Firms adapting to customers’ needs

1Rockar

Digital, South Newbald LEADING in online car retail, driven by its own e-commerce platform, Rockar has put customers back in the driving seat when purchasing.

The concept has been rolled out for Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Ford, Jaguar Land Rover and a host of dealer groups.

With Jaguar Land Rover alone, Rockar is named Number One Retailer for New Retailer Vehicles in the UK, selling more than 6,000 models. The platform logged

1.6 million visits – with 80 per cent new to the brand.

The user journey adapts to evolving ecommerce buying behaviors, logged daily through its back-end analytics platform.

In 2019, turnover increased by almost 10 per cent to £52.4m, with profit up 23 per cent to £6.4m.

The 77-strong team led by Martin Sewell takes pride in delivering the “only e-commerce automotive platform that sells cars in significant volume, providing an extensive, customer-centric data driven environment’ for manufacturers and groups”. g p

2 Soanes Poultry, Middleton-onthe-wolds

A HUGE investment programme is already paying back in growth for the fourth generation family business, with sales of £24m eyed in 2020-2021.

A £3m uplift, it comes as the near £10m expansion is completed, increasing capacity by 20 per cent.

State-of-the-art chicken farms have been created with significant improvements in quality, efficiency, output and profit, overseen by a new senior management tier.

It also grows the cereal feed, fuelling biomass power generation with the by-product.

Soanes worked around the clock to deliver to Yorkshire’s independent butchers, farm shops and delis when

Covid hit. At the peak of the pandemic, a sales uplift of 200 per cent was recorded, with loyalty to shopping locally retaining levels at 100 per cent, prompting a prepacked chicken range for convenience stores.

Investment in personnel and procedures has seen Soanes retain well, while bringing top-quality standards, entering the London market for the first time.