Online sales continue to surge at Manheim

If there was any doubt about the willingness of buyers to bid for used cars online, Manheim Auctions’ latest quarterly figures show that using the internet to buy stock in physical auctions is booming across the country.

With all of its 19 UK centres fully geared up to broadcast live physical sales over the web Manheim is now transmitting live action from the auction halls for around 40 sales each week. Using its latest Simulcast technology the auction giant is seeing the overall number of online bidders and vehicles sold on the web continuing to grow at between 7% and 10 % each month. This is continuing the trend of doubling Simulcast sales each year since its launch in 2005.

In the first quarter of 2008 alone, 1350 individual trade buyers have logged into physical auctions using Simulcast on a combined 11,150 different occasions. Of these bidders, 1014 have actually bought online, successfully scooping up over 4000 cars between them.

Manheim’s report shows that already this year 85 different vendors, including leasing companies, fleets, manufacturers, rental firms and dealer groups have all successfully sold cars on Simulcast. As in physical auction, regular vendors can build tremendous loyalty with buyers in the online community. One of Manheim’s first Simulcast vendors, Arval has now got a regular following of 255 active online buyers and Arval’s sales frequently sell 15% of the overall entry on the web. The highest converter of sales to online buyers is currently Volkswagen with 110 registered web bidders who regularly snap up 20% of the overall entry, with some sales exceeding 40%!

As for the buyer experience, Hampshire-based trade buyer Darren Taylor whose company Motorline buys stock on behalf of over 15 franchised dealer groups and used car supermarkets is very enthusiastic about Simulcast. He said, “I’ve been using the service for over 2 years and it’s now become part of my daily routine. You simply log into Manheim’s daily catalogues, select the vehicles you’re interested in, view the full condition reports to ensure there are no surprises and then bid on the system as the various lots come through. Pretty much every day now we successfully buy all types of cars online competing with auction hall bidders at six of Manheim auctions, including Leeds and Colchester. There’s still plenty of competition to contend with in the halls but Simulcast lets me do this without leaving the showroom which is great when you’re trying to cover the country and feed a number of hungry dealerships. ”

Commenting on this increasingly popular channel to market, John Given Manheim’s Group Sales Director said, “The profile of vehicles sold online is quite interesting, averaging 28 months and 33K miles with an average sales value around £9500. Perhaps not surprisingly, in general vehicles sold online are slightly younger with less mileage than those sold to hall bidders, nevertheless the gap is narrowing and there are plenty of exceptions. What our figures do clearly show is that, as buyers become more comfortable with internet bidding, online purchasing is not just restricted to the nearly new, commodity type stock which perhaps it used to be. Providing buyers trust our descriptions and can obtain further advice from staff at our auction centres as required, they are quite happy to bid for all manner of stock.”