Changes at Cazoo
▶ The big news in the motor trade at present is Cazoo’s announcement that it is to stop retailing its own cars and instead become a sales platform for other traders to advertise cars for sale, alongside Auto Trader and ebay/gumtree Motors. In their own words, Cazoo is going to be “transitioning to a pure play automotive marketplace.”
While it has been no real secret within the industry that Cazoo has been struggling for some time, the announcement of a switch to advertising cars being sold by others was a surprise, especially given that when Cazoo launched in 2019, founder Alex Chesterman made no secret of his view that the existing motor trade was… well let’s just say he was far from complimentary and made clear he thought he could do a lot better.
How quickly this happens remains to be seen – it was suggested that Big Motoring World were looking to buy Cazoo’s stock of 3500 vehicles, though at the time of writing this doesn’t seem to have happened and Cazoo are still listing their own cars for sale on their website, though the actual Cazoo branding seems to have been reduced. Editor Martyn also says he saw a few Cazoo cars going through Eastbourne Car Auctions a couple of weeks ago, though it wasn’t clear whether these were trade-ins, former retail stock or cars acquired by their car-buying side.
Cazoo taff, however, have been told that for now it’s “business as usual.” In the same online meeting with staff, Cazoo Chief Executive Paul Whitehead said that the intention was to be a “strong number two” in the sales market, rather than take on clear leader Auto Trader directly. A rather strange aspiration, though he did also point out that a successful business doesn’t have to be number one, citing Rightmove and Zoopla as examples.
Interestingly, when Big Motoring World’s boss Peter Waddell was asked, at the Car Dealer Live event on March 7 whether he would be using Cazoo’s sales platform, he was emphatic that he would not be doing so, and would be sticking with Auto Trader.
However, even to be number two, Cazoo are going to have to mend a lot of fences with the trade, and court the self-same businesses as they initially thought were doing such a bad job. How successful they will be at doing this remains to be seen.