After only three months in operation, autolocator, the joint on-line vehicle retail venture between motoronline, CARtoday.com and IOL, generated business in excess of R412 000 for subscribing dealers in August.
After only three months in operation, autolocator, the joint on-line vehicle retail venture between motoronline, CARtoday.com and IOL, generated business in excess of R412 000 for subscribing dealers in August.
"We are very excited by the quick up-take of both dealers and consumers to using autolocator,” says Mike von Hone,
Managing Director of autolocator. "We expect this figure to grow rapidly as autolocator gains momentum and an increasing number of dealers subscribes across all geographic regions in South Africa".
"We are also making good progress in growing the vehicle database that already has more than 6 000 vehicles listed, and our call centre has recorded receiving up to 40 enquiries per day in peak times.
“Our goal is to facilitate over R1 million of business per month for our subscribing dealers and we are confident of achieving this by the end of the year," Von Hone added
WesBank and MSN have recently added autolocator to their website offering as a value-added service to their online communities, thus ensuring visitors access to the database of over 6 000 new and used vehicles. “It has always been our intention to make the autolocator service available to as many online users as possible and we are currently in negotiations with other motoring related websites to ensure we do exactly that,” von Hone said.
Despite the subdued current economic climate in South Africa, there is enough evidence to indicate that internet retailing, particularly vehicle retailing, is entering a period of sustained growth.
As an example, McCarthy Online increased its turnover by 50 per cent to R12-million in its last financial year. McCarthy Call-A-Car recorded sales of 7 000 vehicles over the same period.