2015 was a record year for Manheim CV and January gets off to a flyer
Happy New Year from everyone at Manheim commercials and what an exciting year 2016 holds for us all…. Before I jump into 2016, let’s look back on how 2015 ended.
After spending nearly two weeks reflecting and looking at the Quarter 4 stats and performance, 2015 was a record year for Manheim commercials and had many highlights and depending how you look at them, challenges along the way. 2015 was a record year in terms of units sold, as well as a record breaking 33% sold online throughout the year – up 8% against last year. Another proud record was the increase in our CV buyer base which rose 15% on prior year and many of these contributed to our online sales penetration. Duplicated model stock proved to be a challenge throughout 2015 and when reflecting back our increase in buyer base and strong auctioneering skills helped turn these challenges into opportunities and overall manage expectations and deliver strong market results. The nearly new market throughout 2015 caused a similar problem, with aggressive deals on new vehicles, this contributed to prices softening in this sector and the increase in buyers to Manheim CV certainly helped find the true market prices for these vehicles. Finally, 2015 also saw a record amount of purely online only sales and bid weekender events for commercial vehicles. So to end 2015, Q1and Q2 were packed with high levels of stock which included large volumes of duplication and Q3 and Q4 recorded record levels of conversion rates and performance.Now on to 2016 and how exciting it looks…. Following on from the above Manheim CV are launching new sales and new sales channels in new areas of the country and we are doing this with passion, excitement and all will be delivered by our industry leading team members.
We have started 2016 with a bang, opening our first ever CV branch from scratch in the name of Shepshed Commercials.
The 10 acre site, located smack bang in the centre of the country just for commercial vehicles and includes a 360° degree turntable for vehicle imagery. After undergoing a seven figure investment this branch will be one of many to come as a centre of excellence for commercial vehicles, selling vans, trucks and plant. As you can imagine being involved from day one of this gives me great self-achievement and further demonstrates our passion and commitment to commercial vehicles and further underpins our stance as the UK’s number one CV auction company.
Following a very successful 2015 for Gloucester, the auction centre now holds two commercial sales per week continuing throughout 2016; the new sale will take place on a Tuesday afternoon at 2pm. Giving Gloucester two sales a week with excess of 250 vans per sale. This will be the only CV auction sale in the country held in the afternoon and we are very excited to see what this sale can deliver… watch this space.
The market place has been extremely strong from the word go, with our auction halls packed with buyers and online flashing away like my Christmas tree. We have seen very healthy attendances at all our seven CV sites as buyers have been out in force to purchase after a relatively starved of stock December, with most vendors during this period stopped selling after week one. We have seen conversion rates exceed prior year by up to 20% and some sales selling 90+% of their total sale entry in some centres and Shepshed’s launch sale produced an 82% conversion and 269 buyers in attendance and going into week 3 the market remains buoyant. I suppose the big question is how long will it continue…
My opinion is we will see a strong January, many buyers have reported there keenness to buy and stock up for what they feel with be a hopefully buoyant month of retail sales. Many buyers I have spoken to over the past two weeks have said December and the Christmas period was a buoyant retail period for most, and many of these have reported mixed messages on how successful January has been. I have noticed buyers purchasing patterns being a little different to January 2015… buyers over the last two weeks have been purchasing three to four units per sale rather than six to eight units last year - my opinion is buyers are being a little cautious as many got caught out by the heavy duplication during Quarter 1 and 2 of 2015.
I feel we just need to be mindful of the above and make sure we are pricing heavily damaged stock and product duplication at the correct market reserve price, from this the conversion rates and buyer following will walk hand in hand and overall the vendors who take in all aspects will reap the best performance overall.
So to conclude over the past two weeks, the LCV market has started very strong, catalogue entries have been increasing week on week and buyers footfall and clickfall remains positive, next week I will introduce the what’s Hot and Not models over the past three weeks.
Thank you again for your much valued business and continued support. Tune in every week to see how we’ve performed.
Until then, keep ‘Sharing the CV Love’.
Thanks Matthew
