Face to Face: Unity Automotive

Unity Automotive factfile
Annual turnover £25 million
Franchises Subaru (3), Isuzu (3), SsangYong (1)
Annual sales volumes 575 new 700 used
Annual servicing 7,500-8,000
Properties freehold/leasehold
1 x freehold 2 x leasehold with purchase options

Jon Mathers is not your ordinary dealer group managing director. While most would agree this industry encourages competitive spirit, Mathers embraces that quality as a former global jet ski racing champion and time trial racing car driver.

With a recent acquisition taking Unity Automotive to three sites in Tredington, Warwickshire, Balsall Common, near Coventry, and Peterborough, making it one of the largest Subaru specialists in the UK, there’s no mistaking Mathers’ passion and ambition to succeed.

That fire for cars has existed since helping out at his father’s Ford business doing minor services at just 11 years old.

He was told the best route to getting a full time job at a dealership was through the parts department so that’s where he started. He was running the department at 18.

He told AM: “I was selling cars from the parts department and I became sales director at 25 after moving into the sales department for a few years.”

It was at this point Mathers was having to juggle his sporting career racing jet skis with his responsibilities in the showroom.

Mathers said: “My boss at the time said to me: ‘One of us is going to retire and I hope it’s me.’

“I would be away racing in America or Portugal and it was his way of politely saying it was my time to focus.

“So from that point onwards I started working on a future plan to buy Crossroads garage out.”

Mathers became part of Crossroads’ exit strategy and in 2003, along with two business partners, successfully completed a management buy out of the business.

International Motors, the Subaru and Isuzu importers, recognised Mathers’ potential and passion for the brands and supported him with his ambition to run the business.

He said: “They’ve always been incredibly supportive of me.

IM has sent me away on countless residential courses to become a dealer principal and it has invested a lot of time and effort
in me.

“When we went to the stocking companies asking for £800,000 IM supported us and told the bank we were a good bet.
“While IM has had other groups and other dealerships coming in and out of the fold, we’ve stayed constant. We’re at the front of the Subaru world, everybody knows within that very tight community that we’re passionate brand specialists when it comes to that product.

“So from 2003 to 2008, whenever a special edition of the Imprezas was launched we were their biggest seller. And if you look at the who’s who of the top sellers of the original Terzos, the RB5, WR1, RB320, it’s us.”

The turnaround

Performing an MBO was difficult enough, but it wasn’t until Mathers took on his second site that things really started to
get challenging.

The burning ambition to expand led to the business taking on a failing Subaru and Isuzu site in Peterborough. The business was a month away from closure, losing close to £30,000 a month and the latest accounts showed the business was running at an annual loss of £294,000.

Mathers admits the full picture of just how much trouble the business was in wasn’t revealed immediately.

He said: “Some of the information seemed obvious and some of it we uncovered later, which is the normal way in a buyout.

“We knew from the first conversations we had when we were doing the takeover, talking to the staff, that there was a big problem here.”

The dealership was without a working dealer management system, the accounts were not set up properly and the dealership was not working under any daily controls.

Mather said: “We had some fairly fast pedalling to do with demoralised staff because they all quite rightly thought ‘any minute now we’re going to be looking for a new job’.

“So we had the three biggest issues you could possibly have. We’d got demoralised staff, no customer database and no DMS.”

Within a week, Mathers installed processes and systems from the Tredington site to breathe life back into the business.

Mathers has now increased revenue across the group by 40%. It has the highest customer satisfaction scores for Subaru UK with a net promoter score 20 points ahead of the national average of 54%.

Discover and Develop

Training was a major aspect of how Mathers saved the Peterborough dealership, with its AM Award winning training programme “Discover and Develop”.

Each member of staff underwent psychometric testing and evaluated to see if their personalities matched the positions they were already in.

Mathers said: “You might have a star performer technician potentially who would be much better in parts because that’s the way his preference flow would be, the way he takes information in, the way he can relay it.

“So we basically rejigged the staff roles to make sure that we housed the right people in the right places.

“The wrong person in the wrong role will never excel and they probably won’t enjoy coming to work and everything about the job becomes a problem.”

Mathers knew the process worked because of using it at the Tredington site for four years, but there were still ego problems that were encountered during the changes.

He said: “You have to get them to forget about the titles or how they’re perceived, and to try working in a different environment and in a different role.

“I’ve changed a service manager to a parts manager, which was a radical step for him as well.

“And he’s flown with that side of the business because he was much more in tune with it and he’s doubled the profits, but without doubling the turnover. He’s got the profit margins up because he’s much more interested in selling, he’s much more focused, and that suits his personality.”

Clearly, some people are not going to enjoy a change like that and the business did lose some employees. The previous staff were used to working without processes and as soon as they were put in place their ability to do whatever they wanted meant they just left of their own accord rather than having to be “pushed”.

Mathers said: “They were given the options and they were given coaching and mentoring, but literally it was too big a leap for three of them.”

Click on page two for the second part of AM's Face to Face interview with Jon Mathers

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Manufacturer relationships

Consistency with your partners is essential when operating a business and this is a big positive for Unity.

Mathers said: “Subaru and Isuzu have been incredibly consistent with their mindset and ethos. “We adopt all of their new procedures, policies, digital media, web rules, and not surprisingly we’re always in the top three for volume.

“We’re one of their most profitable dealers. Rather than fighting against it, we embrace everything they give us because you can’t change things you can’t change.”

The strength of the yen is one of those issues Mathers can’t change. But rather than creating cash offers or low rate finance, the business has developed ways of engaging with customers long term.

Every single person who buys a car, new or used, from Unity will get 50 years of free breakdown recovery.

Mathers said: “There are no tricks, there are no catches and it’s not seen as a brand discount or anything else, it’s very simple. You keep that car for 50 years and we’ll still cover it. All you have to do is have your annual service and an MoT with us, that’s it. We’re trying to be different, because I don’t want to discount cars, I want to sell them for as much money as I possibly can.”

Unity Automotive uses the net promoter system (NPS) throughout its business. Rather than just use it just for service, it’s used at every stage of the business - for test drives, parts invoice and lost customers. If a customer buys from a different franchise it asks them why.
Mathers said: “We are incredibly proud of our feedback and recommending to a friend or a colleague is so vital in getting what NPS is all about, it’s vital to our business.”

Future growth

The next generation of Unity dealer principals are being nurtured and Mathers has guaranteed those positions.

As the business looks to grow to five Subaru dealerships before the end of 2013, Unity will have talent in place to lead those dealerships with Mathers’ processes.

Unity is an acquisitive business looking to expand, but Mathers is conscious of not wanting to grow too quickly, but he will be taking loyal members of staff with him on the journey.

He said: “We’ll start to grow a bit faster and as we pick up speed the guys in the top positions will mean everyone under them gets to shift up one place because I’m incredibly loyal to the people who are already loyal to me.

“I wouldn’t go out to the market and find myself a new dealer principal when I’ve spent 10 years mentoring people under me who understand how I tick and they know how I like to do things because I do have some particular quirks. I like everything just so.

Everything has to be perpendicular. I’m an attention to detail freak, I really like the detail side of the business.”

The group’s long-term future is with Subaru and Isuzu, but additional growth could come from SsangYong, which was added to the business in Peterborough.
Mathers said: “SsangYong’s business could grow quite significantly over the next three years.”

Making staff feel part of the business

Mathers fell in love with the concept of things like the John Lewis Partnership and having a business where everyone feels like they’re a part of it.

Every person at Unity Automotive has a chance to share in the profits of the business. It goes throughout the business based on selling and saving.

Mathers said: “If you can eke out the lifespan of a tool or piece of equipment, brilliant. If you can upsell that lifeshine to a customer, great. It’s about measuring things that have worked because when everyone’s looking at that £50 spent on an advert the rewards from it will be split 16 ways, so there’s always a global picture.”

Mathers believes staff engagement is also built through mutual respect. He said: “I would never ask anybody to do something that I wouldn’t do myself. And every time I come into the business I will make sure it’s spick and span. I clean the floor, I’ll empty the coffee machine. I will do those jobs. I will work the late hours, I’ll do the shows and I’ll do the shows that no-one else wants to do. I put myself at the front of the business. And I think people respect that if they’ve got a leader who they can believe in and they can trust.”

Mathers also makes sure the staff have fun with track days, go-karting and off-roading. As he puts it: “It’s a competitive environment, but this isn’t some high-pressure steam cooker of a dealership”.

Turning a passion into a business

Jon Mathers’ passion for racing has been incorporated into the business with his Pro R Subaru parts and specialist servicing operation.

Mathers said: “I’ll turn up on a Saturday when I’m not even scheduled to be there and just tinker around and be with the guys in the workshop because I genuinely like it.

“My life is intermingled and this isn’t a job to me. I get to play with great cars and drive them around and then drive them on track.
“And the racing is great, it’s been great for the business, it’s been great for our aftersales, it’s been great for our aftermarket because it gives us the credibility.

“If we can build 621bhp engines that can run a whole season, we can certainly maintain your 2.0-litre units.”

The business gets a lot of specialist engine building work because of its reputation.

Unity Automotive formula for success

- Invest in domain specific web addresses to increase online traffic and improve search engine optimisation
- CRM system which manages all customer interaction ensuring a consistent message
- Service, parts and sales work in unison
- Service department replicates the sales environment with matching furniture and employee clothing
- Discover and Develop programme for all staff
- All staff share in profits from the group
- Create unique offers for customers rather than discount deals
- Engage with customers on a regularly basis