Confounded
A high energy podcast with its own video channel featuring interviews with amazing people who have overcome adversity and life’s challenges to be successful in unique and wonderful ways.
Confounded
Tom Wood explains how to sell £100m of cars in six months.
A fun and insightful chat with Tom Wood, the CEO and founder of Cazana.
In a short space of time, he has built the company, raised crowdfunding and equity funding, bought https://carandclassic.co.uk and taken to Cazana to be a leading data company in the automotive space.
Tom hails from a business & innovation background having led technology teams within investment banking and pharmaceutical sectors and founded and sold companies in the marketing technology space.
Cazana provides automotive insights for the future of vehicle ownership. Using big data and predictive analytics, Cazana analyses millions of automotive transactions daily to assess the value and risk associated with every vehicle on the road
Cazana’s systems are used by manufacturers, finance companies, dealerships and insurers globally.
(Since this was recorded Cazana was sold to Cazoo)
Hi, tom. Welcome to Confounded TV. How are you, hi? Thanks for having me. Good Thank you. You are in Italy, not in the UK. I am in Italy. Yes, your whole team has gone virtual and you don't really have any plans to go back to an office-based business.
Speaker 2:We still have an office in London. We've got a couple of years. We've just moved into a new, bigger office before this all happened. We still have an office in Bucharest, so we've got two main bases for the business. Interestingly, I think the Bucharest team probably got back earlier. They're quite keen to get back into the office.
Speaker 1:They're the dev side of things.
Speaker 2:Dev and data yes, they're a slightly younger team and you're keen to get their office bands back. I think the coronavirus situation in Romania is less severe, I guess, than it is in the UK, so they can reopen stuff sooner. I think we've said to our team we won't be back until September. At least we'll review it. Then we asked everybody. A couple of months ago I had a people sent out a series of questions to the team saying what do you want to do? Clearly, everyone's working from the moment. That's going to be the same for a little while. Where do you want to go? How do you want to be set up? Everyone wants to take a seat right. They want an office going on Fridays, so we have drinks and I want to work for the rest of the time, and there's a different spectrum of responses in between.
Speaker 2:We are now Casano and Caracol are now officially distributed first. We've onboarded five, six people. Since we're getting a march into the business, we don't care where they are. We're not hiring based on location anymore. We are a distributed first workforce. We have worked out with things like being able to carry laptops and hoodies to people when they're on boarding stuff and wherever they might be in the world. We've put a huge amount of effort into asynchronous communication, so making sure people document their stuff and think about stuff before calling yet another Zoom meeting that can really overload you. I think people will be coming back in the office. I'm not saying it's the office's dead, but Could be followed up and a bit cheaper.
Speaker 1:Could be in Scotland. No, if you moved Once, everyone's going back, not every day every one. Obviously there's an opportunity there to not have quite so much real estate.
Speaker 2:Definitely. Yeah, sorry, I think Scottish office is like you're doing Scotland. That's good of you. If you like the ring. Yeah, I think that's where we'll end up. I think there's sales and marketing stuff that will always end up happening face to face.
Speaker 1:once we're through this, it's this kind of social thing, isn't it? I was doing some work for an affiliate company. The whole affiliate business is based on who you've been out for beers with. Pretty much the whole thing is all social, social, social. This has been an amazing change for them. You would employ people based on who they knew from the affiliate companies. All have nights out and they look after advertisers and publishers and they're very social and it's all had to shift, jump, all gone.
Speaker 2:We haven't cracked that. We're trying to crack it at the moment.
Speaker 1:The social side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm fed up with Zoom. Pubfeed is Everyone, is just a mechanism. It works brilliant right, but because you're doing this all day long, you don't want to do that all night long as well.
Speaker 1:But I think it's good, isn't it? I've seen it's like it separates like what is work, right? So people did all the Zoom stuff and kept up with their workmates and of course then they get to the point where they go Friday night. I can't be arsed, I'm going to go and do something else. And because they're not commuting and not quite when you commute, you go to the office, do the laundry, you commute back. You're really committed, and not that this is a bad thing, but actually just saying, actually I'll do my job and I'll just do it in that space and I'm not going to join your 44th quiz night this Friday, thanks, because I'd rather sit in the garden and drink rosé, and I know that's a bad thing.
Speaker 2:It's something to crack, though, isn't it? If someone can work out how to have social fun remotely, then that would be a good thing For that affiliate example you used there, right that networking and the soft side of selling. That is missing right now. That is completely missing from every industry right now.
Speaker 1:Right, I would recommend Davros Bingo. Actually he did that with RedBreen and Awin and the guy the host on there. He picked on me, unfortunately. He's like being at one of these comedy clubs when you're the guy at the front and he goes, you all pick on you for the whole evening and actually it's really good. It's the first time the whole lockdown actually felt like I've had a night out. That's pretty cool. I'd highly recommend that, davros Bingo.
Speaker 2:So once you're topped in to avoiding that front row scenario, then my camera's broken, something like that.
Speaker 1:No, what actually happened was even though I'm a contractor in there the marting guy who organised it because I was like the guy who was going to be I wasn't the most senior, just the oldest, I think, really and he said, oh yeah, else is in charge. So this guy just went hey you. And picked on me Everything from my haircut, where I came from, where I live, all the rest of it, and I kept giving him bounce back but changing my background to things like pork pies, because I was like they've lived here less to show, and it just got worse. But Davros Bingo shout out really good, that is actually a good night out for this. The affiliate link of the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll put the affiliate link somewhere.
Speaker 1:This is an affiliate link for you podcast. Yeah, so that is. I think the Zoom thing is quite interesting in the sense that I think there's overloaded Zoom meetings at first. Right, it was a bit frustrating, wasn't there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we've had more meetings in this period than we've ever had before, right, because people that was the people behavior At the beginning we can't have a chat, no, a machine or whatever, so we'll jump on a Zoom. And we've definitely recognized that we had Zoom fatigue and so we've kind of been a lot more questioning do you need to hop on a Zoom?
Speaker 1:for that? Or actually, what's the goal, what's the outcome, who really needs to be there and how long is this going to last?
Speaker 2:And we're resolving much more stuff now in threats, for example, right? So actually put a question rather than holding me listening. Put a question in Slack or put a question in Notion and let's have a thread of people that can ship and there might be people that are working weird hours because of childcare so they might not be able to respond to that thread until 10 at night, so they'll put their answer then. Within a couple of days, you'll have a thread where people have discussed it and a conflict conclusion, and which saved half an hour of everyone sitting there on a Zoom call.
Speaker 1:And you can dip it in that, I guess, because that's the thing People's life balance has completely changed. They're almost becoming almost everyone's becoming like a founder right. So one of the founder things, as I've always said, is you don't have a work life balance, you just have life, of which work is a major part of it, because you've got your investors, you've got your customers, just everything.
Speaker 2:And now everybody's in the shower. You know, that's what we do in weird places and I agree, like everyone else is doing that now. So everyone is now thinking about that, which is not a pretty good thing, but they're thinking more about stuff in weird hours, but they're also able to.
Speaker 1:It's cut the grass or look after the children or whatever, so they actually get much more flexibility. So actually it's the thing everybody said they wanted, and we'll see if they all come back to the office. We should obviously talk about your business. So I believe you started in the startup innovation arm of BMW and within what feels like a very few short years, you've done a deal with Xperia, you have raised funds through CrowdCube and you have gone on to buy a car in classic as you would, and now you're one of the biggest providers of data in the car sector. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a UK car sector. Yeah, it feels like a long few years, but yeah that's.
Speaker 1:But it is only 2017, or something, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean I started originally kind of 2012. I went to the full district of Boring but in 2012, wanted some data on classic car pricing. There was nothing out there, so we started grabbing data off the web looking at how the prices retail prices were changing, and I've always run I probably shouldn't use it. Real businesses, Businesses that make profit at the end of the day, and kind of bootstrap stuff, and so that was a there's a difference between a startup and a real business.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no. It's not a business. It's a business on accelerant right and you're not necessarily looking for end of the month profit, looking for growth right, whereas traditionally I'd always profit is key and perhaps is key in all those business raises, so that's why I'd always traditionally run it's the first four years of it was all around that it was about bootstrapping some of me. So we had this website, uk Vic or we had 200,000 people a month that were coming to it to check cars before they bought them. So they wanted a kind of a provenance check on steroids. We brought all of this different data together that was kind of public domain in government and some data from experience actually into one place. So we were very consumer to start with, but then the accelerant came in the form of BC in 2016. So it kind of went from me and a few freelancers in early 2016 to the team of 60, 65 people we've got today.
Speaker 2:So I guess, the relatively short period of time we I think that's pretty short.
Speaker 1:Four to 60 in a couple of years is pretty good, and that was passion capital, because they've got an eye for business. They always had a good eye for business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've got a lot of the huge amount of time for passion. We got very lucky. So people talk about the VC, the fundraising, the Trudge being long and hard and we got a guy called Rory BGS who was giving me some amazing advice. Rory Sterling wasn't he? Yeah, Rory Sterling, and he's like what are you doing here? This is way too early stage for us Go talk to Passion. So Passion were our second VC conversation, so kind of very, very, very lucky in that they were interested.
Speaker 1:And children. That's not normally what happens when you no, no, it's normally a hundred phone calls and they all tell you to go away, tom being jammy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there's serendipity and luck, isn't it? Because you can read some of the stuff that the idiots and LinkedIn put out about it. If you follow this formula, you can successfully raise funding for your business tomorrow. A lot of it is the business, the timing, the contacts, the network, and then just actually being introduced or knowing somebody, and that's where the hard work really comes in, isn't it? It's like the networking you put in will pay off in space.
Speaker 1:The only reason we're having this conversation is we met over a coffee for absolutely no reason whatsoever. True, yeah, true, apart from the fact we were starting stuff and that pays off, and that's the one thing you should really, for a young or first time founder doesn't have to be young anymore, I guess. But is that network network, network network? Because a member is one of my co-founders. He showed me the name. Was said your meetings are a waste of time, campbell, which is a famous phrase out of Braveheart. You had meetings that are a waste of time. I can't even do a Scottish accent and, however, I don't think they are. I think there's a kind of weird logarithmic impact that they have, the more of them you have with people who are interesting and useful and bright, obviously not just me, anyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's the key thing. There's some yeah, I think differently in those early days. It's absolutely essential. It's weird, actually, is stuff grow. Who's in this business goes to be different kind of steps on the ladder.
Speaker 2:Now it's much more about process and I'm terrible at process, which is why I had a bunch of people that are brilliant and a real and a real, you know, and I'm really good at bringing the right process in and doing it in the right way. So hiring is a good example. Right, we would almost spectacular city thanks CVs for the greets back in the day when you raised money in your desk or you've sold something big or you've grown in your product. That's pretty neat resource here. Okay, I'll take one of those speculative CVs and we throw into my inbox and it almost I think it doesn't ever work out many of those eyes, whereas now you know, recruitment is a real process.
Speaker 2:We've got a lot of that fit into working out what I think we I don't like. We have a brilliant person who really understands the process and the put amazing process in place, ben, to help us work out exactly what it is we're looking for, help, all that cultural fit stuff. So you can. You can turn all this stuff into process and it becomes less about laughing, more about probably the right steps. I totally agree with you. Like in the early days, it's about lots of those random coffees and stuff comes good Off the back.
Speaker 1:Which is pretty. It's interesting, isn't it? Because what you're really saying is you have a vision, you put stuff together, you hack stuff together, you work hard, you network, you get some cash, you keep building and there comes a point where it pivots from you doing being a jack of all trades and having all of this in your head to going actually. Now I need to pay someone who's an expert add this one bit and let them get on with it, and that's obviously. I think that's probably a time of running a business is a bit weird when you go from it's mine.
Speaker 2:It's really uncomfortable. It's a transition I've probably just pinned through or probably still going through. But yeah, you condition yourself in the early days of running a business to good looks like results. That like doing everything, working really hard at everything, whether that's sales or marketing or copywriting or dev even.
Speaker 1:Which coffee machine to buy. Right, it's literally everything.
Speaker 2:Literally the lot, and then good looks like now finding a bunch of really brilliant people they're the best possible people that are 10 times better than me at all of those individual things and creating an environment where they can go do their thing. So it's a very different world, a very different job. Frankly, I always say my job changes every quarter and there's a business change every quarter. I and my job changes every quarter and it's weird, like it's uncomfortable at the beginning when you're conditioned to doing loads of stuff equal success. Now, actually helping a bunch of people, creating an environment for the right people to turn up and do stuff equal to that's good fun isn't it, it is yeah, yeah, it is good fun.
Speaker 1:So you raised some money from passion and then you did some quite good hires after that from the sector and then you continued to grow out the data and then so from there to sort of. You then did that deal with experience. How long was that period and what was the changes you were going through there?
Speaker 2:So we did deal with experience in 2019, so, yeah, earlier last year and, but prior to that, I mean, I think the market we're going off to is there are a couple of pretty legacy players in the car Data market that been doing the same thing really like think like they did the same thing in the same way for a long period of time and, to be fair to them, I've done a brilliant job of being quite monopolistic. So we've only got their claws in and, and it's quite hard to displace that. We found that time, but that has kind of meant they haven't really needed to innovate. Would be much stuff differently?
Speaker 1:And so that's a pretty.
Speaker 2:This is like start up textbook markets to go off to right. There's quite a lot of money in it. It's quite data driven. So you know you can, you can reduce the cops of delivering that, you can improve the quality of them, do so provably and you can go and disrupt. So it's you know we've been doing that.
Speaker 2:Now, yeah, you mentioned BMW. You know I kind of turned up to their innovation lab in 2016 in in a pair of Chor's, a t-shirt, to a room full of 3p suited. It's been no, you get from Germany, I could. I told you that would happen and said, um, yeah, we've got this quite interesting data from the retail market, you know, and now that's a better project. The current and the future value of vehicles Is that interest and they it was.
Speaker 2:It was very interesting doing the innovation lab with them and getting a commercial contract. I'll come back to me and that's what we kind of realized. Actually, we've got something quite interesting there on this space to be a modern Evaluation provider and modern vehicle data provider, and so you know that that grew organically in the dealer space and the insurance space and in the lander space over the last, you know, from 2016 to 19. And then, yeah, we did this quite big deal with. It's very and we've got lots of their own great data, wanted to add our data into the mix and wanted to improve some of their legacy platforms. So we we power a lot of their tech for them in the auto retail space and they resell a lot of our data into their kind of lenders as well. So that's.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, though, because they know, they've got the name, they've got the reach and they're taking out there. If it's a thing, this is good data. We buy it, we use it. You should buy it too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're not too precious about, I think, I think, one of the feelings of some startups. Well, I think I might say it's a failure or not, but I am not precious about whether we sell our stuff direct or not.
Speaker 1:Like, I think, the right reseller relationship, they can drive stuff faster and Much faster, probably with lower risk, probably with lower sales costs with the brand yeah, a brand of that nature, taking something as in we buy it and it's good enough, right, and how many sales guys have they got compared to you? I mean, it's it's the reseller model. Look how well it works for you know People who you know build them the zoo and things like that with the Microsoft.
Speaker 2:You know, if you look at that whole, IT like the channel right, which is like the concept, like it's massive, that is a. That's the way you sell it kit or it. You know, yeah, big enterprise software. So you know, I really believe in it. I'm not that's not saying we don't sell stuff. We sell a lot direct. We, the insurance industry, we we tell into that world ourselves directly. But yeah, yeah, you know experience about 20,000 dealer customers using their tools every day. So it made absolutely sense for us to add our data in and rebuild some of those tools. So that's the key thing is?
Speaker 1:is your name in there? Like, do that when the dealers use it, do they know it's Kazana? Yeah, yeah, and that's that's. That's the win, isn't it? That's the great thing.
Speaker 2:And we got a corn talk about today with one another big one lunch. I think it's next week, so I'll send you it by the time. This is like or are you very quick? You might be very quick on the.
Speaker 1:I'll let it this this afternoon and go live tomorrow Not really takes takes ages. I'm an idiot. Remember? I don't know how to use Final Cut Pro. I have to literally look at the help page every other every other day to remember. I remember how to slice stuff and then you went. There's two things that happened to us. You notice in your history is really interesting. One is you had a bit of a tangle with the, with the, the ASA on Google search ads. I presume that was a competitor putting a spoiler across. It told me you were bringing that one up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, yeah, we did so. So, yeah, the guy that runs our all rads and I don't what it was. So we this is when we're selling a consumer product. We had two different levels for some product. Yeah, and I have a strong suspicion this is one of those big legs seeing come between. We thought it is.
Speaker 1:It was lead totally as you can read it and it's like it's so they viewed the ASA ruling. It's so obviously yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, who is? A miss dark running to frustrate our progress.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean it's, but it didn't.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just. It's just one of those things I've learned points and I think what's really interesting about legacy people. So I won't talk about what. I won't name those companies, but I will. We also compete to get to the business called also trade, which is a yeah, we have some of our products invested with them and I've got not respect for them. I think they're a really great business and one of one of the reasons I got a respect for them is the spot I didn't find this as a competitor. Perhaps because of that, the CEO and COO invited us for lunch, had a chat with us and I and and what we do and how we interact in the mob Right, which I think is a sensible move. And these other businesses I'm talking about, they just they've never even said hello but we've never even, you know, engaged and we've tried to multiple times and they don't even want to. It's like proper head in the sand stuff, you know. They don't even want to know what's coming, which is kind of Weird.
Speaker 1:I guess I would want to know.
Speaker 2:If anyone starts up doing what we do, I will be right around there to talk about it. Best to give them understanding about our men in bar major, where they're called.
Speaker 1:Do you want to have breakfast?
Speaker 2:also, so I can say that what car stuff does? Yeah, why not right? Why would you not?
Speaker 1:well, was in there in their minds, I think. Those bigger legacy companies I remember it when I did them come to check back in the day. The bigger legacy companies sit there and it's like they're fighting World War one and you're fighting, you know, with predator droons. So they're sitting there, the troops are in the trenches, right the trenches there. You ain't getting over it. And then you can a fly your drone over the top and land somewhere else and see the customer and that's. You know, that's the kind of thing that and they just it's just too hard for them to To adapt and because we had this conversation with her in a previous podcast, but the incubation have some of them work really well at BMW, in other ones I spent two days and Help me do some consultation. You got all these ideas new, okay, did some, took it away. There's some project worker how it work and I knew feel well, never happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't my top tip not the Oscar, but I'll give it anyway on those on those innovation labs or those incubation things are, if you're as a startup, if you're gonna do it, only do it if you're using it as a sales opportunity. Yeah, I think all of them I've been to enough and they're all great, right and they're well meaning. You know the innovation workshops on how to sell or how to market all those things. But the reality is, don't, don't go there unless there's a, there's a corporate participant who you want to sell stuff to. Yeah, that was our observation on the BMW. On we had an audience with the CEO of Financially services UK, the COO that you risk office. Are all of these people who you try and get any talk to them as a normal start. I'm not gonna talk about it, I'm gonna have. So that's the read me. That's the reason to do those things if you, if there's a corporation involved that you want to be selling to.
Speaker 1:Do it, yeah, but they've got it. They've got to have that level of commitment, honey, and not all the do. Some of them are just like literally just spinning the wheels talk about.
Speaker 2:You know, they're just trendy shit, you know oh, you know, is a pop art time head of innovation is willing to do, do the end of the end, and there's no, and there's no real Nature up to the top. Yeah, I mean, I think that's why the BMW on works well. I just can't do it. Multiple years of it it's continued to work well because you get access to the whole, you get a pass like you're walking around the building Talking to people, literally get a part when to go and get into the. Yeah, it's all the opposite is and you can what they're in never check out. So, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine I'm going. Oh Christ.
Speaker 2:This is an incubated yeah.
Speaker 1:I've got a multi-billion dollar car business to and now I've got to talk with this guy from down the hall. It's a bloody in any reassure, so true. And then you went to the left field and bought car and classic. I know, yeah, you must have a purpose, but on the outside it looked like. So here's a guy doing vehicle provenance data checks and Building a mass database of this, and he goes and buys a website which is about, you know, mg midgets.
Speaker 2:Yep, we will not explain so. Coyote for current classic guys there is a dope. No Is. It's the biggest specialist in classic car marketplace in Europe. So about three million people a month comes that website from. Very heavily, you know, uk focused. About 30% of our traffic comes from Italy, france, germany, belgium, a bit from the US and so if you're looking to buy or sell anything classic or weird so I said you know you want to buy a car, you need you should go to one of the traditional best websites but you a car, you don't need car or classics, but we call it.
Speaker 1:That's a great definition for the cars you don't need, because he's doing me and big enough.
Speaker 2:So so, yeah, so I Overnight success, right. But actually I started working on back position in 2015. I dug out the emails in the day so I kind of approached the owners back in 2015 said would you ever want to sell? And anyone that know me you're a car guy, like anyone that knows cars will know car in classic and there'll be a. Why is that looked so bad for so long? You know it's just, it's a website that was built in 2005 and they never changed. So nothing.
Speaker 1:I think, power to them, because they must have had a fairly nice life. There's a bit of advertising in there. They loved cars, they had a website.
Speaker 2:I didn't know so they didn't have a personating me, did they do partners actually? And one of the partners, which you actually sold out a few years earlier, did love cars, but the guy that I bought it from did there's no interesting class Wow in display revenue basically, and that was no interest at all. So I obviously petrolhead loved the site, part of the reason we bought it.
Speaker 1:We know and love it and we knew that it was massively under monetized and I love space needs, so nice and so the change in Google display ads must have hit because, you know, the last couple of years from 2015 ish there was lots of changes to display ad revenue, so that must have made a major hit for them was adding massive and that's how we bought it basically is because, if this guy, we're running it almost as a as a pension, almost as an annuity, so you're collecting the display revenue and obviously, yeah, your CPMs trend down over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very little innovation on the site. Traffic was pretty much flat lining, so it wasn't really growing anymore and and yet so the revenue was just slowly taking down on it. You're on, yet we come along when the reason that we could we buy it. So we think we've, we've done a lot of stuff around audience growth again, so we're growing about 25%. You're on here at the moment and, yeah, lots of other clever stuff for our monetization we just launched. The whole market place world is going through a lot of change at the moment and it's all getting into the transaction and a thing you'll hear a lot in my place land.
Speaker 1:So how's this? Just for the right, just for the rest of us? What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Sorry, the one market place is in a site where you can go buy a cell stuff. So we're gonna gumtree for okay toasters through to cars or eBay of this auto trader or to trade it. So. So getting into the transaction is Kind of interesting, right. So on auto trader, you can pay 40 quid and go and list your car for sale but you're on that car transaction Maybe you're making two grand a profit to order a trader anything 40 quid of that two grand. So you know how can you get into that transaction? Can you get more of that? But I'm not the transaction.
Speaker 2:And so what we've done on current over the great thing about current class music it was not monetized at all. So there was no display for it was only display revenue on it. There was no charging of dealers, there was no kind of support of consumers with the transaction process. So that's awesome, right, it's very hard for an established classified business like a word trader to radically change the model. Right, when you're listed you're pulling in over 300 million quid per annum on the same model. Very different. Somebody pivot that, whereas with carbon plastic we weren't making any money off our classifieds. So actually we could invent something new and that's all we've done.
Speaker 2:So we've launched an auction service so that allows us to safely transact a vehicle between two users. One of them might be a dealer, one of them might be an individual. They might make the dealings. We take a piece of the transaction. So we charge a 5% commission on a transaction to get it done. And our part of the bargain is we bring lots of buyers to the mix. We go and take photos of the car and describe it properly and we have an X-Grow service that helps the vehicle self safely transact. So more service to the customer. They're pretty, they're pretty. I'm not here selling, I'm pretty happy to be to the customer and we take more out of that transaction. And that's something that you know that classified world is kind of striving to move towards.
Speaker 2:What a trader and people are that doing some stuff around finance right. So there's a chunk of commission available in the finance deal and so people are starting to get some out of the transaction in that kind of load.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, the marketplace thing is hard. There's no, because, like, your customers are the ones who pay you, and then you try and take money out of that and say halfway through this transaction, if you use ours, we'll take some of that money too. And then, of course, your customers go hold on a minute, I'm already paying you and you want to take some more of the money out of the situation. So I think the marketplace thing is really going to be interesting. With COVID, I think, and being at something that worked with RedBrain, you saw the e-commerce stats flying up 30%, 40%, depending on which category, and there's some really funny stuff about you know, literally there was no laptops for a couple of weeks, there was no webcams for about a month and then all of a sudden, these things started appearing again, but there was no free weights and there was no yoga mats and shit like that, and it's amazing just the change.
Speaker 1:And of course, I think the whole automotive space is sort of sitting there going oh my goodness, we've got to adapt, adapt, adapt, adapt. And actually it's going to be really hard for a lot of them because they're still saying that people want to go to the showroom and the number of comments. You see, you know, it's just a matter of time for people to go back, and I think what people aren't considering maybe is that there isn't a vaccine, or the vaccine is a year away or two years away. And who's got the most money? It's people over 50. And who's not going to go and mingle People over 50. And there's a real risk that they don't ever go back to the showrooms the people who can actually afford to buy stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the positive thing is driven is a piggy-consumption phrase a massive digital transformation in that sector, right.
Speaker 1:So there's five years of change, and it'll be five years of change in eight months or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whereas previously, you know, your online end-to-end exchange, guaranteed price journey was probably not top of your development, it's kind of you know, that's quite out there. Your online, can you reserve a vehicle or express interest in a vehicle? That's kind of top of your list now, right? So it's forced a lot of these guys to think. My view is that it will always be a physical component to a lot of vehicle transactions, right, like a lot of vehicles you need to fall in love with, either by seeing, you know, exceedingly well-described and hundreds of images on it and some kind of you know, walk around.
Speaker 1:The question is what is a lot? The question is is 50% a lot? Because, if it's, or even 70%, because if 30% moved to, please just deliver it to my house, that's a fundamental shift of a seismic nature in an industry, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and you know a lot of the people that are doing that are offering you know it's seven-day test drives and they don't like it, but then you have to do anywhere under some of the consumer 14 days. Technically True story, yeah, so yeah you.
Speaker 1:Free cars just every 14 days, well, and the people will exploit it right. Like you know, you join, but like I don't think they will See, I disagree with you because I don't think they will, because there's one fundamental problem and difference between I want to test drive this mug and I want to test drive this car. Right, because the online buying right is applied to whether you buy a mouse or a car. If I want to buy a car, I have to get finance Right. So unless I'm buying a car for ground depending credit cars and I'm actually, I'm planning for finance I'm going to trade in my car, I'm doing a PCP or deal whatever, and the cars can deliver it and I don't like it, send it back.
Speaker 1:Okay, send it back, finances cancelled, everything's ripped up and then I go to another deal and buy another car. I'll have to go through finance again, except this time there's a hard credit check. I know the finance will actually show is still outstanding because experience and Clear score and every year actually, if you look at them, they're actually always a few weeks behind. So you'll go back and make the other and they'll say no, you can't have a car because you really got a 25 grand low and outstanding to black horse whatever. So I think they're actually protected in a way by the the purchase process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good, it's a good shout, and I think People are people work through this stuff, right? I mean, that's the reality. Like the industry will work out how to work through it fast, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of these little things to work out. But I think my point is, at the moment, this has forced them to think through this stuff. Right, where is it? Probably wouldn't naturally happen for another, I don't know five years in a big way, it's going to happen right now. You know, and you said, the next 18 months will be full of this transformation, which is great, right, that makes the. That will make the industry more relevant, it'll make it hang around for longer, like it'll make it thrive despite this, and that's good thing and it's great for you, because obviously, we, we, we've had, we've provided all the data that powers that so the more accurate the data, the better the data, the more you can reliably use it.
Speaker 1:Then it's actually it's actually a good thing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:That's one of the problems are like you can, typically, if you're going to a physical dealer and you're, you want to Stack a car deal it's called so you would trade in your old car, got an old colleague brings the mix. You want to have your finance deal and you want to get the new thing or the or the used thing. And yeah, the moment you can't stack that thing, that that whole deal, online, so you can't go and get an accurate Evaluation on your use. It will work out what part about that contributes to the mix and that's a pretty basic part of it, right? And that's one of the things that we deliver so being able to get a very accurate underwritten view of what that vehicle is worth in today's market. So you know that it is an important mix. So, yeah, we're lucky, we're in a, we're in a good spot.
Speaker 1:So what are your plans for, like moving through that? Obviously, we nobody knows what's going to happen the next three to six months, maybe. And what are your plans? Is it just to double down? Keep doing. You do well.
Speaker 2:Expand your marketplace, yes so we've got in dealer world. We're doing lots to help that transition. We recognize that they've had quite a lot of pressure from a revenue point of view, frankly, through lockdown. You know that wasn't a fun period a lot of. Even. So we're doing doing more to help, I suppose, than massively grow our business in that. That's basically we're going a lot of the tools to kind of help me out on that digital transformation. But insurance world versus growing really fast. So we do a lot of work in In the motor insurance sector and helping insurers. It's most total loss valuations now used to the other days from look at because on a data to be able to all and or have it damaged. Yeah, a few years ago the financial onwards when came out and said his honor should be looked at as part of that process.
Speaker 1:That's the win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great and it took us a while to get to get that, get that approval and I get that recommendation. But yeah, so most insurers, when I'm a bit of, spot that and we're doing more and more in the underwriting space as well. So helping insurers understand what's that vehicle worth when it goes on to cover, being able to provide better insurance quotes to customers. Let's say, your car's got lane assist or it's got low speed brake, automatic braking on it. Lot of insurers don't know that at the moment. They don't know if your, if your golf, has got that installed on it or not. We help them understand that. So and obviously those things ever can have a material impact on, on the, on the cost of the insurance.
Speaker 1:I guess like the stuff like that actually has them has quite a major impact because if you have a little front end shunt in your golf With the, with the lane assist and the passive stuff, all all the sensors on the bumper, instead of just a bit of plastic, it's like two grams with a kit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's on the rest. Yeah, I mean the rest.
Speaker 2:Some, some windscreens. On some, I would mention, manufacturers can be two thousand pounds to replace the windscreen now because it's got six, seven sensors in it. So, yeah, it can be quite expensive. That's amazing. So it's a double-edged sword, right. So you've got this very high, or much higher, replacement cost when you do have it back. Actually, I know no one uses their phone when they're in the car, but let's say you're using your phone in traffic and you didn't spot the car in front stop. Obviously it stops you at low speeds. A B will stop you hitting that and that's where a lot of claims came from. So Understanding that you've got that on the vehicle and whether that's with chip or not is a really important part of it. We do a lot work on that with insurers. And then the third bit is growing car and plastic and so growing this auction product. We got there, so we've you know we launched it in June We've sold half of an Inquity Worth of Cars. You know it's very, very early days, but just just very who's listening?
Speaker 1:We're now recording this sort of 22nd of July, so that's, that's how much in a very short period of time, isn't it?
Speaker 2:six, six weeks. Yeah, oh, you know, we sell. Last year we sold four hundred eighty million pounds worth of cars through the blackboard. So we haven't we haven't really done much yet versus the size of our platform, the half a billion dollar car guy that's.
Speaker 1:That's your new title kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if only, if only we. Yeah, we got involved with this transaction all the time, but that's the plan, you know, and it's let's get involved in more of those transactions.
Speaker 1:That's half a billion of of classic cars. Yeah, and in the uk, and you're a bit that would be done in the uk. So that's, yeah, yeah, oh, that's, that's amazing. So that shows you the scale of that sector. And here's me here's me making crap jokes for mg midget, mg midgets right.
Speaker 2:No, no, I'm not a class of sweet spot is the every man that we've got. We've got Ferrari GTOs on that site. Yeah, we got, we got, so really is.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. I take it, I take back the mg midget your car. Just call the Ferrari Enzo website. Yeah, I'm. Half. A billion is a big number, isn't it? Yeah, this for that sector. How many, how many just do you mean off the top of your head, how many transactions actually happen in the, in the classic space that you know of?
Speaker 2:So we don't. I mean we know we've got, you know, the lion's share of the market. It's as what we do. We don't know how many happen in place of his windows or by brokers. It depends on the market, right? So if you're a lot of that very high-end stuff still happens by black, but it's still broker based business. But you know, I would guess we've got 70, 80% of the market.
Speaker 1:Um, so, you say, you know how big that is. We have any transactions, that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's about 90,000 transactions per annum.
Speaker 1:That's significant, isn't it? It's quite interesting as well, Because obviously a lot of this is like I've always wanted to buy an XR3i, because I wanted one of them when I was 18.
Speaker 1:Then you get the whole affordable like I, like the everyday man stuff like the MG midgets and the Spitfires and all that kind of stuff, because when you actually get in, when you drive around, it's great fun, because actually you don't have that whole. I think cars have gotten off tangent here and me edit this out. But I think I got a Golf GTI and I love Volkswagen. They've always been great, apart from when it broke three times to get fixed but it was too powerful. It's a Golf GTI, front-wheel drive and, to be quite honest, you're going not to 70 so quickly that there's no fun in it. There's no fun in the corners because it's too easy. And then you can go and buy something like a 15-year-old MX-5, and you realize what driving was actually like.
Speaker 2:My first.
Speaker 1:Nissan Micra right, 900cc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're on the limits doing anything, you actually drive any modern car. Now you lose your license very quickly.
Speaker 1:It's not just that, it's just no fun. I mean, a Golf R around country roads is just so what I mean? Unless you're driving like the stick, there's just no joy in it because you're never actually having to have any skill. Any idiot can drive, which is what they do, obviously. I see it around here. They all get them and they all drive them like idiots. I might leave that in actually just for the Nissan Micra, because I'd want as well you leave the Nissan Micra out. And I delivered pizzas for Pizza Hut man. The Dason used to pay £1.20.
Speaker 2:With the Flair one as well, was it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:White, with the horrible tan leather in here and the 920cc engine. It was brilliant. Not a 20, fantastic 20 to 30 knots.
Speaker 2:I love that, but yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1:We got five up and did 95 miles an hour in the road from Aberdeen to Stonehaven and I did the three peak challenge in that car three up.
Speaker 2:But I did all the driving. We just started to leave on a Friday and did it, so I drove to Ben-Novis, did that and then drove all through the night and so I think I did about well, we did it in 22 hours. So all the climbing and all the driving in 22 hours, that's hard. In a 900cc Nissan Micra which we blurced it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were great. I remember that If you put some big lads in the back, you could actually get the front wheel so that you were steering nothing was actually happening Back in the days driving killed you more regularly, so that's been great, tom. Thank you very much. It's much appreciated. You come on Confounded TV and I'll make sure I get some sponsors from those affiliates we mentioned earlier. It's been really fascinating to hear about Kazana car and classic and I really do wish you all the best for the future.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on out today.
