The Automotive Trade

With a total stock of over 50 million vehicles and annually around 3 million new registrations, Germany has the largest automotive market in Europe.

The automotive industry and the automotive trade therefore play a key role in German industry, especially against the background of other key industries, such as electronics and engineering, being closely entwined with the automotive sector.

The management of an automobile dealership is one of the most complex tasks a manager can face today.

There is immense inter- and intra-brand competition. For over 10 years the industry has been in a still continuing process of concentration: fewer and fewer dealerships are competing for market share in both sales and services. Their increasing size requires organization and IT-structures far beyond the dealer or the repair shop “around the corner” of the past.

In addition, external influences and rapidly changing market and competitive conditions require a high degree of flexibility and the complete business model to have a certain insensitivity to special influences and situations, such as oil price dependence, political intervention in the market (scrappage bonus, tax legislation), the influence of major foreign markets (formerly mainly the U.S. market, currently and in future to a similar extent the BRIC countries), difficult financing conditions, new customer needs and changing patterns of demand.

Therefore, a large number of threatened automotive dealers currently find themselves making efforts to reorganize and restructure financially. This is reducing their management scope when dealing with crucial issues and the strategic development of the company.

The automotive trade is one of the main areas of expertise of unitcell management consulting. Our team has long partnered entrepreneurs from the authorized automotive trade in complex projects from restructuring to strategic realignment. Unitcell consultants have the necessary expertise to solve short-term operational problems and to strategically realign automobile trading companies on a long-term basis. We have experience with almost all significant brands and excellent contacts to classic financing partners and venture capitalists.

We would be pleased if our automotive trade industry profile, which is available for download, and the statements it contains help you assess the market in general as well as your own position and perspectives. Should you be interested in discussing the situation further, we would be delighted to speak to you.

Thomas Brede
Director automotive centre of excellence