lot.

By means of this system, a buyer can request a selected automobile — 90 p.c are for used automobiles, 80 p.c for manufacturers apart from Volkswagen, Luciano mentioned. A workforce of managers then search the Web, wholesale public sale suppliers, even different dealerships in a peer group, to trace it down.

Many automobiles are acquired from different markets in Texas, together with Dallas and Houston, in addition to from Arizona and California. And the shop has acquired automobiles for patrons from as distant as Seattle and New Jersey, he mentioned.

Avenue Volkswagen, which sells a mean of 1,200 new and 1,600 used automobiles every year, expenses a flat payment of $750 to search out the automobile, plus the price of transport, tax, titling, licensing and any reconditioning, Luciano mentioned. He added that the quantity the dealership pays for these companies is identical quantity the shopper pays.

This system produced gross sales of roughly eight automobiles a month in its first two years, Luciano mentioned.

Quantity had elevated to fifteen Automobile Catcher offers a month till the previous few months, when the determine climbed to 16 to 18. Because the scarcity of microchips has constrained new-vehicle stock, fewer used automobiles are being traded in, he mentioned, and that has spurred curiosity in this system.

“We’ll in all probability work 25 of them, however in quite a lot of instances I can not discover the automotive. It is solely as many as I can really produce the automotive and are available to a workable deal the place they will conform to the worth,” Luciano mentioned. “Proper now, that is just a little more durable as a result of costs of automobiles are up.”

Some prospects inquire about this system considering it is a technique to a reduction, he mentioned. However that is not the case.

“That is so that you can get the automotive of your goals, the automotive that you simply’re on the lookout for,” Luciano mentioned. “In case you’re on the lookout for an affordable, low cost automotive, you simply want to come back by the lot and let me present you what I’ve.”

The purpose of this system is to accumulate trade-in automobiles, create a chance to promote a automotive and create repeat prospects who will return for future gross sales and repair and probably refer their mates to Avenue Volkswagen. Making it work requires a regular working process, he mentioned.

That begins with the shopper kind. The dealership requests a number of choices for colours and trim ranges to broaden the search. From there, he mentioned, job roles are outlined so workers know who can be chargeable for looking for the automobile, filling out paperwork and arranging for the automobile to be shipped.

Avenue Volkswagen asks Automobile Catcher prospects to fill out a credit score utility and conform to cost info previous to a automobile buy, although it doesn’t maintain the shopper to the deal if a automobile cannot be situated, Luciano mentioned.

Automobile Catcher is usually a final resort for a buyer when the dealership has exhausted all different choices.

“We have walked the lot. We simply haven’t got something. We do not have something coming in, and it may be a case of simply letting them go down the street and see if they will discover it elsewhere,” he mentioned. “Then we go into the dialog: ‘Would you want us to buy and try to discover you [a vehicle]? … Let me let you know just a little bit a few program we’ve. It is referred to as Automobile Catcher.’ ”